golden apple, sweet apple, not one apple

The next morning the dawn chorus was not subdued and damp. The birds were celebrating a bright new day con brio.
It took us a while to get on the road, but once there it was great. Except that after two or three hours I got this feeling that some things about the valley we were approaching were familiar. Yes! my famous sense of direction had ensured that we were almost back where we started from.
It was worth it just for the VERY disgusting spider (see photo) I mean bloated and revolting.. and much worse because white. He (or she) was hiding in a specially rolled up leaf, but I saw a white awfulness protruding. I stopped and looked, and immediately the spider leapt out of its hiding place, and suspended from a single thick and ghastly strand of white silk, it made a break for the undergrowth. When it thought I had gone it started to climb up the stem of the blackberry bush back to its folded leaf. It seemed to be too fat to climb up its own strand of silk, even though, as I say, the silk was like a steel hawser compared to what most spiders climb up. And so I was able to photograph it in its full dreadfulness.
So then I turned back and followed the river- what river? dunno- and squeezed past several barriers to get along a track by the river. Soon we had no choice but to get on to asphalt. A signpost told us that we were a few kilometres from Pertouli, which was the village I suspected we were near when we found all the bear tracks.
There was a church, and grazing so we stopped for lunch. There was also a war memorial to the andartes in the soviet brutalist style. But I liked it with its hammer and sickle and its Fidel Castro lookalike unknown soldier.
There was something else that I liked less. A cloud formation. Oh no, thunderheads. SHIT, thunderheads. SHIT.

I didnt think the bad weather would be this night..but there was no doubt that it was coming, and somewhere, soon, I was going to get drenched, yet again. We were stuck to asphalt for a few kilometres and then from Xrisomilia (golden apples) we got a nice track through a scrubby oak forest down to the river. Another river, but I still dunno what its name was.

We were making our way towards Glikomilia, (sweet apples)but were searching for a place to camp. We couldn`t find anywhere because that area produces trifili (alfalfa) and sheep, and there was absolutely nowhere to park George. It was nearly dark when the local Dimarchos stopped his jeep near us, and told me a place where we could stop. By time we reached it- it was on a knoll above the river-it was pitch black dark. In the morning I saw what a delightful place it was. The view was fine, and there were loads of very nice sage plants in flower.

With all the emphasis on apples in the place names in this area I was expecting that fruit growing would be what they did. Not any more, it seems. On the way to Glikomilia(sweet apples) I did see ONE apple tree. That was it.Wrong time of year to test the apples for sweetness or goldness, so I don`t even know which village it belonged to.

From Glikomilia we crossed a pretty big mountain and then hit asphalt for the splendid descent towards Kalambaka, where you get views of the Meterora. There is a certain weirdness about them. They were so obviously (to me at least) once under the sea, that you feel as if you are in a huge fish tank. The monasteries are like those little plastic decorative(?) things you can get to put in your tropical tank..You half expect to see one of those plastic divers with bubbles coming out of his oxygen tanks to areate the place.

There is a huge plane forest there and I imagined that we could find a place to stop easily enough. But alas, when you get closer to the plane forest you find that it is a rubbish tip. A rubbish tip the size of London, but a rubbish tip none the less.

So we crossed the bridge and landed on the ghastly road that goes to Grevena and Ioannina. I don`t recommend it.

Then I saw an empty garage. We went in. There were paddocks around, I tied up George. Phew.

Then the garage owner turned up to feed his dogs. He was very nice and gave me bread, said I was welcome to stay, for ever, if I wanted.

The garage was closed because the petrol company with which it worked had gone bust. Taking the garage proprietor down with it.

Now he can`t do a deal with a new company because, although his garage is in a coveted site, the companies want a massive amount of cash as a downpayment.

Of course he hasn`t got a massive amount of cash, since he`s done no trade since the other company crashed.

His place has got a superb view too. I took a photo at dawn.

Then we set off for Deskati.