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.
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