spinasa

We got back to Nereida in the evening. The rain was no longer torrential, just the kind of wet that soaks in to your very soul. We sploshed past the church and got to what was obviously a café. A very nice woman said they weren`t open yet, but they would be in about an hour. In the meantime, she sent me back the way I had come saying that there was an empty house where I could camp and grazing for George.
This meant I passed by a house I had passed on my way into the village.There were two blokes pottering about under the shelter of their balcony.
They asked where I was going, and I explained.
“No no!” they said. “That house is locked” “ But” said one guy, whose name was Vassili, you could camp in that building (it was a kind of roofed place that once was used for villagers to do their washing) and you can put your horse in that field. George could be free in a huge grassy field. Perfect. Then Vassili said please come and have an orange juice with me. Even more perfect.

Vassili had a lovely warm house. He was a retired policeman from Athens. When I say policeman I don`t mean a flatfoot..he had been a superimportant upper echelon cop.There were lots of photos of him hobnobbing with bigwigs and wearing uniforms covered in medals. He said he enjoyed being retired. Being a cop was different then. He thought it was a dangerous job now.
His family came from Nereida he said, and he came there frequently to sort the house out and to undertake various duties for the village. He was the president of a society for the protection of the village. They arranged events for the summer and ran a small newspaper where all important village activities were described. Also people`s poems and written thoughts. And, of course, births deaths and marriages were recorded. It was a really nice newspaper.
I went to eat at the café, as I had promised, and there I met two of the three people who had warned me about the river and another person I had met sitting in his car enjoying the view before the rain started. Everyone had a good laugh at my wimpy failure to cross the river, and my wasted 24 kms. But I turned the tables by saying.. yes, but if I HAD crossed the river, then we wouldn`t all be sitting having a good time and making new friends. Which was true.
Then Vassili and Ilias turned up. Ilias was my first contact in Nereida, he had even made me a very clear map about how to get onto the right track for Mavromata.
“It is the duty of the wealthy man
To provide employment for the artisan”
Was something he and Vassili, and the artisans, clearly believed in. It also seems to be the duty of the wealthy man to provide copious amounts of alcohol for the artisans.
In order to avoid feeling that they were being patronised the artisans teased Ilias unmercifully. Since Ilias is a respected lawyer all the old chestnuts about crooked lawyers came up.. as they obviously did every evening. Ilias took this in good part. I noticed that the chafing of Vassili was much more subdued, though he was subjected to a certain amount of vulgar sniggering when he said that since in this village could not allow a traveller to 1. pay for their own food or 2 sleep in the wash house he was going to 1.pay for my dinner and 2 invite me to stay at his house.
I was by this time almost totally out of it with exhaustion, but I was very grateful to be offered a warm dry place to sleep.
Ilias` surname was Spinasa. This was the old name of the village. In 1935, apparently, those who decide these things had decided that Spinasa wasn`t a Greek name, and so the village would be called Nereida instead.
Imagine if all your family name was associated with a village.. lets say..Cheriton Fitzpaine , and your name was Fitzpaine, and you were all jolly proud of it and the village, and suddenly they said..no! its not British! You must be called Fairy from now on. Would you like it? Of course you wouldn`t.
Especially since, Vassili says that Spinasa is a perfectly good Greek name.. it comes from the word Spinos (chaffinch) and means chaffinch place, which is a lovely name for a village on a wooded mountainside- and for a family that comes from there.
People in Athens, even today, are all too keen to change placenames, without even TRYING to think what they mean. What city mapmaker has even heard of a chaffinch, let alone heard their glorious chorus at dawn? And yet they impose their ignorance on people they haven`t even seen. There are loads of Nereidas in Greece. Did they all once have lovely local names that were removed from the map for mistaken or spurious reasons?
I put my still damp smelly sleeping bag to dry on one of Vassili`s radiators, got into a warm dry bed and slept.
Vassili had told me he never woke up early, so in the morning I went to see to George, and then sat reading at a table, sheltered from the drizzle by Vassili`s balcony,waiting to have a coffee with Vassili when he woke up..
As I was sitting there I heard a horse approaching. I looked up in the field, George was still there. Then a little chestnut pony, a white dog and a guy wearing cowboy boots and hat came along the road. Other travellers! What an amazing coincidence.. the only two equestrian travellers in Greece both in a tiny village at the same time.
The guy was called Zenophondos he said. He lived near Napaktos. This was his first journey with a horse. He had followed a similar route to mine, he`d been on Vardousi, for example.He had spent the night at the drunk grannies church where I had been the previous night.
I stories differed though. Wolves, it seems, had come down to attack his pony at To Spiti Tou Diavatou. Hmmm.
Anyway he suggested we travel on together. I tried to wriggle out of it. If you look at his card you`ll see why I didn’t think we`d be all that compatable.
I said that I had to stay and have coffee with Vassili when he woke up, and I didn’t know when that would be. Zenophon said he needed a coffee and would stop in the village. Sometimes, he said, he just didn’t really feel like doing much. I know that feeling all too well.
Vassili and I had our coffee. I said I wanted to go on alone,and so wanted to give Zenophon a bit of space. Vassili said he didn’t have anything special to do so we just hung out for some time..til 12 to be exact.
I was very grateful to Vassili for his kindness and hospitality.
There`s a photo of him, and one of the artisans with George.
Then I set off.
And tied up outside the café was the little chestnut pony. So I bit the bullet, and Zenophon and I travelled together. But I am afraid I didn’t do it with good grace. In fact I was in such a vile temper that I could barely speak. My companion didn’t care at all as he was chatting continually on his mobile.

The photo of Zenophon and the pony- is there something ambiguous about the gesture he appears to be making? Can it be that my feelings about travelling together were reciprocated?

At some point, George lost a shoe.Under normal circumstances I would notice something like that at once. In fact, subliminally I did notice.
Anyway we travelled along in the pouring rain and freezing cold for hours. Zenophon was heading for Lake Plastira, as he had friends there. I was going to Agrapha, (I said) so the time came for a parting of the ways.
There was nothing wrong with Zenophon. He very sweetly insisted on giving me a present. He gave me a penknife. “How did you know I`d just lost my knife?” I asked him.
I just prefer to travel alone. Travelling with Zenophon made my reasons for this very clear to me.
When we parted I realised that George was missing a front shoe. Although I carry spare shoes and everything, the shoe that was lost fitted perfectly, and I would have to do a lot of bodging to get the spare to fit. And the bodging would have to be done with heavy stones and so on, as obviously I don`t carry an anvil and a heavy hammer with me.
No.. I`d have to go back. And now I thought about it, I knew exactly where the shoe had been lost. George had struggled in some mud and stumbled. That`s where it would be.
That is to say about 7 kilometres from Nereida..I would have to go back about 8 kms.
But, I found the shoe. And a LOVELY place to stop for the night..it was more or less night by now. We camped at the monastery of Panayia, which belongs to Nereida.
Lovely grass for George. Dry place for me. And no Zenophon. Who could ask for more?

We got back to Nereida in the evening. The rain was no longer torrential, just the kind of wet that soaks in to your very soul. We sploshed past the church and got to what was obviously a café. A very nice woman said they weren`t open yet, but they would be in about an hour. In the meantime, she sent me back the way I had come saying that there was an empty house where I could camp and grazing for George. This meant I passed by a house I had passed on my way into the village.There were two blokes pottering about under the shelter of their balcony. They asked where I was going, and I explained "No no!" they said. "That house is locked" " But" said one guy, whose name was Vassili, you could camp in that building (it was a kind of roofed place that once was used for villagers to do their washing) and you can put your horse in that field. George could be free in a huge grassy field. Perfect. Then Vassili said please come and have an orange juice with me. Even more perfect. Vassili had a lovely warm house. He was a retired policeman from Athens. When I say policeman I don`t mean a flatfoot..he had been a superimportant upper echelon cop.There were lots of photos of him hobnobbing with bigwigs and wearing uniforms covered in medals. He said he enjoyed being retired. Being a cop was different then. He thought it was a dangerous job now. His family came from Nereida he said, and he came there frequently to sort the house out and to undertake various duties for the village. He was the president of a society for the protection of the village. They arranged events for the summer and ran a small newspaper where all important village activities were described. Also people`s poems and written thoughts. And, of course, births deaths and marriages were recorded. It was a really nice newspaper. I went to eat at the café, as I had promised, and there I met two of the three people who had warned me about the river and another person I had met sitting in his car enjoying the view before the rain started. Everyone had a good laugh at my wimpy failure to cross the river, and my wasted 24 kms. But I turned the tables by saying.. yes, but if I HAD crossed the river, then we wouldn`t all be sitting having a good time and making new friends. Which was true. Then Vassili and Ilias turned up. Ilias was my first contact in Nereida, he had even made me a very clear map about how to get onto the right track for Mavromata. "It is the duty of the wealthy man To provide employment for the artisan" Was something he and Vassili, and the artisans, clearly believed in. It also seems to be the duty of the wealthy man to provide copious amounts of alcohol for the artisans. In order to avoid feeling that they were being patronised the artisans teased Ilias unmercifully. Since Ilias is a respected lawyer all the old chestnuts about crooked lawyers came up.. as they obviously did every evening. Ilias took this in good part. I noticed that the chafing of Vassili was much more subdued, though he was subjected to a certain amount of vulgar sniggering when he said that since in this village could not allow a traveller to 1. pay for their own food or 2 sleep in the wash house he was going to 1.pay for my dinner and 2 invite me to stay at his house. I was by this time almost totally out of it with exhaustion, but I was very grateful to be offered a warm dry place to sleep. Ilias` surname was Spinasa. This was the old name of the village. In 1935, apparently, those who decide these things had decided that Spinasa wasn`t a Greek name, and so the village would be called Nereida instead. Imagine if your family name was associated with a village.. lets say..Cheriton Fitzpaine , and your name was Fitzpaine, and you were all jolly proud of it and the village, and suddenly they said..no! its not British! You must be called Fairy from now on. Would you like it? Of course you wouldn`t. Especially since, Vassili says that Spinasa is a perfectly good Greek name.. it comes from the word Spinos (chaffinch) and means chaffinch place, which is a lovely name for a village on a wooded mountainside- and for a family that comes from there. People in Athens, even today, are all too keen to change placenames, without even TRYING to think what they mean. Or how the names connect people to their place. What city mapmaker has even heard of a chaffinch, let alone heard their glorious chorus at dawn? And yet they impose their ignorance on people they haven`t even seen. There are loads of Nereidas in Greece. Did they all once have lovely local names that were removed from the map for mistaken or spurious reasons? I put my still damp smelly sleeping bag to dry on one of Vassili`s radiators, got into a warm dry bed and slept. Vassili had told me he never woke up early, so in the morning I went to see to George, and then sat reading at a table, sheltered from the drizzle by Vassili`s balcony,waiting to have a coffee with Vassili when he woke up.. As I was sitting there I heard a horse approaching. I looked up in the field, George was still there. Then a little chestnut pony, a white dog and a guy wearing cowboy boots and hat came along the road. Other travellers! What an amazing coincidence.. the only two equestrian travellers in Greece both in a tiny village at the same time. The guy was called Zenophondos he said. He lived near Napaktos. This was his first journey with a horse. He had followed a similar route to mine, he`d been on Vardousi, for example.He had spent the night at the drunk grannies church where I had been the previous night. I stories differed though. Wolves, it seems, had come down to attack his pony at To Spiti Tou Diavatou. Hmmm. Anyway he suggested we travel on together. I tried to wriggle out of it. If you look at his card you`ll see why I didn't think we`d be all that compatable. I said that I had to stay and have coffee with Vassili when he woke up, and I didn't know when that would be. Zenophon said he needed a coffee and would stop in the village. Sometimes, he said, he just didn't really feel like doing much. I know that feeling all too well. Vassili and I had our coffee. I said I wanted to go on alone,and so wanted to give Zenophon a bit of space. Vassili said he didn't have anything special to do so we just hung out for some time..til 12 to be exact. I was very grateful to Vassili for his kindness and hospitality. There`s a photo of him, and one of the artisans with George. Then I set off. And tied up outside the café was the little chestnut pony. So I bit the bullet, and Zenophon and I travelled together. But I am afraid I didn't do it with good grace. In fact I was in such a vile temper that I could barely speak. I took a picture after we crossed a bridge. Is there something ambiguous about a gesture Zenophon appears to be making? Can it be he felt the same ? Anyway I didn`t find out much about my companion as he was chatting continually on his mobile. At some point, George lost a shoe.Under normal circumstances I would notice something like that at once. But I was too cross to take it in. Subliminally I did notice though. Anyway we travelled along in the pouring rain and freezing cold for hours. Zenophon was heading for Lake Plastira, as he had friends there. I was going to Agrapha, (I said) so the time came for a parting of the ways. There was nothing wrong with Zenophon. He very sweetly insisted on giving me a present. He gave me a penknife. "How did you know I`d just lost my knife?" I asked him. I just prefer to travel alone. Travelling with Zenophon made my reasons for this very clear to me. When we parted I realised that George was missing a front shoe. Although I carry spare shoes and everything, the shoe that was lost fitted perfectly, and I would have to do a lot of bodging to get the spare to fit. And the bodging would have to be done with heavy stones and so on, as obviously I don`t carry an anvil and a heavy hammer with me. No.. I`d have to go back. And now I thought about it, I knew exactly where the shoe had been lost. George had struggled in some mud and stumbled. That`s where it would be. That is to say about 7 kilometres from Nereida..I would have to go back about 8 kms. But, I found the shoe. And a LOVELY place to stop for the night..it was more or less night by now. We camped at the monastery of Panayia, which belongs to Nereida. Lovely grass for George. Dry place for me. And no Zenophon. Who could ask for more?

the taste of paradise

So I woke up early in what turned out to be "To Spiti tou Diavatou" even though we had crossed the whole of a mountain called Voulgara in the dark. I can`t tell you much about it. Before it got dark there were holly trees in flower. There is a Christmas carol entirely dedicated to the religious connections of the holly – to Christianity- even though it has been important to so many Northern religions. The carol – as most brits will remember- says: And the first tree in the greenwood it was the Holly…holly,holly,And the first tree in the greenwood it was the holly. And the carol has a verse for all the phases in the life of the holly tree..."The holly bears a berry as red as the blood." Symbolising the sacrifice of Christ for our sins. The carol also mentions that "The holly bears a flower as white as the milk" and this white flower symbolises a whole load of stuff.. virginity of mother, wedding of Christ to his church and so on. The reason I`m going on about this is that the holly trees were in flower.. not all of them because Holly is a tree that has separate sexes.. and these flowers were indeed pure virginal white.It is the first time that the symbolism in the carol was so clear to me, because it is the first time..that I have noticed these flowers. It may be the first time I have seen them, also, but so often we see things , but we don`t really notice them. What else about Voulgara? Jolly steep up hills and jolly scarey ledges. Streams that make your feet jolly wet. Yes, I walked all the time. Its bad enough riding George along the edges of crevasses in broad daylight. At night you`d have to be totally crackers to do that. So you`d expect I`d sleep late. But my sleeping bag was not only wet.. not damp..wet -but it stank. How could that be? It had rained since we left Rendina, but intermittently. My toilet roll, wrapped in an old supermarket plastic bag was dry. So why was my sleeping bag, wrapped in a 40 quid absolutely waterproof travel bag, soaked and smelly.? Because,unbeknown to me, said absolutely waterproof bag had become not waterproof before we got to Rendina. "No need to put sleeping bag, tent, mattress on radiators" I thought airily while at the hotel. "They are all dry because protected by 1 million % waterproof bag." So they stayed in the plastic non waterproof travel bag for three days of extreme heat (remember how hot I had the room at the hotel) and boiled in their own juices. You try staying asleep, even after walking 28 kms in the dark over quite a big mountain, and ending up in a church where a load of the old ladies who look after the church had had some kind of party and got drunk and thrown fairy liquid and olive oil and incense about the place in an orgy of wild cleaning, in a wet sleeping bag that really really stinks.Bet you couldn`t. The morning was gorgeous. George was in a lovely place to graze. What to do while the sleeping bag dried? My project was to find and photograph a Barbie insect on a Barbie flower. And I found one! I did! It was perched on a flower of the colour graphically described by Aegistos as BLOG PINK. Barbie insects, quite rightly, feel that they were put on earth to glimmer and dazzle. They don`t move much, and when they do move it is slowly and not far. So I confidently faffed about focusing and getting the right angle and just the right…when whizz! The little bugger was gone. The search for the Barbie insect on Barbie flower continues. But I think, that possibly, you get only one chance for such a classic shot- and I blew mine. I did manage to photograph another super insect though. This I had seen only in motion up til now. They are like little red hot coals moving through the air. You can`t see their wings as wings, because they move so fast. By following one of these little fireballs I managed to see what they are like when they come to rest. The combination of black and red, is exactly the combination of colours in a fire, and that's why they look as if they are little burning coals when they fly. Another interesting thing was some blue birdnest orchids. These strange things are parasitic on other plants, hence no green leaves or anything. While I was hanging about in this very odd place..3 roads meet here, there are parked dead lorries, a childrens` playground you`d only let kids play in if you wanted to get rid of them, and the church run by the drunk grannies- there is also a place that is going to be a taverna soon. I met the chap who was building it. Of a house for travellers there was no sign. The guy who was fixing up the taverna was very friendly. "I don`t suppose you`ll be travelling on today" he said "So you are welcome to stay in my building.. there`s a fireplace with wood, its dry and clean" At first I couldn`t think why he thought I wouldn`t be travelling on, but when I demurred, and said I was about to set off, he said "The weather is going to be very bad,very soon" But I really thought I should get on the road. My plan was to get to Nereida, and from there follow the track to Mavromata which goes over Mt Martsa, and crosses the river Tavropos. Got to Nereida easily enough, though I arrived in a state of shock and distress – you see they were building a new road.. apparently it will go to Fourna and elsewhere,, but just look at the collection of photos of the unnecessary destruction being wrought on that particularly lovely mountain side. I KNOW you need asphalt roads I know that communications are very important. But what I don`t understand, can`t understand and won`t understand is why the roads are built with such a horrendous lack of respect for the place, the environment, the future, the past.. everything. Why destroy 500 trees when you only need to destroy 20? Why make a road so wide?.. 40 people live in Nereida..engineers have computers and information about the behaviour of different surfaces, so why cause landslides on such a catstrophic scale? I could go on and on, and probably will, but later.. but really- when I got to Nereida and had to ask someone to move his car so I could get past, the absurdity of the whole thing was made manifest. A person parks in the middle of the road because he is pretty sure no one is going to use that road. And here we tax payers are getting stuck with a bill for god knows how many million euros to build a two lane highway from nowhere to nowhere. And the cost to the environment? Just look at the photos. Getting to Mavromata was less easy. I should have paid more attention to what people told me. I asked three separate people for directions, and each one told me how to find the road and then muttered something like "you`ll have to cross the river, of course" I should have been alerted, but being a dope I wasn`t. Soon the promised rain came. Brrrr. It bucketed down. I know it was raining cats and dogs because I trod in a poodle. After a long time and after a steep descent we got to the river. Where the track appeared to stop. Washed away. Water was cascading down from every side. The river was boiling. Readers, I wimped out. The water wasn't that deep but there were huge boulders and stones and I just didn't want to risk George. So we walked back the twelve or so kilometres to Nereida. I say we, because, George, being Greek, was in a state of considerable outrage at being so violently rained upon, and was also absolutely sure that, if a landslide didn`t get him from one side of the track, then some incredibly athletic predator would get him by climbing up the sides of the ravine. Since there were PLENTY of places to fall to our deaths, I decided to walk. George almost managed to kill himself even so. He had decided that the edge of the crevasse was marginally safer than the cliff above. Suddenly something scared him. He leapt forward, knocking his beloved owner for six, and then bolted. The angel that looks after stupid people protected me. Instead of lazily and dangerously walking along with George`s reins hooked over my arm, as I normally do, I was holding the reins. All I had to do was open my fingers to let George go. I ended up with bad rope burns on my left hand and a seriously wrenched shoulder. If I`d had the reins over my elbow I suppose I`d have broken ribs and a dislocated shoulder at best. George, panic stricken, pounded off into the mist. "He`s going to go over a cliff and he`s got my new computer with him" I thought. Then I heard him pounding back again. Of course it was even scarier in the mist on his own than it was in the mist with me. The photo shows his great relief at finding me. I was, of course, desperately relieved to see him too. (marsbar eating fest followed) The walk back to Nereida was exhausting. But it is surprising how a small perfect thing can make everything bearable. On the side of the track were two bright red wild strawberries. (I couldn`t photograph these particular strawberries because it was raining too hard, but I have added a photo of other strawberries I ate another day.)Beautiful. I gobbled them up. Didn`t even offer one to George, though he is partial to strawberries. They tasted of paradise.

Barbie insects

That evening we reached Ano Kallithea. Noone even tried to steal anything.. quite the opposite, everyone tried to help us. It had a really lovely church and a very nice place to eat. This was run by Elena, who had come from Athens to Kallithea because she fell in love, married and had a child. She was very unhappy. In the Summer, she said, everything was fine because there were lots of people. But in the winter!!! She was the only woman of her age. Her child is the only child in the village.Her husband has sheep and works desperately hard. But she wants to go back to Athens. She can`t milk sheep she says. If she could, or if she learned, next thing you know she`d be doing that all the time.. Her husband, like all who milk sheep, has constant pain in his hands and fingers. In addition, something else, that I didn`t know.. sheep are quite dirty, and so you constantly pick up infections from them. Your hands and arms have to be clean and washed, but this means that the skin is soft, and any tiny scratches or abrasions are bound to leave you open to infection. I ate in Elena`s taverna. I told people how lovely I found their village and also their mountain. They were very proud of their mountain. "We`ve got fir trees and crags and grass and lots of water.." I asked the local farmers if it was going to rain. NO they said. But I believed the flies from the morning, and camped in an empty house. Just as well because the heavens opened. Elena had invited me to breakfast. I asked her why the people in Dilofo were so afraid of the Afghanis.. and where were they? Elena was shocked. "But they are really peaceable" she said. "The Red Cross set up the camp for them., They are refugees. Mostly they stay in the camp, but some come out to work." Later I rode past the camp..everything was very quiet. All very neat and clean. Nobody seemed to be out marauding. Nobody even seemed to be thinking of marauding-ever. After a while I got to a fair sized town called Makromi. I parked George and went into the town to buy supplies. Everyone was rude and unhelpful. I think it was because I hadn`t got George with me to supply a reason for being oddly dressed, but they may just be like that. But I bought supplies anyway.. there was a supermarket so I got extra instant soup and other necessities. A horrid wind got up now that the rain had stopped, but at least it dried things. We went on towards Tsouka so that we could get off asphalt and on to tracks. It was dark by the time we reached that place and the wind was howling, there was rain on the wind and I was totally knackered. I found someone`s empty workshop for me and a field for George. The wind howled all night, and it was still howling and rattling the roof of my workshop in the morning. I woke to a dawn with colours bright and unnatural. It was spectacular, but not in a good way. Like it portended something very bad indeed. I felt as if I was in some horror movie like "Day of the Triffids". But actually, it just portended more and more awful wind, and the certainty of more and more rain. By the time I got to Rendina I had had enough. Everything was soaked. I was cold. The wind was exhausting. There was a hotel in Rendina, with a field for George. So I stopped there. They put the radiators on so I could dry my stuff and I had a LOVELY hot bath. I put the heating on full. My friends who have visited me at home in the winter know how uncharacteristic that is of me. But I just couldn`t get warm. Although my sleeping bag claims to be warm when wet, and IS warm when wet, and all my fleece pullovers and vests claim the same.. and ARE.. there is still an area, about 1 mm thick all round your bones that gets really achingly cold if being damp like this goes on for many days. And this 1mm takes a VERY long time to unfreeze.When its really cold we talk about being frozen to the marrow. This cold wasn`t like that. It was like an ache throughout your body, like a coating on every single bone. If they give you warm chocolate croissants for breakfast this does help the situation though. After I ran out of money we left Rendina.I was rested, George was rested.. and he`d put on weight because lovely people had found corn for him as well as grazing. We intended to go quite a long way, to make up for hardly moving for 3 days, but.. about 7 kms from Rendina the mountainside was SO flowerfilled that I HAD to stop. George was glad about this decision as the mountain pasture was obviously, even to me, the most delicious grass we had yet found. The weather was very iffy. It kept raining for ten minutes or so and then being sunny. Ideal for seeing insects esp. butterflies, as they kept having to perch with their wings outspread to dry them. From what I know about Barbie, I don`t think she`d be keen on insects. But there were small turquoise glittering insects up above Rendina, which, if she was going to like an insect at all, would be the one she liked. There was also a blue butterfly the like of which I have never seen. There was a teeny weeny, I think moth, about 1cm with its wings spread out to dry, which was quite perfect, but probably not for Barbie, as it was brown. And then there were orchids.JUST MINDBLOWING orchids. Anyway…I decided that the thing to do would be to go on as far a Fourna, and find a place to stop near there. The prob with that was that it was asphalt. So when I saw a mud road that had a signpost saying it went, among other places, to Spiti Tou Diavatou, I thought that`s where we will go. After several hours night fell. See photo to understand what kind of night fell. Several hours after that..at about midnight .. we got to a children`s playground and a church. We stopped there. There was grass for George and water. The church wasn`t quite how churches usually are. There was the usual cleaning stuff and oil for lamps and matches and everything..its just that they weren`t quite where you expected them..oil was on the floor for example. Incense was scattered. I just boiled some water for soup and then crashed. Still trying to get oil out of my stuff.

INSECTS

Pleasant and less pleasant wildlife. Up there lost somewhere on the flanks of Oiti, on the banks of a lovely little river and camped in a meadow full of grass for George, I saw lots of skinks. These are almost legless lizards… don`t mean almost drunk, but almost without legs..the ones in Greece, that is.. there are skinks elsewhere which grow to a large size and have legs that work like legs, but the greek ones are tiny. They move like quicksilver. The adults tend to be a dark brown colour, and when they move they move like molten bronze. Younger ones can be yellowish, and they move like molten gold. They are very hard to photograph because they are so small and so fast and because they hide in leaf litter or grass and you can`t see much of them. I don`t want to disturb creatures in order to photograph them, or to stress them. I NEVER catch them and then photograph them. Some people who photograph reptiles catch them, then put them in the fridge for a while.. this makes them torpid and easy to pose. But I don`t like to even touch them because I am afraid to upset them, so, my photo of the skink just gives you an idea of what they are like. You can`t really see the vestigial legs, though you can imagine them…you can also look them up on the internet or in books and see a better photo. From being lost we became not lost after seeing a sign. We chose to go to Pirgos. From there we went down to the river and followed a truly lovely plane forest along the course of the river and at some stage that`s where we stopped in a very pretty meadow for the night. Just before we stopped I saw a dead Dahl`s Whipsnake on the track and photographed it. I intended to come back and photgraph it again in the morning when the light was better. Of course it was gone. Stupid Penny forgot about all the carrion eaters that come out at night. A hedgehog could want nothing more than to crunch up a slightly putrid snake. So, not only is there an inadequate photo of a skink, but of a Dahls whipsnake too. The insects were APPALLING!!!! In the evening we were eaten alive by mosquitoes, though our lotions and potions did their best. I can report that my tent`s mosquito net also kept those ghastly ksnipers (midges) off me too. Worse was to come. In the morning the flies. Sorry no vdeo dunno why I have, I hope, included a video of poor George trying to eat his breakfast while being tortured by flies. This was after he had been thoroughly coated with an insect repellent that he isn`t allergic to. I too was tormented to a similar standard. I wanted to just pack up and go, but our stuff was soaking wet from dew, and if you pack up wet you`ll be sorry later. So I decided I`d better follow my usual programme of pottering about looking at nature. And I was rewarded by getting photos of remarkable little insects that I had been seeing for several days and wondering what they were. I still don`t know what they are, natch, but I will use the rather good, though I say it myself, photos I have taken to do so as soon as I get home. Til now I had only seen them flying, which they do pretty fast, and then disappearing: brown bodies and white flashing bums and back wings whizzing up as you pass, and then whizzing off to where you can`t see them. But because it was early morning and they were damp and cold they just were perched on grass stems drying out. I still don`t know what they are, but at least their full weirdness is exposed to public view. (See the photo of weird but adorable black and white insect) They were my compensation for the disappeared Dahl`s Whipsnake and my reward for not packing up damp. I had thought of packing up anyway, because of George, but when flies are in this kind of mood there`s no escape. They followed us all day. There was a storm coming, that`s why. Something about the air pressure and the damp in the air and the heat makes flies really unbearable before bad weather. But it does give you early warning to take cover. We got to Dilofo. A wind got up so there was some relief from flies. Welcome to "Grafiko" Dilofo said the sign. Hmm. It was a very small place, where we met a person from Afghanistan and his employer. She begged us to stay and eat or take a coffee, but there was nowhere for George to graze, though we really did need to stop. When she asked where I was going I said over the mountain- a very fine mountain called Ghoulinas- to Ano Kallithea. "Don`t go there! They`ll steal everything you have!!!" "I`ll tell them what you think of them" I said. The Afghani guy guffawed, But then he said- strangely I thought: "There`s a camp with thousands of Afghanis there! "You have to watch yourself" Of course I became all the more determined to go to Ano Kallithea. But before we did that we stopped in a lovely place for George to graze. There was also a water trough – unpolluted with lime (locals have recently got into the very stupid and bad habit of dropping lime into water troughs. From what I understand of their reasons they are two: To "clean" the trough of all aquatic life..why? what`s wrong with tadpoles? To add calcium to the diet of their flocks and herds. (Why? Grazing, especially on lime rich soils, which most of the grazing grounds in Greece are, is a natural way to create strong bones and to produce plenty of milk without weakening the female animal that is lactating. Also, lime, as dropped into the water troughs is not in a form that the animals can absorb, anyway. So the whole thing is useless, and VERY destructive of the animal life that depends on these reservoirs. To my very great joy this trough had Alpine Newts in it. The poor photo shows a male (dark blue in this case, but can be anything from tasteful blue grey to Barbie turquoise) and a female, always sludge coloured like this. These need cold water. The larvae need oxygen rich water, and so don`t survive in the warmer less oxygenated water lower down, where they are replaced by common or smooth newts. The trough dripped into a little marsh, and here a great big tortoise was just lying in the water. On Nature programmes one sees the giant Galapagos tortoises doing exactly the same thing. I often see all three of the Greek tortoises enjoying water in this way: drinking and bathing. Now that so many troughs get used to clean cars, or are dried up or have had their PH changed by the addition of lime many tortoises are deprived of the opportunity to indulge in this behaviour. Tortoises make quite long trips to reach water in order to do this. People who are trying to find ways to make animal farming kinder to animals judge how much an activity means to an animal by how hard it is prepared to work to get it. The things the creature will really make a great effort to get are the things that mean most to its comfort and pleasure- and therefore health and through that its economic viability. By these criteria tortoises really need to wallow. Because they will really go a very long way to do so. Recent surveys of Greek tortoises have shown that their populations are secure ONLY if their environment stays as it is. Just by changing the way water troughs operate we are therefore depriving ourselves of tortoises. For no reason. Or only for reasons that farmers perceive to be good, but which actually are no good at all. Who told them to put lime? Where did they get that idea from? Of course the persistant use of watertroughs to fill up those tanks of poison you put on the back of tractors and then go to spray your fields means death to every organism in the area of the trough.. just a drop spilled here or there, an empty bottle chucked in the ditch and you can forget wildlife in the area. That's why this trough was so lovely. It was a haven for wildlife as well as being necessary for the sheep and cows (and horse and human) in the area.

falling in love again lovely Vardousi

falling in love again, Vardousi, pictures

Falling in love again

http://http//www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYXg7LlzyO8

I`m a reasonably faithful kind of person, but as we approached that snowy peak through the flower filled high grassy meadows of Vardousia, I found that I was in an emotional turmoil inappropriate for one who heart was given elsewhere. It seems that Giona was being replaced. I had fallen in love with another mountain! And not just any other mountain.. Giona`s next door neighbour, in fact. It wasn`t Giona`s FAULT that I went to parts of it that were dusty and had no water, but somehow I blamed it. Yes, I had felt the old magic briefly as we camped by the Mornos river, but the violent attraction that Vardousi was now exerting was lost. The thrill was gone. A Crisis! I knew exactly what Lola is the Blue Angel was talking about. in "Falling in Love again" Listen to the song, (I hope link posted above)but where she uses the word men, substitute the word mountains. Also, with mountains you don`t have the problem of finding a nice way to dump them. Of course falling in and out of love with mountains is a pretty safe thing to do, since the mountains don`t give a toss is you love them or not, and also there`s no risk.. if you fall in love with a mountain it`s not going to break your heart or have jealous tantrums or anything. But perhaps we should all fall in love with mountains, because then we would try to protect them from harm. And also there is a beauty and a sensual stimulation that does in some way replicate some of the thrill of being in love. I mean the shock of joy and the intense delight I felt when George and I left the dark forest and walked out into the flower scented greenness of the sheep meadows below the peak of Vardousi shook me with its force. Many of the marsh and meadow plants I saw in such abundance were familiar to me from my childhood..milkmaids smocks,kingcups,buttercups, daisies, oxlips, heartease..all those lovely names all those loved flowers. Nostalgia is a very strong emotion too, and these marshy uplands brought all those sunshiney memories from childhood flooding back. The grass was lush and George was able to gorge himself. They told me that on June 1st the sheep come to graze these meadows. 7,000 of them arrive from the plains of Attica. Ist June is the traditional date for Vardousi. Every big mountain with upland meadows in Greece has a transient population of sheep and/or cattle that come to graze it in the Summer, and which are either slaughtered at the end of the Summer, or are transported back down to the lowlands for the winter. There are careful arrangements about the when and where of these transient populations..some mountains allow sheep everywhere, others give cattle first choice of the pastures,and the sheep must make do with the drier higher ones, or can use the cattle grazings when the cattle have done with them. Some areas are fenced, and the grass is kept for hay.Only when the hay is collected can the sheep graze those pastures. The date that the animals arrive is crucial. If they come too soon then there will be too little grass, and the hungry animals will destroy the pastures by grazing too close. If they come too late the grass may have gone to seed, and many annual grasses die after they have seeded. If they are grazed it prevents them setting seed too soon. So the traditional dates are based on the local observations of the weather and grass growth patterns. They do not take global warming into account. Thus, the grass on Vardousia was ready for the sheep to graze.. that's why there was so much grass for George, but the sheep wouldn`t arrive for 2 more weeks. People in the village of Athanasios Dhiakos realised that the grass was ready but the sheep were missing. But they told each other and themselves that as long as it rained everything would be fine. "And does the rain fall as it used to?" I asked. No. they said. The grass grows because there is wet from the melting snow. The snow used to melt at the end of May, now its nearly all melted already. "But if it rains there`ll be plenty of grass" "and if it doesn't rain?" "It`ll rain" The track from Athanasios Dhiakos is in the process of becoming a road. So it was no fun to go along. As soon as I could I found a smaller track and got lost in the forest. And a very fine place to be lost it was too. A river, a riverside sheep pasture, a cherry tree to camp under. Perfect, even if it wasn`t Vardousia.