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.
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