Friday 29th April 2022 – Vivari, near Tolon, Greece

 

A short walk from the car park took to the museum entrance and, as we were there a few minutes before it opened, we took a look at the spring and chapel just above the museum. There was a service going on in the small chapel, quite an unusual occurrence in Greece and it suggested that it might be the saint day of the chapel. The icons that had been placed outside the chapel mentioned ‘zoodochos pighi’ and ‘ioanis’. ‘Pighi’ means spring and there are many, many villages in Greece named that or a variation of it. There are also a number of villages names Zoodochos Pighi and this means ‘life-giving spring’. Given the heat and lack of rivers in much of Greece, springs were indeed essential for life. The chapel was dedicated to ‘St. John (the Baptist) of the life-giving spring’ and, when I checked, I discovered that April 29^th is its saint’s day. It is very common for there to be a chapel by springs in Greece, thanking God for the provision of good water.
This strong spring fed the museum with the water to power all of its exhibits and we went down to see them in action. There was a fulling mill that was used to soften and bind woollen fibres and also for the annual wash of cloth, rugs etc. This simply used water falling from height and forced through a small opening into a tub. The water and the cloth spirals around the tub, similar to a washing machine but without the use of any chemicals – very green!
There were also an example of the ‘eastern style’ flour mill where the mill wheel is mounted horizontally and operates a bit like a turbine with the falling water forced through a small opening onto the wheel. I have also seen these mills in the mountains just using a small stream as a source of power. There was a whole building showing the process of tanning and dyeing of leather, something that was very prevalent in our area of Somerset.
The water was used time and time again as it was channelled down the steep hillside and the last use was in a mill powered by what we in the UK would consider to be a normal, vertical, mill wheel. This was a gunpowder mill, one of a huge number of such mills in the area. The Turks used the mills of this area to produce gunpowder for themselves but they were turned against them during the War of Independence (1821) when the mills were used to supply freedom fighters all over Greece.
The museum is really interesting with excellent information boards and videos and I was so glad that all of the water powered exhibits were operated by the staff so that visitors could appreciate how they worked.
We moved on to Stemnitsa, another nearby village that was also heavily involved in the 1821 uprising. It is also a very pretty village but less touristy than Dimistsana.
The road down to the coast is a major road but was incredibly quiet. This might have been that, when we turned a corner, we disturbed four golden orioles. It is rare to see these beautiful, bright yellow birds and we were incredibly lucky to see four – more than we have seen in all our very many visits to Greece put together.
When we reached the coast, we stopped at the ‘House of Tiles’ in Lerna. This site is really one for archaeology enthusiasts but is one of the most important prehistoric sites in the Greek world being inhabited continuously for 5,500 years from 6500 BC.
On then to our campsite, Lefka Beach, just along the coast from Nafplio.

Photos: The St. John chapel; Water is channelled from the spring into wooden pipes that take it down into the museum; The simple flour mill with the fulling mill in the background; The gunpowder mill with the posts being lifted and dropped by the mechanism - these were used to pound the raw materials and it was very noisy!