the curse of the killer bambies written

The morning after I got the bad news about the Vardousia black cattle, I went to photograph Giona. 6 years ago I had photographed it from here. No prizes for guessing which photo was taken late April 2004 and which lateApril 2010. But if you need a clue I`ll just whisper global warming. Global warming or no the view from the road made your heart sing. Pentagi has got money from the eu to make it more attractive to tourists. For example they had sent a LOT of money putting seats wherever they could along the road. walkers don`t usually walk along asphalt. they like to look at a nice view while sitting. Obviously noone had thought about ANYTHING to do with seats. "Right we`ve got 8 million euros for seats lets scatter them about the place like confetti." In Pentagi ALL the seats were facing AWAY from the view and looking at the road. The one in the photo particularly interested me as it was sited with its back to one of the most spectacular views in Greece, but it is looking at..well a pile of gravel. As I made my way back to my campsite and George I found large numbers of newly metamorphosed giant peacock moths. These, according to my guide to moths are common throughout Europe. So how come this is only second time I have seen them? Maybe they were common when the book was written and no one has updated it? During the night bats, and now in the day, swallows, were hunting these large, helplessly flapping beauties.. they have fat juicy bodies. A warning to us all –no matter how lovely our wings may be, if they are connected to a fat juicy body, then we may never get the chance to spread them. The moth in the photo is a case in point. Body less wings. From Pentagi we followed a superb track up into the mountain. We stopped for lunch at Dihori. That's where I lost my knife. Grr. The reason we stopped at Dihori was because there was a sign specifically banning horses from entering the village. Oh what? So having entered the village with George and tethered him on a bit of waste ground I tried to find someone to ask about this. But hardly anyone LIVES in Dihori, it is a place where Athenians come for holidays. In the end I found an old bloke. I asked him. He said its not just horses, its ANY domestic animals , and its to stop them coming into the village and doing what he delicately referred to as Zimias. Shit is what he meant. Why was Dihori originally built? For the herders to live in during the summer when the cattle and horses and sheep were grazing the high pastures. And now the inhabitants are so refined that they don`t even want to see a domestic animal.Certainly not smell one. What do they think mountains are? Why do they come there?How dare they destroy the way of life to keep their holiday homes smelling of violets, bleach and insect spray. George and I went on up until we found a meadow of perfect loveliness. There was water there was grass there was beauty all around. And one of the peaks of Vardousia above us. We stopped there. And this is when the vampire bambies got their chance. George doesn`t like roedeer. They`re better than pigs, but only just. I didn`t mention it to George, but I was pretty sure that some roedeer would come into the meadow to graze in the dusk. But actually none did. But when I had been comfortably asleep for a few hours I was wakened by George`s alarm snorting. This is the noise that horses make to warn each other of danger. Bling soon realised that this sound meant that George was frightened, and she always rushed to him to bark at whatever it was. In the absence of Bling this duty devolved on me. But somehow, readers, I couldn`t drag myself out of my warm sleeping bag to save a great big horse from tiny harmless herbivores. I knew it was roedeer because they have a barking alarm call, and they had run off making this sound when they encountered George. George was scared, but the bambies were even scareder. They wouldn`t be coming back. So if I went out to George it would make no difference to the overall number of roedeer in the meadow. It would stay steady at none. So I called out from my tent soothingly. George continued his horrifying snorting. But I refused to be moved by his plight. In the morning he was very sulky, but I was unrepentant. But we both knew that Bling would have fixed everything. George comforted. Me able to sleep. The next night the bambies made another horrifying attack. There was at least one..there may even have been three of them. And the day after they attacked in broad daylight. They`re getting bolder. We can`t say George didn't warn us. George`s fear of the vampire bambies meant that he didn`t eat much at night, he spent his time staring into the forest trying to guess where the next assault might come from. This meant that I had an excuse to stay in the lovely meadow looking at Nature while George caught up on his eating On this first morning near the peak of Vardousi I got more and more interested in this mountain. I was becoming dangerously fascinated. There were so many interesting plants and rare trees and loads of yellow bellied toads, which are my fave amphibians. Then we went down the mountain track ..down and down and down.. til we got to the river, and from there we went up to Artotina, where we stopped for lunch. One thing. Vardousia is a splendidly green and verdant mountain, full of the kind of life that depends on it being so. John Muir said "God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches, and a thousand tempests and floods. But he cannot save them from fools" On the way down from the meadow at Profitis Ilias to the river we passed no less than 5 places where water was being trapped and removed, probably more because I didn`t start counting systematically until we had passed several cement boxes and sets of plastic pipes. No mountain can stand this level of water extraction. You fools- Absolutely no mountain can stand this. Vardousi didn't burn.. but it will. The view of Vardousi was wonderful from Artotina. Everyone knew about the track that led across the mountain and ended up near Pirgos, and showed me where it was. By nightfall we were high up in the fir forest…not at all sure we were on the right road.. but we camped in a gorgeous site under another peak of Vardousi and under siege from marauding bambies who emerged from the forest to graze on what at first glance seemed to be a meadow where we had camped. On second glance it was a rubbish dump- no really- endless kilometres up a very tough track, blocked by landslides and fallen trees, there had been a rubbish dump. Bottles. Tin cans, dead bicycles, chucked out beekeepers kit, bits of broken kitchen ware. Also some other substances. High up on mountainsides there isn't much soil, so your tent pegs may need to be tapped in with a hammer. Here they sank and disappeared into –well I`d rather not think what they disappeared into. But there was plenty of grass on top, which is what the bambies wanted, even though George thought that what they wanted was to drink his blood. The flies were terrible, as were the ants. George rolled, as he always does as soon as his saddle is taken off. The ants bit him and, as he is allergic to ants by the morning he was covered in vile suppurating spots. I have posted a picture of him wearing his fly protecting hat. To show how very specatacularly sited that rubbish dump is. So we set off early.. up a track that I really couldn`t believe could be the track I wanted. So I turned off it onto another track.. which DEFINATELY wasn't the track I wanted. It ended at an exceptionally violent river. No way we could cross that. So we went back ..a long way back and all up a very steep hillside. We tried going on up the track I had thought too rough to be the correct one. It continued to be very rough and was regularly almost,but not quite, impassable. The kind of road a 4X4 couldn`t possible get up, but some kinds of Corsa might make it… On this track, which I know for certain no human had gone along this day, we found a newly dead viper with its head smashed in. Until now I have thought of that method of killing snakes as peculiarly human. What other kind of creature could have done that? I can only assume that a snake eagle had caught it, and somehow dropped it. I can`t really think how else it got there. Snake killing bambies? Unlikely. Was it just incredibly unlucky and got crushed by a small rockfall? Weird. Our track went up and up and up. Suddenly the path turned and right in front of us was a snow covered peak. WOW! I thought. I found I didn`t mind if the path stopped here. The view repaid all the effort of getting up. But the track didn't stop.. it led straight towards this stupendous mountain top. WOW! Again. Yet again I have failed to post the writing and its associated photos on the same blog. Sorry. You`ll find the photos referred to on a separate post.