Greece - Week 35

Monday 11th February 2019

We left beautiful Gefyra and the view of Monemvasia, and filled the van with water from the tap at the harbour.

The next “star” on google maps was Githio. We drove inland through a couple of villages, stocked up with provisions at Lidl and carried on along the beautifully scenic roads edged with wild flowers. 

We could see a ridge of snow capped mountains in the distance. It was 21oC with blue skies and palm trees so it was amazing to see the snow too. 

We pulled into a lay-by, with fantastic views of the route we’d just taken, and made lunch. On the beach below we could see the Dimitrios Shipwreck. A flock of birds were circling the wetland in the bay and a campervan was parked up with the owner flying a kite. 

A few miles up the road we found Githio. We turned off the main drag and drove along the concrete causeway, parking up next to the church. 

We followed the path around the little island, walked past the building that looked like a castle and up to the lighthouse. Again there were wild flowers everywhere among the grasses and even a tall cactus grew up the side of one of the stone walls. 

We drove on over the hills, with acres and acres of orange trees either side of the road, and even past lorries with the orange pickers sat in the back, until we reached the Caves of Diros. 

At the car park to the caves, the lady at the cash desk told us the boats that take you into the caves weren’t running because the water was so high. So we decided to park up for the night in the bay below and try again in the morning. 

Trying again at the Caves, we still couldn’t enter by boat due to the high tide. So, undeterred, we took the land route for €6 each. 

We’ve been in lots of caves before but I don’t remember any of them being as wet and humid as the Diros caves. They were only small but packed with every shape and size of stalactite and stalagmite you could imagine. We spent a good hour admiring them all, even though we came out a bit wet, having been dripped on numerous times lol. 

From there we headed to Stoupa. We parked in the free car park near the church with 3 other campers and settled in for the night.

The following morning we walked around the seafront. It was only a small bay but we could see the attraction for holidaymakers with its sandy beach and pretty surroundings. 

They had a lovely painting on one of the walls. Street art is so much nicer than graffiti. 

We bought a cauliflower and some oranges from the lady at the fruit and veg van and found a cafe for a latte. We sat next to the window, and listened, fascinated, while 3 people were having a conversation in Greek. We walked back to Harriet in the rain. 

After lunch, we carried on to Olympia. We chose to travel via the toll road (€4.60) so we could empty the toilet. Before the toll road started, the views were stunning. To me it looked like the photos you see of Tuscany in Italy. Green hill sides punctuated with tall slender cypress trees and reddish coloured rocks. Little purple iris were growing at the sides of the road and the odd pink blossom tree was just coming in to flower. Beautiful.

We spent the night in the car park at Olympia next to a Dutch van.

On Valentine’s morning, we visited the archaeological museum and walked around the site of Ancient Olympia. The site was full of old stones and columns and an abundance of beautiful wild flowers. 

The sun was shinning and the birds were in full song as we walked around the information boards reading about how Olympia had looked over 2500 years ago. 

The temple of Zeus, the building where the boxing and wrestling took place and of course the grand stadium (complete with entrance tunnel) that could sit over 40,000 people. 

We also found the site where the lighting of the modern Olympic flame takes place before it travels to the country hosting the games.

In the Museum itself were objects and statues from all around the site. 

An amazing place and another Unesco World Heritage site to cross off our list. 

We slept there again that night and in the morning, drove to Patras. We’d found a launderette on Google Maps by entering Laundromat in the search section. It had good reviews and when we got there we weren’t disappointed. Modern machines and spotlessly clean.

On the way out of Patras, and after filling up with fuel and LPG, we could see the bridge we were going to drive across from the Peloponnese back onto the Greek mainland. Although we were admiring it from afar, we were shocked to be charged €20.30 to cross it just because we were over 2.2m high! Cars were only charged €3.50!! Not sure what height had to do with it??

Still reeling from the experience, we carried on to Itea and the sleepy spot we’d found on the harbour courtesy of Park4night. 

We had a quiet night and set off again next morning to Meteora. 

We traveled over the mountains and up into the snow. It was a main road so the snow ploughs were keeping it clear. 

3 hours later, we arrived at Meteora. 

Meteora is a rock formation that is just out of this world. It literally means, “suspended in the air”. The sandstone pillars were topped with Monasteries built by monks centuries ago. There were 24 in total but only 6 remain today and you can visit them all. It’s a UNESCO World Heritage place and the sights just blew us away. It was late afternoon when we got there so we did a recce of the area. There were roads going up to each Monastery with small parking areas and view points. 

The evening sun was just great and we managed to get a glimpse of them all. We read that they were closed on different weekdays, so we were lucky to arrive at a weekend.

We slept in the free car park in the town below. There were campsites open but we had everything we needed and free camping was a good way to keep to our budget down. We even had a view that night of the rocks. 

Sunday morning we drove back to St Stephen’s Nunnery. We paid €3 each to get in and I was given a long skirt to wear over my jeans by the Nun at the entrance desk. No photographic evidence as Andy told me I looked like a Grandma lol. (Think he forgot I have 2 gorgeous grandsons!)

It was easy to get to and not too many steps to climb. The panoramic views from the top were stunning and so were the grounds. The inside of the chapel was gorgeous, full of beautiful frescos. And to top it all, I got Andy in a religious building on a Sunday!! 

Next to St Stephens was the Holy Trinity Monastery, which was made famous by the James Bond film, For Your Eyes Only. 

If you’re a fan, this is interesting ...

At the summit a very tranquil monastery run by Greek Orthodox monks awaits the visitor. The complex has two chapels with breathtaking frescos dating back to the 17th and 18th century and a little garden. But the highlight for Bond fans is probably the winch room to the north of the building, that the monks use to fetch provisions. In For Your Eyes Only, Bond, after he approached the summit, used the winch to help his aides Columbus (Chaim Topol) and Bondgirl Melina (Carole Bouquet) to enter the villainous hideout. It’s actually not the same winch, as Eon productions had to rebuild another winch room on the eastern adjoining rock.

In general, there will be no recognizable interiors of the monastery, as the film crew were never allowed to film there. The friars didn’t like to have Moore & Co. stumbling around their holy place, while the mayor of Kalambaka (wisely) hoped for a touristic push. The Greek Supreme Court had to rule out, that the monastery itself might be property of the church, but not the mountain. The film crew therefore carefully used all square meters on top of the rock pillar, it could get – while the monks hung old rags and laundry out on their roofs to impede the filming ... 

We didn’t visit inside this one as it was the hardest one to get to, and I’d been struggling with a bad back. 

Researching the Monasteries, we learnt that the best one to visit was Grand Meteoran. When we got there though, a sign said it was closed for renovation for the whole of February. It was still an amazing place to see and we even watched them winch the little cable car across the rocks full of building materials.

The tat shops were still open though!

The last Monastery we saw was Varlaam. We had to walk down and across the steps and then up the other side. 

The steps were quite a recent addition, as up until 1925, the monks would have to winch each other up to the top in a net where they’d climb out onto a ramp. 

The Winch Tower was erected in 1535 and before that they had to climb up ladders and ropes. OMG, I’m good with heights but I’m not sure I could be hauled up in a net dangled on a rope!! 

Again the grounds were beautiful and the views were stunning.

The interiors were lovely and the museum was interesting too. 

They even had a room containing a very old wooden barrel that could hold 20 tonnes of rain water.

All in all we’d had a brilliant day, the weather had been kind, the scenery had blown us away and we wouldn’t have missed it for the world.  We both decided it was going to be in our top 5 places we’d visited on this amazing trip!

Instead of staying there another night, we carried on to Igoumenitsa. Harriet had to do a lot of mountaineering again as we were trying to keep off the toll roads. We’re so glad we did as the scenery as always was fantastic. 

At one point we had to stop to let the sheep and goats across the road. 

This goat just stopped and eyeballed us for a good 5 minutes daring us to drive any closer until the shepherd whistled and he carried on lol. What a character. 

The winding road took us through the beautiful mountains where villages clung to the sides of the slopes. 

In one place, the rooftops were actually level with the grass verge. The sun was shinning, we had blue skies and nothing to pay, heaven.

A few miles further on, and a scary incident later (when a car overtook a lorry on a blind bend and missed us by a whisker), we were thwarted when the next thing we new, the road in front of us was blocked. There was nothing we could do but to turn around and head for the main road. Within 2km we hit our first toll, our hearts sank. In central and southern Greece the charges were extortionate. Because we were over 2.2m high, we had to pay the class 3 rate. Luckily though, in Northern Greece, the maximum height charge changes to 2.7m and so we only had to pay the much cheaper rate for class 2 vehicles. Work that out if you can! So all in all the whole journey only cost us €5.60 and honestly, as we dropped down on to the coast again, we both decided it was worth every penny! 

Instead of winding mountain roads and hairpin bends we drove through miles and miles of tunnels, making the journey much quicker. 

We arrived in Igoumenitsa at tea time. We found a sleepy spot in a large car park at the port and went in search of a pizza.