Given that we were expecting to visit the archaeological
site this morning, I had booked the winery tour and tasting for the rather
early hour of 09:00. We had a pleasant welcome and were introduced to Manos who
was to give us the tour. It turned out that we were very lucky as Manos was the
Production Manager but was also responsible for the blending of the wine and
dealt with the 500 small producers who provided the grapes for the cooperative.
Quite a responsible job!
We had a really interesting tour of the winery with Manos able to answer all of
questions. The wine tasting was also very good and we tasted four wines – one
white, one rosé and two reds. The Nemea production is almost exclusively
red and the white wine was not very good. However the rosé was good
and the reds were excellent. We left with a selection of wine to take home.
Our next destination was the north coast of the Peloponnese and we had selected
a scenic route to get there. In the Nemea museum there were exhibits from a
number of other sites in the area and we were passing a couple of them on the
way. Often, these sites are not open to the public or there is very little to
see but we decided to keep an eye out just in case. The first site was Petri
but there were no brown tourist signs, so we drove on. The next site was
Aidonia and there was a sign to the ‘Mycenaean Tombs’. The road was very narrow
and steep and I had to go past the next sign down a dirt track so that I could
find somewhere to park the van. We have followed these signs before and given
up as the signs ran out and we had no idea how far it was to the site. We
walked back down the hill to the dirt track and were delighted to find that the
site was only just a few metres away. The first tomb was an impressive, simple
shaft grave but what came next was incredible. The hillside was covered with 18
(ish) Mycenaean tombs, many intact and open, allowing us to walk down into
them. They were all hollowed out of the solid rock and many showed signs of
tomb robbers. In the museum it said that most of the tombs had been robbed
although there were still valuable finds left. Some however were intact and
these gave some beautiful finds, including the signet ring in yesterday’s post.
It appears that there is some excavation work still being done, so we hope that
they might find more. We spent time exploring the tombs before heading back to
the van and the main road. This is a stunning site for anyone who has even a
slight interest in archaeology.
The route took us through the mountains with many steep and winding roads but
with great views. We passed Stymphalia Lake, which hardly existed. The lake can
be 6km by 2km in winter but the water filters down through the porous limestone
and through a series of sink holes and therefore shrinks considerably, sometimes
disappearing completely by autumn. If the sink holes become blocked, flooding
can occur, which in ancient times was put down to Artemis being angry because
people weren’t worshiping her correctly.
After the Stymphalia valley we went over a low pass into the Pheneos valley,
also home to a (smaller) occasional lake. The road here was well above the
fertile valley bottom fully exploited with crops.
A long winding descent took us to the main road along the northern coast of the
Peloponnese and we turned left to find out campsite, Akrata Beach. We first
stayed here in April 2008 on our 14 month Odyssey and when we arrived the very
pleasant, jolly owner greeted us with the news that they weren’t open. However,
Manolis explained, we could stay free of charge – a very good example of Greek ‘filoxenia’,
friendship to strangers. We returned later that year and also in 2011 but
hadn’t been here since then. Much to our amazement, Manolis remembered us and
gave us a great welcome. The small site was very busy, a very good sign for
this time of the year, but Manolis gave us a place right by the beach with a
lovely view across the Gulf of Corinth.
After a lovely meal in the campsite taverna, we closed the curtains on the view
of the little blinking red lights of the wind farms on the northern coast of
the Gulf of Corinth.
Photos: Nemean wine maturing in oak barrels; Two of the
Mycenaean tombs at Aidonia; The interior of the tombs are often made to look
like houses.
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