Wednesday 27th April 2011 - Kastraki, Meteora, Greece

We had very light showers during the day yesterday but it started raining harder just before we went to bed and continued for a large part of the night. Fortunately, by the morning we were back to very light rain.
This is our last full day in Kastraki so we decided to do some more investigating. There is yet another hermitage cave on the outskirts of the village, Agios Giorgos Mantillas (St. George of the Kerchief). There is no hermit in residence now but the cave is still much visited by the locals who decorate the cave with colourful kerchiefs. The map showed a track leading from the village square but in fact it was a residential asphalted road lined with houses on both sides. We climbed up some steps to a small chapel above which was the cave that was full of colour. I was hoping to be able to get up to it but there was no obvious route and certainly no steps cut into the rock. When returning from our early morning visit to the monasteries on Monday, I saw a group of people in the cave and a rope hanging down from it. This may well have been a late name day celebration (all Greek churches celebrate these) as we had read that if St. George's day (April 23rd) falls in Lent, the day is celebrated after Easter and Monday was the first possible day. However it was clear that they had used a rope to get up and unless you are a climber, that is probably the only way.
The campsite map showed the track continuing and a footpath leading off around the rock mastiffs but given the 'footpaths' that we had attempted to follow before, I didn't have a lot of confidence that it would be walkable. However, we were pleasantly surprised. Not only was the footpath there but it was easy walking and interesting. It went through woodland dotted with knarled trees giving it a rather eerie feel in the damp overcast conditions. Due to the overnight rain, the grass and leaves were very wet and so we we after we had ploughed our way though them.
The map of Meteora displayed on a board in Kastraki showed a 'Monk's Prison' in this area but we had no information about it. Was it a prison from naughty monks or naughty lay people? And where exactly was it – the map only showed a vague arrow? We never knowingly found it but we did find the impressive remains of the hermitage of Agion Pnevma (Holy Ghost). Built into a natural cleft in the vertical cliff, there are scant remains of some walls and many post holes cut into the rock at the bottom of the cleft and hollows line the walls deep into the rock. Many metres above and now inaccessible (at least by me), an intricate series of beams and posts form a skeleton of the original extensive hermitage which must have had many floors.
We returned to Henrietta and spent the rest of the day catching up with the blog, posting it using the WiFi connection in the campsite restaurant and planning for the next few days.
Photos: Agios Giorgos Mantillas; Agios Pnevma; Beams and posts from high up in Agios Pnevma.