Tuesday 20th May 2008

The route to Meteora is described in our guidebook as one of the prettiest in Greece but it was still hazy today and I have to say that our route last Friday and Saturday and those in the Peloponnese (especially 9th and 10th May) were much nicer. This road was also much busier, we hardly ever met another vehicle on the other routes, but here there were many heavy lorries and quarry trucks servicing the construction sites for the new motorway that is being built through the mountains (quite literally in many cases). There was no way of overtaking the lorries, so we just had to be patient. Fortunately, the bends in the road were not as tight and the hills not as steep as on Saturday, so gear changes and breaking (both still painful) were not as frequent.
We have been to Meteora (meaning 'rocks in the air') before but the first sight still took our breath away. Massive rock formations, their cliffs etched with numerous caves, cover the area and dominate the villages below them. Perched on top of some of the pinnacles of rock, in seemingly totally inaccessible positions, are monasteries. In the 10th century Christian hermits started to use the natural caves but in the 14th century two monks from Mount Athos (a Greek monastic community) visited and decided to to establish a monastery. The idea caught on and at one time 24 of the rock pinnacles had monasteries on them. Many of the rocks as classified as 'advanced routes' by today's rock climbers and it is difficult to understand how they managed to build the monasteries without modern tools. Even in the middle of the 20th century, visitors were still winched up the rocks in baskets but now steps have been carved into the rock, staircases built and bridges constructed to span the gap to adjacent rocks. Hopefully, the photographs that I have included will give some idea of the spectacular scenery but it is very difficult to do it justice.
The journey had not been a long one and we arrived in time to drive around the area. We stopped at Roussanou (Ayias Varvaras) and walked up the steps and over the bridge to the small monastery. The very small chapel had some very good frescoes and we were particularly impressed by the wall full of depictions of martyrdom. There was a wide selection of methods available – fire was very popular (boiling or burning), then there was impaling on a wooden stake, beheading, having all your limbs chopped off, death by a thousand cuts (attached to a wheel and rotated so that your body was cut by knives stuck into the ground below the wheel) – to name but a few! Greek churches often have horrendous depictions of The Last Judgement but this one was particularly gruesome. We drove on to two other monasteries to admire the views but decided not to visit them today.
We drove down to Kastraki, just below the monasteries, where the campsite 'Vrachos' was located. It was a hot day again, so we found a shady pitch near the swimming pool and settled in. I decided to see if Terry and Stuart had arrived and set off following signs towards the 'New Place' i.e. a more recent addition to the campsite. I had only taken a few steps when I met Stuart and established that we must have been within minutes of each other travelling along the Ioannina to Meteora road. Stuart was on a shopping expedition. They had run out of wine when we met them at Ioannina so they drank our wine. They had already told us that they wanted to supply the wine next time that we met and had purchased exactly the same wine in Lidl. At least they thought that they had – it had the same name on the label, it cost the same (€1.99 - £1.60 for 1.5 litres!) and it was red. It was only earlier today that they had bought the medium sweet red wine instead of the dry. They had tried it at lunch time and Stuart described it as 'absolutely terrible' and to make matters even worse, they had bought 2 bottles, 3 litres of it. For a Yorkshireman who has lived for many years in Scotland, the waste of money was a tragedy! This campsite, just like the one in Ioannina, sold wine in their shop but at a ridiculously high price, in this case the cheapest red wine was over €8 (£6.40) a bottle - “'Ow much?”. Stuart had explained to us that if you stay silent for long enough in any shopping street in the world, you will hear “'Ow much?” and you will know that the person is a Yorkshireman! Stuart was determined to find a supermarket in the village that had better value wine.
Stuart directed me to where they had parked and I walked for about half a mile through the rambling campsite until I got to the furthest corner of the site and there I found Terry with Maisie, their campervan. Arriving unnoticed, I said in a loud voice “Excuse me, have you got any red wine to spare?”. Shortly afterwards, Stuart arrived back after a successful expedition and we decided that we should get together for a meal that evening. Maisie has very limited cooking facilities, so I offered the use of our BBQ and oven with Stuart supplying the dry red wine! Another excellent evening was had in such easy-going company and I was able to clock up a first – watching fireflies. Our son Simon had seen fireflies near our Somerset village but I had never been lucky enough to encounter them. We sat outside on a beautifully warm evening and Stuart pointed out that there were fireflies a few metres away. Later some flew over and around us – a fascinating and lovely sight.
Photos: Varlaam Monastery from below; Varlaam from above.

Monday 19th May 2008

The campsite shares its site with the university boat club and this morning many students arrived, carried their boats to the lake and sculled in singles, pairs and fours across the lake. A majestic sight to watch over breakfast.
We said goodbye to Terry and Stuart, only to bump into them again in the centre of Ioannina when we walked, very slowly, in to the town. We investigated the old town, visited the museum in one of the old mosques and then had our first gyro pittas of the Odyssey in a taverna recommended by Stuart. The taverna was on a main street right opposite the entrance to the old town and the somewhat slow service allowed us to participate in one of Jane's favourite hobbies – people watching. Even I was enthralled by this today. We were directly opposite a taxi rank and there was a constant succession of people waiting, taxis arriving and departing fully loaded. As often happens in Greece, the taxi drivers would check to see if any of the people waiting were going in the same direction as their passengers – more profit for the drivers and quicker for those waiting if they can share. Next to the taxi rank was a small shrine with an icon of a saint wearing traditional Greek mountain village dress and pedestrians and car drivers alike would cross themselves as they passed it – difficult if you are using a mobile phone at the same time!
In the afternoon, we took the ferry over to the lake island of Nisi and walked (slightly faster) around the three monasteries. The island was not that interesting but was obviously a popular place to come to eat. The tavernas had glass tanks full of eels and a few carp, all from the lake. It was sad to see the large numbers of eels packed into the tanks with no room to move and the idea of picking an eel to eat really did not appeal. Unfortunately, after the lovely clear views across the lake yesterday, it was very hazy today and it this spoilt the view down to east end of the lake. However, I am not complaining as the on the two other occasions that we have visited Ioannina. It was becoming very hot and humid and we decided to retire to Henrietta. We opened all of the windows, doors and skylights in the van and sat in the shade but the heat was really oppressive. Sure enough we had an extremely brief shower with very large drops of rain and then the thunder and lightning started over the mountains at the other end of the lake. We were hoping for a really good downpour to clear the air but were disappointed and instead had a very restless, hot night's sleep.
Still, my leg had survived the walking of the day, a good sign for the driving that I would have to do tomorrow.
Photos: A rather surreal view of an apparently headless sculler carrying his boat to the lake; Our gyro pitta taverna reflected in the chrome of an immaculate Kawasaki 900 motorbike; A Great Crested Grebe and chick.

Sunday 18th May 2008

We didn't have far to go today, so we had a relaxed start. Jane had correctly guessed that the signs in the car park may have indicated that there was going to be a market. We walked round to it and bought lovely fresh vegetables and, one of my favourite fruits, cherries - €5 (£4) for 2 kg (4.4lbs). Although I was tempted by the deal, it would have taken us too long to eat that many, so we bought 1 kg for €3.
The drive to Ioannina was very easy and very fast compared with the tortuously slow progress that we made on the windy roads yesterday. We made a slight diversion to Dodona on the way, an ancient Greek site with a very large theatre. Dodona is famous for its Oracle, the earliest in Greece. The Oracle answered questions by interpreting the sound of the rustling leaves of a huge oak tree. The site dates back to the 3rd millennium BC and started with the nature goddess Gaia, Mother Earth, who is associated with tree-worship and prophecy. The site was initially very simple – just the oak tree and even in the 8th century BC it only had a small wall around it. However, eventually a large cult site was built together with the third largest theatre on the Greek mainland. It was whilst I was walking around the site that I managed to do something nasty to my right leg. I stepped off a rock slightly awkwardly and felt something go 'twang'. From that point onwards I was limping and in considerable pain. Just after this I was walking along a narrow path between long grass and was just about to put my foot down when a three metre long snake went under my foot. Thankfully, I just managed to avoid standing on it. We got back to Henrietta and had a late lunch whilst I tried to exercise my leg and establish whether I would be able to drive. We were lucky that we only had a few miles to go and although it was very painful, we got there.
We arrived at the campsite in the middle of the afternoon and were very pleasantly surprised by it. It was very warm and we quickly found a shady pitch right on the lakeside, coincidently next to the only other British van on the site. We introduced ourselves to Terry and Stuart and found them to be a very pleasant couple. Chatting to them was very easy and relaxed and the afternoon and then the evening just rushed by. We sat looking at the view of the mountains over the other side of the lake, watched a sea plane (or should it ba a 'lake plane'?) land and take off, and watched the many Great Crested Grebes diving and catching fish. We discovered that we were both going to be in Meteora in a couple of days time and agreed to attempt to meet up there.
Photos: The sacred site at Dodona – the site of the original sacred oak is marked by a large oak (centre of picture) planted in the early 20th century; The theatre.

Saturday 17th May 2008

In the morning we drove the short distance to Proussou Monastery, set in a cliff at the head of a gorge with an almost alpine backdrop. Apart from its beautiful setting, the monastery is visited by Greeks for two reasons – the icon of Panayia Proussiotissa housed in the 9th century church and the connection with revolutionary fighter Yeorgios Karaiskakis. The church is very pretty with smoke-blackened frescoes probably caused by candle smoke and candles also caused a number of fires in the monastery, which means that its buildings are relatively modern. Karaiskakis used the monastery as his stronghold and his two defensive towers, built on rocky outcrops, still flank it.
We then drove down the stunning gorge, at times high above the river and at other times down beside the rushing water. The road builders had carved into the rock leaving a huge overhang and just beyond this we came to an intriguing shrine. The shrine itself was a small building crammed with icons and many burning candles, whilst outside there was a short ladder on the cliff face and many offerings attached to the cliff itself. There were model cars, coins, keys, crosses, worry beads, notes and even a model aeroplane. A car stopped and three young men came over to look at the shrine. They asked me to take their photograph and I asked one of them about the shrine. He explained that the red arrows on the cliff face at the top of the ladder pointed to the 'footsteps of the Virgin Mary'. People climbed the ladder and stared at the footprints and after about half an hour, they could detect the Virgin Mary's presence and were able to ask for a gift from her. This may be money, a car, a job as a pilot etc. and the items attached to the rock would either be part of the request or thanks for a fulfilled request. The man was not making a request this time although he had done so in the past. I didn't have the courage to ask what he had requested and whether it had been successful. I climbed the ladder and followed the arrow. There in the stone was a shape (probably a fossil) that, with a fertile imagination, could be said to resemble a footstep. We had seen a piece of stone in the monastery with a similar fossil that looked much more like a footprint but the attached explanation was all in Greek, so we hadn't understood its significance. I decided not to request anything from the Virgin Mary, I am sure that she has much more important things to sort out.
I really wanted to visit a pretty Greek village with the lovely name of Paleo Mikro Horio (Old Small Village) but we both missed the (probably unsigned) turning. We skirted the large town of Karpenisi and joined a more major road West in the direction of Agrinio. This road is not shown as a green (picturesque) road on our map but I don't know why. It winds its way through dramatic scenery providing excellent arm-strengthening exercise. The last remnants of the Winter snow huddled into the shaded crevices of the highest peaks whilst pine clad, steep-sided mountainsides came down past the road into deep gorges. There was virtually no cultivatable land and subsequently very few hamlets. Just occasionally we spotted a goat shed on the mountainside and it reminded us just how lonely it must be to be shepherd or goatherd.
We had plotted a route across country from this road to a campsite on the coast. However, Jane had casually checked the route on our more modern, but much less detailed, Europe road atlas and discovered that the road that we were going to take now seemed to have been replaced by a reservoir. It did however show a new route further North that was not on our detailed map. We knew that we couldn't afford to take a chance on either of these routes as we could have ended up on dirt tracks or facing the prospect of having to come back to the main road after a very long diversion. We agreed that we would only take the roads if they positively signed towns that showed that there was a route through the mountains. We passed the first turning when the signs only showed towns going North and not the Westerly direction that we required. We came to the second turn and could see the original road literally running straight into the new reservoir. They had obviously diverted the road but the signs only listed villages on the eastern side of the original river. This meant that we had to take a much longer route via Agrinio but at least we knew that we would get there before nightfall!
After a while the land flattened out and, although the road was surprisingly narrow at times, there were many less bends and we were able to drive faster. Having passed Agrinio, we turned North and some time later spotted a sign to the right for Proussou. So there was a road through, but we still don't know what route it takes. We arrived at the area where the campsite was supposed to be only to find that it was closed, so we decided to find a wild camping site further up the coast. We drove into Menidi and found a large deserted car park that seemed to be suitable. However, we spotted some temporary signs that had been put at either end of the car park and, not understanding the Greek, we decided to move to some wasteland by the beach at the end of the town. A French motorhome behind us did exactly the same thing and soon pulled in a little way from us. We looked out on to the Amvrakikos Gulf and the very long and thin sand bars created by the rivers that flow into it.
Photos: The Proussou Monastery; The interior of the monastery church; A view south showing the monastery in the gorge – our wild camping spot was on the hill behind the large tower; The reservoir with our road disappearing into it.

Friday 16th May 2008

We left Akrata Beach after saying goodbye to Manolis and Sandy and Pat who were busy painting the metal bases of the bar tables. Manolis is lucky to have two such willing volunteers and he is very aware of this despite the fact that he complained that I was distracting his staff!
Our journey was going to take us over the bridge that spans the Gulf of Corinth from Rio (on the Peloponese side) to Antirio (on the mainland side). The bridge was a considerable engineering feet and it looks very stylish. Our task was simple – drive along the Old National Road and then over the bridge. However, we had not allowed for the Greek knack of not completing a task properly. We saw the bridge but there were no signs to the bridge or to any destinations on the other side of the Gulf. We followed signs to Rio only to find ourselves under the bridge with no way to get up to it. We decided that we would have to get onto the New National Road to get to the bridge but as we approached that road we only had the option of 'Athens' or 'Patras' neither of which involved the bridge. After a considerable time of driving backwards and forwards and performing a U-turn in front of the toll booths of the New National Road (a manoeuvre that was not allowed but we followed four other Greek vehicles, including two lorries), we finally got to the bridge and very impressive it was too.
We were heading almost due North from Antirio, past Lake Trichonida and the thermal spa resort of Thermo on to a road that was shown as 'green' on our map. The route up to Thermo (a thermal spa resort) was quite attractive but it got even better after that. We were heading for Proussou Monastery and we got to one of those classic Greek signs that showed our destination in two different directions. Jane however could see that the one to the left went on a white road (not asphalted) and the road straight on was shown as asphalted on the map. We were a little concerned that our map showed about 12 km of non-asphalted road further on but the map was from 2000 and many roads have been improved since then. We continued to follow signs for Proussou (most comforting!) through spectacular mountain scenery but we did get to a section that was dirt track. We had agreed that we would turn back if it got too bad but, certainly to start with, it was in good condition. Well, we actually drove for 14 km along this road, though tiny deserted hamlets, past lovely chapels and bemused shepherds who obviously thought that we were mad. Generally the track was good but it often became narrow and sections had cliff on one side and a long drop into the valley below on the other side. Jane coped very well and was perfectly calm – fortunately the big drops were always on my side. We didn't pass another vehicle for the whole 14 km, for which I am very grateful. The thought of backing up on some of the sections really did not appeal! We reached a main road at a T-junction with absolutely no signs for Proussou and the map indicated that we should have been right on the edge of the village. Confusion followed and was only solved when I stopped to ask the way. We were over 10km from Proussou and could not have been on the road that we thought that we were. It was a real experience and wonderful scenery, but I would not recommend it to other motorhomers!
There were no campsites in the area and we knew that we would have to wild camp and we found an excellent position on a side road, close to the Proussou cemetery, above the village and monastery. I investigated a small chapel just below our site that had a lovely view down to the monastery and a wonderful bell tower – the bell was hanging in a tree next to the chapel!
Photos: The bridge from Rio to Antirio across the Gulf of Corinth; On the dirt track through one of the few small hamlets; A view from the dirt track down to the hamlet that we had just driven through; The view of Proussou and its monastery from near out wild camping spot.

Thursday 15th May 2008

We decided that we would wait until we were sure that the strike was definitely over, so we spent another relaxing day on the site. We found out later that the fuel stations had reopened and that diesel was readily available and I paid Manolis to ensure that we didn't weaken and decide to stay yet another day.
We sat, read and after lunch an informal gathering evolved. We were joined by Pat, Sandy, Robert (an American living in Italy and a regular visitor to Camping Akrata Beach) and a German lady who had lived in America for many years and whom we had seen at a number of other sites. The ways of the world were corrected, the strike discussed and there was much watching of the sea – all very stressful!
Photos: The informal gathering.

Wednesday 14th May 2008

The strike is over! This means that we will be able to move on within the next few days but before we go, we want to be sure that we will be able to buy diesel on the way.
It is overcast today, there is not a breath of wind and the Gulf of Corinth is as calm as a millpond. The view over the Gulf was extremely hazy, no chance of spotting Delphi today!
Another lazy day writing the blog and sorting out photographs. Manolis (the site owner) very kindly allowed us to use his Internet connection, so that used up a couple of hours. I decided to clean and check out my bike but found that the chain locks were solid with dust and I couldn't even get the keys in. After much oiling and fiddling with the keys, I released the lock and got the bike off. After giving it a good clean and pumping up the tyres, I took it for a quick ride and, much to my surprise, it was fine and the gears worked well. Not bad considering that it is many weeks since I last used it and the gears were covered in dust.
Sat outside the van, we chatted with Pat and Sandy and then Manolis and his three year old son Yiorgos (George) joined us. Yiorgos was wearing a T-shirt that had “My dad is stronger that your dad” embroidered on the front. When I mentioned this to Manolis, he grinned widely and adopted a strongman pose – a typical Greek man. Yiorgos amused himself throwing pebbles into the sea whilst Manolis and I entered into a light-hearted competition of skimming stones. This is obviously an international sport and, of course, we played it to an international standard. Yiorgos remained totally unimpressed by the sight of the stones bouncing across the sea, then slowing down, until they arced in a multitude of minute skips and disappeared under the water. We had already established that Manolis was stronger than me (from Yiogos's T-shirt), but I told Manolis that he had the brawn, whilst I had the brain. This lead to much banter during the competition. Pat and Sandy judged that honours were even and we retired to some chairs to watch Yiorgos throwing stones – a great way of keeping boys (of all ages) occupied! Manolis wife Tula arrived with their younger daughter Cleo and the conversation continued. We watched three fishermen throwing lines from the beach and dragging lures along the sea floor. Manolis was convinced that they wouldn't catch anything but one caught an octopus, which was obviously what they were fishing for, and proceeded to kill it by throwing it hard onto the beach a number of times.
Tula told us that some of the truck drivers want to continue the strike, so it may not be over after all. Still, if we have to be stuck anywhere, this is a very good place – certainly the friendliest campsite that we have been on and very comfortable with Manolis's new, upgraded facilities.
Photos: Manolis admiring my skimming technique (it is all in the sway of the hips and the flick of the wrist!) whilst Pat judges and Yiorgos plays with pebbles.