I think my first visit was in 1984 - I've lost my old diaries, and the memory is certainly not what it was! I do know that I've only missed 2 years since my first visit, and that I have been twice in one year a few times - although I have been trying other places for my second holiday in the past couple of years.
Funny you should mention the site being up and running Paul - it only happened because I needed to learn how to write sites for work, and thought I'd give it a go at home. I wasn't going to spend my spare time writing about Project Management (which is what I was doing then). so I chose Plakias as it was something I wanted to write about.
Another motivator was Steve - who often comes out to Plakias with us. He was talking about writing a site as well - and I spoke to him one day his site was nearly finished, and I hadn't really started. SO I cheated, and cobbled something together with a desktop publishing package. It meant I was able to get something live quickly, but I never did meet Steve's standards.
I was amazed that the site started getting accessed regulalry, and I supposed that encouraged me to try to do it properly. The whole thing needs revamping now - just wish I had the time! Just you wait until I retire!
Initially the site was just stuck up on some free webspace that I got with my Virgin account - then I moved to BT - but a few years back Steve gave me the plakias.co.uk domain as a present, and it's been there ever since. I think that's one reason we get a good listing in the search engines - its been there so long!
Ploppy mentions the old forum - there was always a bit of interest, but they were difficult to maintain. The latest version is so much better - but so much more complicated - so aren't we lucky Ploppy's around to keep his techie eye on thinks - 'cause I'm rubbish there!
Paul also mentions 9/ll. I flew home from Plakias that day - to Gatwick, with Greg and Loz my regular Plakias mates! We landed in Gatwick early evening - and didn't know anything about what had happened until we were outside the airport and the taxi driver mentioned it to us.
What a long and rambling post from me - sorry. I don't get much chance to sign on these days. I am also currently having problems with my broadband connection. So I logged on at work today - I must do this more often - it's a much better lunch option than going to the pub!
Well - back to work soon - see you in Plakias soon (well - Sept 18th!)