Tuesday 17th May 2011 – Gortys, Lousios Gorge, Greece

As we were driving from Dimitsana yesterday, Jane was reading the Blue Guide and discovered that it was a special day for Prodromou today. Every monastery and church celebrates its saints day and Prodromou's is August 29th. However the 17th of May is the saints day of St. Anthanasius of Christianoupolis (a local saint) and this is the dedication of the church in the precinct of the monastery. When we stood outside the motorhome in the morning, we could hear the sound of chanting drifting up from far below. We drove down round the many bends until we reached the full monastery car park and we parked on the road just outside. There is quite a long walk (about 15 minutes) down to the monastery and we were quite convinced that we were nearly there when the track took us in the opposite direction to the chanting. It soon became clear that we had been misled by the echo from the other side of the gorge and we soon arrived at Prodromou in its dramatic position part in and part under the cliff.
The church was overflowing with some of the faithful sitting in seats outside. We joined them and listened to the service for some time before we walked over to the monastery itself. This was quite intriguing with the rock of the cliff often forming the walls of the rooms. The monastery probably started life as a cave hermitage in the 12th century but the main monastery was built in the 16th and 17th centuries. The guest accommodation was built 1860, still built into the cliff. The tiny main church within the monastery is built into the rock and has some lovely frescoes inside the church and the rock outside. We were presented with coffee, cake and biscuits and sat on the balcony watching the view and enjoying the treats.
The service finished after at least three hours and the congregation made their way down to the monastery precinct where they were given coffee and an interesting roll of deep-fried sweet batter sprinkled with cinnamon. I was offered one and shared it with Jane – an experience but we wouldn't search for another one. The congregation chatted for a while with the many monks, priests and a bishop before they filed into the monastery building and sat down at long tables. Here they were treated to a full meal with oven-cooked lamb with small square pasta served in a tomato sauce.
We met a Danish couple with their young daughter who were the only other foreign tourists at the monastery. Simon worked for the Danish National Museum and Mette had been involved in aid work mainly in India. In fact they had both spent about three years in India, some of that time with their daughter Bertha. Mette told us about her time in the remote parts of the country where she had seen many different weird and wonderful rituals including animal sacrifices and people experiencing mystic fits where they were able to commune with the spirit world. For such a young couple, they were well travelled and had some amazing tales to tell.
Jane walked back to Henrietta whilst I walked down a path to the depths of the gorge. I had intended to walk to the other monastery, Philosophou and this would have been quite easy, but time was getting on so I simply went down to the river and then walked back up (a long way up) to the motorhome. On the last part of the walk I met Mette, Simon and Bertha again and had another long chat. Bertha was unbelievably well behaved. She was fascinated by everything around her – the donkeys at the monastery (she spent about half an hour feeding them with grass) and anything to do with nature – she had quite a collection of wild flowers by the time that we got to the car park. She had walked all the way to and from the monastery and spent hours there without a single complaint.
After a very late lunch we headed on to the ruins of Ancient Gortys just a little further down the gorge. We looked at the remains of a ritual bathing place and the Temple of Asclepieion. The site was important for many centuries, even into the Roman times as it was said to be the place where Nymphs washed the infant Zeus. In fact it is thought that is why the river was named Lousios, as it means 'wash' in Greek. We walked up to a bridge over the river just below the Prodromou monastery and inspected the 'watermill and fulling-tub of the Monastery of Prodromou' just beyond the bridge. This was quite fascinating as it had been built partly in a cave where a strong spring emanating from the cliff provided the water power before flowing into the Lousios River.
The very quiet car park provided an excellent wild camping spot for the night.
Photos: The monks' cells at Prodromou; From Prodromou looking towards Philosophou; This tiny chapel was once a hermit's cave and still contains frescoes painted by the hermit; Old Philosophou Monastery seen from the walk down to the bottom of the gorge. It was deliberately designed to blend in with the cliff of the gorge so that it could not be seen by raiders. It is no longer occupied and is sadly decaying.

Monday 16th May 2011 – Above Prodromou Monastery, Dimitsana, Greece

Jane thought (and I agreed) that our route north would be quicker if we took the main Sparta to Tripoli road and then cut across west. The Sparta – Tripoli road was very quick but the next section was mountainous and slow. We would have been better off on the, apparently more minor road directly north but we did at least get some lovely views of the Taygetos mountain range.
Our first target was the small village of Pellana where there is a group of five Mycenean tombs. The number of tombs and the richness of the finds from them have lead some experts to suggest that this might be the early site of Sparta before it moved further south. It was obviously a very significant place, which it isn't now! The site of the tombs is closed but we were able to look up to the site on a low hill and see some of the tomb entrances.
Onwards and definitely upward we headed north into the centre of the Peloponnese. We arrived at a huge plain with the once great city of Megalopolis at its centre. The modern town of Megalopolis is an important centre but is a nondescript, rather drab place that retains little evidence of its glorious ancient past. Parts of the plain were known to spontaneously combust (a phenomenon that must have cause quite a stir in antiquity) and this lead to the discovery of vast brown coal deposits. This is why the plain is dominated by open cast mines and three massive power stations with their red-striped chimneys spearing the sky and white clouds of steam from the cooling towers spiralling past. The plain is surrounded on all sides by high mountains, creating a bowl in which the power stations sit. This is not good news, as on calm days such as today, the pollution stays in the bowl creating a layer of smog that covers the plain. This was clearly visible as we climbed up into the mountains where we selected a picnic spot that had a view of the mountains and not the power stations.
Continuing to climb we arrived at Dimitsana and headed for the Open-Air Water Power Museum. This is run, like the excellent Olive and Greek Olive Oil Museum in Sparta, by the Piraeus Bank Group Cultural Foundation. We had visited it before, probably when it had just been set up in the 1990s, and thought that it was very good. It didn't disappoint us. The information boards were very good, telling us all about the installations and the life of the millers and local people. There was a fulling mill for washing cloth, a flour mill, a tannery and a 'black powder mill'. Huge volumes of water flowed through the site from a very strong spring just above and this provided plenty of power for the fulling tub and the flour mill, using a horizontally mounted water wheel, that were both operating. The 'black powder mill' produced gunpowder in a complex and dangerous process using a vertically mounted water wheel to power a series of vertical wooden posts that pounded the ingredients to the fine powder required. Dimitsana produced much of the gunpowder used in the long war of independence fought by the Greeks against the Turks in the early 19th century.
We also bought the excellent 'Walker's Map of the River Lousios Valley with Cultural Information' from the museum that had many suggested drives and walks in the area complete with a very good map showing the roads, trails, remains of watermills and other points of interest.
We intended to visit the Prodromou (St.John the Baptist) Monastery in the morning so, given that there are no campsites in the area, we decided to try to find a wild camping pitch close to it. We drove back towards Stemnitsa and took the right turn signposted to Prodromou. All of our maps show this as an un-asphalted road but during our brief trip through the area three years ago, I was sure that I had seen an asphalted road. This was the case although minor rockfalls littered the road and there were plenty of potholes to be avoided. The road descends sharply into the gorge on a series of hairpin bends but it was not far below the main road that I spotted a suitable, nearly flat area of land and we were able to keep far enough from the edge for Jane's comfort. The views over the Gortynian mountains and the Lousios Gorge were magnificent. We could see the Philosophou Monastery over the other side of the gorge but could not see Prodromou that was obviously far below us and tucked into the side of the gorge. We could see a few villages from our pitch but as night fell more appeared as their lights started to twinkle far away on the mountainsides.
Photos: This rather lovely building in Pellana must surely have been a mill at one time. High up above the plane in Georgitsa we came across this aeroplane and at the entrance to the village was a sign to 'The Airport' – a strange place for it but there was obviously an Air Force base nearby; The Dimitsana Water Power Museum - water runs in front of the building housing a fulling tub and flour mill; The Fulling Tub; The Gunpowder Mill; Jane admires the view from our wild camping pitch.

Sunday 15th May 2011 – Mystras, Greece

The Taygetos mountains were very clear this morning with the snow shining in the sunlight but the view to the sea was obscured by haze. We drove the short distance down into Arna and parked in the small car parking area above the Plateia (square). Taverna and café tables were dotted around under the shade of the enormous platanus trees, the central one allegedly one of the largest in Greece. Our brochure from Sparta told us that there was a 'flat path leaving the square that leads in one and a half hours to the Springs of Aghia Marina'. We thought that sounded like a good walk so we tried to find the path but it wasn't obvious. We found a board with a map showing the route of the pan-European E4 walking trail that showed it going through Arna. It confusingly also showed two Aghia Marinas, one was a village and another was a chapel and they were in totally different places. The E4 went somewhere near the church but not actually to it. Fortunately the locals were very helpful and many had already said hello to us and asked us where we were from. We asked directions to the springs and were taken to an English speaker. He looked surprised that we wanted to walk to Aghia Marina (a bad sign) but drew us a map. He didn't understand the word spring so I tried 'pigi', which I thought was the Greek word for spring but it obviously isn't or I didn't pronounce it properly. I took him to the map board and pointed to the chapel and then got a second version of the map. We followed these directions but they simply took us on the road which is not what we wanted. It would have been a long walk in the full sun, not the lovely walk through trees that we had been promised in the brochure. I left Jane in the van whilst I went off to investigate other possible tracks. I found the E4 heading in roughly the correct direction and followed it. It was well signed through the village and out into lovely countryside. Through trees with springs, a profusion of wild flowers and lots of butterflies – I counted at least 8 different types from huge swallow-tails to tiny speckled brown ones. It was delightful. Then I had the common Greek (and other countries) walking trail problem – lots of signs in the village in places where you don't need them and no signs when there is a choice of trails out in the countryside. The area is criss-crossed by tracks leading to people land – olive groves, nut trees, pastures etc. Most of the time it is obvious which is the main track but I came to one meeting of tracks where the main one went up hill (I wanted to be going down) and was then blocked by a wire fence. I tried the others. One seemed hopeful. I scared a flock of sheep that then went into a huddle under an olive tree and eyed me suspiciously. However that petered out and so I walked back past the concerned sheep who then decided that I wasn't so bad after all and started following me. When ever I stopped and turned around, they stopped and started grazing. And when I walked on they followed. I had visions of walking back into Arna square with a flock of sheep behind me. Fortunately, they eventually gave up and I retraced my steps to find Jane in the motorhome.
Jane had just had a long chat with a group of four Norwegian walkers in their late 50's who were walking parts of the E4. They had just done the stretch from a refuge high up in the Taygetos down to Arna. They said that the route down was well marked but there were many fallen trees and ravines that required significant amounts of scrambling and climbing.
We walked down into the plateia and had two frappé (cold coffees) and were presented with an Arna calendar (now displayed in Henrietta). We then walked on to a shop that sold local produce and bought some mountain oregano and were given a postcard and some chestnuts. There was a reason for this – Arna has a chestnut festival at the end of October that attracts over 2,000 people. Given that the village has less than 130 residents, every one of them must be involved in the three days of celebrations. Make a note that if we ever come to Greece in the Autumn, we must go to Arna for the chestnut festival.
After exploring the rest of the village, we took a different road down to the main Sparta – Gytheo road and drove back to the Mystras campsite.
Photos: Arna Platea (Square); Arna's Clock Tower; Concerned multi-storey sheep.

Saturday 14th May 2011 – Arna, Greece

We had been given two excellent local guides by a café in Sparta and that inspired us to investigate more of the local sights. We wanted to travel up into the Taygetos mountains and one of the brochures mentioned Arna, which sounded rather nice. First we headed into Sparta, visited the Temple of Artemis Orthia (the site is not open but it is visible from outside the fence) and drove down the east side of the Evrotas River expecting to cross it at one of two crossings further south. One certainly did not exist and if the other did exist, it was down a very narrow lane, too narrow for the motorhome. Greek maps strike again!
We went back to Sparta and drove down the main road along the west side of Evrotas. After stopping at an excellent, large AB Supermarket where all of the staff spoke English, we arrived at the Tholos Tomb of Vafio (or Vapheio). This was where two beautiful 15th century BC gold cups were found during an excavation in 1888 and we saw them in our visit to the Athens museum. There wasn't much left of the tholos tomb surrounded on all sides by vast olive groves.
Next stop was the Hellenistic bridge at Xirokambi - built in 100 BC it was on the ancient road from Sparta to its port of Kardamyli on the other side of the Taygetos mountain range. It is complete and is still being used by pedestrians.
Here our climb started and we were soon seeing magnificent views. There are no campsites in the area so we were looking for a suitable wild camping site. We saw a couple of possibilities on the way but just before Arna we came across the ideal site with easy access from the road. The long, wide and flat area of stony ground had magnificent views to the right over the Taygetos mountains, to the left over the Evrotas valley and plain to the Parnon mountains, and ahead to the sea, the Gulf of Messenia. At 900 metres with those views we really felt we were on top of the world. We took a walk around the perimeter and then cooked dinner. As darkness fell we watched the lights of villages appear in every direction.
For anyone wishing to wild camp in this area, the site is approx. 2km outside Arna on the Vasiliki road, GPS coordinates 36.88182 N, 022.43152 E.
Photos: 15th century BC gold cup from Vafio showing the capture of bulls; The Hellenistic Bridge at Xirokambi; Wild camping near Arna.

Friday 13th May 2011 - Mystras, Greece

This is our last day in Mystras and we wanted to see Sparta. The bus took us into the centre and we went to the Town Hall to attempt to get a map that showed the location of the visible archaeological remains. There was no tourist information office but the Municipal Police were extremely helpful and provided us with a good map. We made our way to the Sparta acropolis via the remains of Leonidion, said to be the tomb of Leonidas, the man who with 300 of his Spartan soldiers fought to the death in the pass at Thermopylae against the might of the Persian army in 480 BC. Very little of ancient Sparta can be seen today although it appears that every time that they dig foundations in the modern city some more are revealed. Most of what is visible on the acropolis is Roman, the theatre being the major attraction with its view over the snow-capped Taygetos mountains. We were also able to see the ruins of Mystras sprinkled over the hill below its castle. We had passed a passed a very well equipped nursery / kindergarten / first school on the way and on the way back we saw a group of five to six year olds being marched around the playground, some waving flags. Then they started to chant. This made me think of the rigid discipline of the ancient Spartans and I nearly asked the children whether any of them had been left as children on the mountainside to see if they were tough enough to survive! Jane was very impressed by the amount of play equipment available for the children and we were both impressed by their vocal pet peacock that was strutting around the playground.
The Sparta museum is quite interesting but is very much an old style Greek museum with poorly displayed and very poorly labelled (even in Greek) exhibits. By contrast, we then went on to the Museum of the Olive and Greek Olive Oil run by the Piraeus Bank Group Cultural Foundation. We weren't sure whether to go to this but we were so glad that we did. It was really interesting and extremely well presented, probably to best that we have seen in Greece. Everything olives and olive oil was covered from varieties, propagation and cultivation of the olive trees to the history of the olive and olive oil, its production, transportation and uses from pre-history to modern times. Well worth a visit.
Photos: The Spartan Roman theatre and the view over olive groves and Sparta to the snow-capped Taygetos mountains; One of many inscribed blocks of the theatre walls – this one starts “Sacred Artemis .....” if anyone can translate the rest, please let me know; Masks from the Temple of Artemis Orthia in Sparta; Reproduction of a prehistoric olive press.

Thursday 12th May 2011 - Mystras, Greece

There was sunshine and blue skies when we woke up so we decided to go for a walk that we had found in the Municipality of Mystras tourist guide that we had been given at the campsite. We had also seen a board detailing the routes and spoken to a Dutch couple who had done one of the walks. We spotted a walk that we could take from the campsite and headed into the village. On the other side of Mystras on the way to the mediaeval site we turned left by an information board. The walk took us on a cobbled donkey track up a very pretty sheer-sided gorge with a stream flowing down it. The wild flowers were lovely and the route was lined with cyclamen. It is very late to see cyclamen growing in Greece but the cool Spring and the shaded nature of the gorge have probably allowed them to survive so long. As we approached the start of the walk we saw some dark clouds over the mountains and these increased as we progressed up the steep path. We passed many springs and chapels on the route and these provided an excuse for a break before continuing the climb. Near the top we came across signs of what might have been a wild boar with much disturbed soil and judging by the size of the stones moved it must have been a powerful animal.
After 2.5km and one and a half hours we arrived at a road just below the village of Taygeti and were informed by a sign that we were at an altitude of 700m. The village is very small but the views from it were lovely. We looked down on the castle of Mystras and across the modern village of Mystras and Sparta in the plain to the mountains beyond. They were covered in dense black cloud and we heard our first ominous deep rumble of thunder coming from across the valley. And then it started to rain, predictably at our furthest point from the campsite. Fortunately, it was only light rain and we started off on the long walk down the road from Taygeti down to Mystras. The road headed off in totally the wrong direction but descended slowly in zig-zags – easier walking but at least twice the distance of the route up. On this section there were herbs (mint, oregano and thyme) growing everywhere and we also saw lots of orchids. We left the road for a few metres to get to a small chapel with a view over the plain and came across a dead tortoise. The upper part of its shell had been smashed open and then the flesh eaten. We know that Golden Eagles prey on tortoises, they carry them up to a height and then drop them on rocks to break the shell. We also had a much nicer view of a tortoise, a live one this time, just a couple of minutes later. We had to shelter under the eaves of that chapel when a particularly heavy spate of rain fell accompanied by thunder and lightening and we used our very inelegant but effective rain capes (glorified plastic bags) for two stretches but got down to the plain without getting too wet. However, a huge mass of black cloud was heading towards us and it was a race to see who reached the campsite first. We won and it wasn't long before the rain started and it continued for the rest of the afternoon and into the evening.
Photos: We decided that this was the village square of Taygeti with a covered communal eating area; View down from Taygeti to Mystras Castle (left) and Sparta in the middle distance (right); View on our descent showing old and new Mystras.

Wednesday 11th May 2011 - Mystras, Greece

We checked the weather on the Internet yesterday and it said that today was going to be overcast with a 60% chance of rain. We had therefore decided to go into Sparta to visit the museum and, if it wasn't raining, a few of the small sites dotted around the city. However, we woke up to blue skies and sunshine – a lovely day. We changed plans and set off for the mediaeval site of Mistras, walking through the village and round the hill that dominates it. Earlier on the trip we had seen a Short-toed Eagle soaring in the thermals but today we went one better, seeing an eagle (not sure which one but darker than the Short-toed) carrying its prey, a long snake hanging from its talons.
The city of Mystras was founded in the 13th century AD following the building of a castle on the summit of the hill in 1249 by the Franks. The Franks were trying to establish sovereignty over the whole of the Peloponnese and this castle was an important part of their plan. People abandoned the ancient city of Sparta and moved to Mystras which became the most important city and the centre of learning and the arts in the mediaeval Morea (the Peloponnese). But it was always under threat and in its history it was ruled for many years by a series of Despots before being attacked, conquered by or surrendered to the Byzantines, the Slavs, the Turks (for many years), Venetians, Spanish, Italians from Rimini, rebelling Greeks, the Albanians and even (briefly after the Greek War of Independence) the Egyptians.
The city is unusual in that it is built on the steep hill crowned by the castle although it often spread outside its defensive walls and onto the plain below with the residents retreating to the fortified areas during times of threat. At its peak in the late 17th, early 18th centuries there were 42,000 inhabitants. The city on the hill was finally abandoned in 1831 when King Otto re-established Sparta and the population moved there or to the modern village of Mystras on the plain below the hill. Ruins are scattered on the hill but it is the churches and monasteries that are the best preserved and the reason why most of the visitors are there. Now declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site, a huge amount of conservation and reconstruction work has taken place. We first visited Mystras nearly 30 years ago and there are huge changes. Churches that were virtually derelict are now roofed and their walls repaired. The beautiful paintings that were often open to the elements have been restored and protected. We spent over three hours walking over the site before heading back to the campsite, passing an interesting dead snake and a large live one on the way back.
Photos: The ruins of Mystras cling to the hillside below the castle; The Monastery of Peribleptos built into the rock; Looking down to The Metropolis from the Pantanassa Monastery which is still an active monastery; The pulpit (?) high up in the Metropolis church.