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.

The curse of the killer bambies

better to walk than ride an unwilling horse text

So I spent a wonderful evening with Giona. The nightingales sang, the water rushed, and…just like in some depictions of the zodiac.. a crab emerged from the waters and invaded the land. My campsite to be precise. There I was, drinking my disgusting tomato instant soup and eating feta and bread, when what should I see in the dim light of my torch but some unpleasant creature from one`s worst nightmares trying to climb into the bowl where the cheese was. It gave me quite a start. It moved a bit like a robot, stiffly and as if programmed from elsewhere. It wasn`t soft and flabby like a toad, yet it was about that size. It suddenly extended a large claw..and seized a bit of cheese. I shone my torch, with a certain amount of dread, certainly, upon this strange unnatural thing. Then I saw what is was. It had a surprisingly friendly little face, with a smiley mouth and everything. Apparently these denizens of the deep are powerless to resist the magnetic pull of the moon. Certainly no self respecting tarot card of `The Moon` lacks some kind of aquatic crustacean leaving the shimmering water for the moonlit land. I suppose tarot cards will need to be updated, as it seems that led torchlight has the same effect. The crab, now that he had joined me, was determined to stay. He helped himself to more cheese, threatened me with his claws when I tried to "help" him back to the water, and sidled, in what was actually rather an adorably confiding way, to be close to me. I liked him, but I worried about him getting predated, out in the open as he was. I didn`t like him enough to protect him by keeping in my tent, though. So I cruelly turned my torch off. He remained still for a while. How to navigate without light? Then by starlight I saw some shiny parts of his armour glinting as he moved, drawn back to the river by who knows what kind of inborn GPS system. The next morning I left it to George to decide where we were going. He plumped for back the way we had come, and from where we had crossed the Mornos the day before we turned along towards Kallio. From there we went up a track towards a place called Klima. It was lovely. But George thought we should stop. In "I Claudius" Robert Graves has characters using what I presume is a Roman aphorism. "Better to walk" they say "Than to ride an unwilling horse" Quite. But tell me, Romans, what do you do if you are already walking and the horse is STILL unwilling? Carry him? Between Klima and Diakopi there are some very splendid geological outcrops. The last time I was on Vardousi (we`re on the flanks of Vardousi now) I didn`t see any outcrops. I scarcely saw anything as the weather was so grim, and the cloud so low that I could have been anywhere. But now, in this excellent weather, I kept seeing things that made me very interested in Vardousi. For example, just near Diakopi was this Mandri. (see photo)All handmade and of quite exceptional stonework. Brilliant. In England people would come from all over to see such artisan craftsmanship. The last time that I had been in this area I had reached Diakopi from somewhere else, and they hadn`t been friendly. Luckily, outside the village there was a Mandri, and Simoula and Andrea had been so kind and wonderful, given me cheese and bread, would take no money..that I intended to visit them the next day. But as I was in Diakopi I asked if the taverna would open later. A guy, told me that it would. He told me that his mum would come and cook as soon as she`d finished milking the goats. Yes.. his Mum was Simoula. So Simoula and Andrea came and we had a lovely evening. They told me about the problems farmers have at the moment. Simoula also massaged her hands a lot. Repeated stress injury happens to all who milk sheep and goats by hand. Simoula is only 52, but her hands hurt all the time. If you go to any café in a village that has flocks you will be able to tell who milks them. They`ll be the ones rubbing their hands and massaging their fingers, without even realising they are doing it. Most industries have a system for compensating those who are damaged by the work they do. Farmers have OGA but you can`t be a disabled shepherd. No- you have to keep milking all your life. I have met old ladies who have to lie down early in the evening because they hands ache so much that they really can`t do anything else. All that for a product that sells at less than it costs to produce. All that to keep supermarkets and the dairy industry making massive profits. Perhaps now, the crisis, will mean that people will pay proper prices for proper food, and the subsidies that keep these small farmers under the control of agribusiness, will stop making the rich richer and keeping the poor poor. PLEASE let it be so. The reason I was on Vardousia at all was because there is a special breed of cattle here. ^ years ago I met someone called Apostolos who knew a lot about these and was farming them and more developed breeds (the limousins )in a very intelligent way. Then there were about 500 of these animals. But alas, the cow fairy, who used to love and protect all the unique cattle breeds in Greece has become infected with Mad Cow disease. This happened when there was a small outbreak in Northern Greece in a couple of herds up near the border with Skopje. This was covered up,(I seem to be the only person who has seen the eu reports about this) but the fairy had eaten beef from an infected animal, and now she is quite insane. Proof of this is that she works with people from the agricultural department of the university of Thessaloniki and is interested only in Holsteins and limousin cattle. Sometimes she shows a slight interest in Belgian Blues or Charolais. But for the Greek breeds she cares nothing. If she sees, for example, one of the lovely black cattle on Vardousi she points her wand at it, there is a flash, a shower of stars and POF! The cow disappears. In 6 years she has brought the numbers down to 200. And she still points her wand at them when she feels up to it. Or any other Greek breed, for that matter. Readers will have noticed that I keep revisiting places where good things were happening, in the hope that they are still happening. Well Apostolos, at Pendagi, was almost the only hope for the cattle on Vardousi and he has sold out of cattle and runs a hotel. The new guy who is responsible for those 200 cattle the fairy has left alive is really no match for her. So I left Pendagi a sadder, though not a wiser, person. Stupidly I continue to hope that somehow those lovely useful cattle can be saved. We can`t just let them go, can we? But if the people who live there don`t recognise their worth, and if outsiders don`t know they exist..what can be done? Last time I was on Vardousia I saw loads of these cattle. This time I only saw one, and he was too far away to photograph, so I can`t even post a photo. Waaaaaaaaagh.

better to walk than ride an unwilling horse

sorry guys...problem with pictures and post togther.. so heres pictures, post to follow shortly

Taking the nightingales of Heraclitus(writing)

I have been in love with Giona since I first visited it 6 years ago. Of course there are dangers in visiting an old love.. maybe the magic will have gone? But I was determined to risk it. I decided to visit a different part of the mountain because .. well just because. We set off from Amphissa along the ferociously steep asphalt road to Lidoriki, before turning, as soon as we could, onto the track that goes into the mountain towards Karoutes. Well it wasn't a very nice track.. it was built for the lorries that go to the bauxite mines. Luckily there was a general strike so the mines weren't working so the number of lorries was small, though their size was large:they included a petrol tanker. It was pretty dusty, even though the road had been sprinkled with water to lay the dust. No rain for three months, they told me, though it had been a very wet and snowy winter. On the lower slopes the fir trees were in bad shape. At least a quarter were dying. Although I had had clear instructions about following specific tracks and about it being easy to get lost, suddenly I couldn`t stand the dust and the lorries and the dying trees any more. I took the first pleasant little track I could find and went along it…like a person trying to save their marriage before I fell out of love irrecoverably. The path wasn't on my map, and I didn`t care where it went, as long as it was beautiful. It was bound to go somewhere, wasn`t it.? Not necessarily. This is the dry side of the mountain, and so shepherds and stock keepers have always had to be careful with water in the summer. I passed a large trap for rainwater which led into a storage tank. It was empty and derelict. There was another deposito which collected all the water from a little creek. I couldn`t give George a drink or have one myself as it was locked. And worse, stolen from the mountain and its wildlife and being used to water a ---lawn… guys!!!! Surely not.. no really, at least 15 kilometres from anywhere someone has built a villa and well, a villa has, gotta have a lawn and non native trees and that stream and that water storage, well, they aren`t doing anything, so I`ll have them…fuck you shepherds, sod you roedeer, there`s too many foxes anyway… The dead trees, according to the forestry department, are caused by a disease, which spreads from one tree to another. This is certainly the case. But, as with the pines and the caterpillars on Mt Loutraki/Perahora ,so with the firs and this disease on almost every mountain in Greece. Where the trees are unstressed they can resist the disease much better. For example, now, when George and I went up and up this path that led nowhere, the trees got bigger and healthier. The higher we got the damper and cooler it was and right high up there were no sick trees at all. If it were just a case of a disease spreading and wiping out the forest throughout the mountains of Greece, then there would be the same incidence of the disease everywhere. Like AIDS in humans. But its not like that. Healthy trees can resist or survive much better than stressed trees. After a while I realised I had to go back to the horrid track I had left. By the time it was dark we reached Karoutes. We camped in the church. Interestingly it had a bell that worked by electricity. This meant George and I got a shock every half hour and deafened every hour on the hour. Only two people seem to live in Karoutes. Or maybe three. But they all know what time it is. They have no choice. The birdsong in Karoutes at dawn was fantastic. I just wondered how the birds could live there. From what I know, birds need to bath constantly to keep their feathers in good condition. They need to drink water too. But how could they? George and I travelled 8 hours without finding any open water at all. Well, one pond, which George couldn`t drink from and nor could I because of the mud around it. And its not as if the people in Karoutes put out birdbaths. Giona`s enchantment was fading fast.. quick.. do something! Everyone knows that you don`t just STAY in love.. you have to work at it. The next incident really didn't help. You remember that stuff I wrote about rams, and how they have strategies for avoiding all out war that we could learn from? On Giona I found out that they don`t always manage to avoid dangerous conflict situations. What I saw was, horrifyingly, that a ram had got another ram down, and was systematically killing him. Of course, I tried to intervene. And the dogs didn`t like it one bit (see photo) "These are adult rams, they should be left to make their own decisions on how to resolve their internal flock conflict situations" they said. At least I think that is what they were saying. At least I am sure they didn`t think outsiders should interfere. So, unlike Mr Bush and Mr Blair, I took the advice of these impartial observers. Nothing to do with their teeth. Then we went along the shores of Lake Morno. Very dry. No grazing at all for anyone. Shepherds reported the same problem. No rain for months. As we went along the road that flanks this reservoir, I photographed an interesting rubbish dump. It appeared that all the foulness that a rubbish dump normally encompasses would leech straight into the reservoir. A reassuring thought for Athenians who drink this water. Two days later I photographed this same dump from the other side of the lake. Unequivocal evidence that it does indeed leech into the lake. Shepherds had told me that there was grazing, and plenty of it on the Vardousia side of the Mornos river, so George and I crossed the river and set off to find this grazing. It happened to be the time when the cattle were coming home. And what kind of cattle? Well some of the local breed and…yikes.. some Limousin bulls. George and I were naturally very wary. The cowherd told us not to be so pathetic. "They don`t do anything, they`re really quiet" he said with a voice full of contempt for us townies that were scared of cattle. I told about the two incidents involving Limousin bulls that we had been involved in. "Mou kanei antiposei" said the farmer (I`m surprised) meaning that he thought I was making it up. But, seeing that we were genuinely nervous, he very kindly said he would walk us up the road where we wanted to go, and would make sure we came to no harm. I thanked him profusely. So we walked up the road and the cows and calves and bull that were coming down towards us scattered in confusion. "You see" said my friend "They`ll go off the road, and find their way home along the river" Just as he said that the bull, who was young (thank goodness) turned back on to the road. He began to exhibit threat behaviour. "Mou kanei antiposei" said my friend as he strode forward brandishing a stick and giving the bull a good telling off. The bull hesitated, and then backed off. "Mou kanei antiposei" said my friend again. 'He seems to think of the horse as an enemy' He told me to keep on going up the road. He would stand guard in case the bull came back. "Don`t stop" he said. I had no intention of doing so. We continued along the road until we were more or less parallel with Lefkaditi. There was a track down to the river, and we found grazing galore. It was a forest of planes which flank the, at that stage, free and tumultuous Mornos river. Flowers! Insects! Birds! Giona stern and magnificent above. Love filled my heart like a great big "YES" In the morning I woke to the sound of nightingales. Thousands of them all shouting their heads off. A quite stupendous chorus. I have, I hope, linked with a recoring of a nightingale.http:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTkZRO-FYTM If you listen to this, and multiply it by about 500 then you will get an idea of the extraordinary magic of these birds. No wonder they are celebrated as metaphors for the great power of beauty. I realised that I hadn`t heard them singing like this for years, though I hadn`t really noticed the process of losing them. I mean there are still nightingales, just not as numerous as they used to be. I thought about this poem by William Johnson Cory, which is a celebrated translation of a epigram by Callimachus. (If any Greek or Classics scholar can provide the original ancient greek version, please post it in comments) blogger doesn`t seem to like written poetry, so I have posted a PHOTO of the poem above.. I hope you can read it.. And when I thought about this poem I thought about how the metaphor of the nightingales with their "pleasant voices" as emblems of everything beautiful only makes sense if Death cannot, in truth, take them. Callimachus could make that assumption. But that was then . Nowadays, Death can take them. Not only can but bloody has. "Thou wast not made for death, immortal bird" says Keats. But what did HE know? Its only when you hear them as they used to be that you realise how many have gone. How many nightingales development and habitat destruction have already taken.

taking the nightingales of Heraclitus

I`m having trouble...what a surprise..posting photos AND text together.. dunno why..so here are photos for the post "Taking the nightingales of Heraclitus."

Then I`ll post the words!! Sorry.

selling my soul for a view

Helikon is a very lovely mountain, inoffensive and charming. It really doesn`t deserve what people have done to it! First :the Mornos canal goes through it in a tunnel, a change from its awful cement deathtrap mode. A tunnel ..that`s OK, one might think..except of course, that when one makes a tunnel through a mountain and it is IMPORTANT GOVERNMENT WORK, one obviously is in a bit of a rush, and one wants to do things as cheap as possible, because siphoning off money is, after all, the name of the game, then naturally a certain amount of wrecking of an iconic environment will be bound to occur. The more rush and the less expense the more horrendous the unrepaired damage to the unfortunate mountain will be. "What? you want water in Athens , AND you want Mount Helicon as beautiful as it was before? In your dreams, Sunshine" OK, before,during and after the tunnel there were lots of bauxite mines. No comment. And those rushing streams on Helikon, that make it a mountain of green glades, gleaming like emeralds amidst the malachite green of the fir trees? Needed elsewhere now. There are beach resorts developing (the very ones made out of ticky tacky photographed in "Little boxes") And monasteries. In spite of all EU directives about not stealing water from mountains, there are hosepipes from the very top of the mountain. These were not there six years ago. They cannot be legally there now. At the top of Mt Helikon is THE ultimate green glade. Exactly the place where Pan (not the mimsy Pan too often depicted on mountain tops, the one in children`s books, but the real one, with his mad goat eyes, and his mad wild pipe music specifically designed to encourage unspeakably disgusting behaviour ) I met a shepherd with his flock up there. He invited me to their May 1st celebrations. "We`ll all be up here on that day" he said " we enjoy ourselves very much" I bet they do. The latest human expiloitaton of Helikon is one I try hard to like: Windmills. At first I was horrified at the destruction they seemed to find necessary to put up these structures. Then I realised I had maligned them. The destruction had happened before.. the windmills were sited on an old bauxite mine. Is sanity finally prevailing? Surely building on an already ruined site can`t make economic sense can it? But perhaps, at last, people realise that there are other kind of sense than economic. Some people are worried about the effect of windmills on wildlife. The noise? Well it was REALLY REALLY windy, I mean fucking awful, when I was camped up there, so the windmills were REALLY going for it. But it wasn`t too bad. It was like being camped next to a giant tumble drier. You could sleep through it easily. When the wind dropped a bit the noise was really not loud at all. Yeah. Windmills might be OK. As we left the summit of the mountain and started down we were somewhat sheltered from the wind… but coming up the mountain was HORRIBLE. You can see poor George, very windblown, and, unlike his owner, unprotected by expensive sunglasses,with a lot of dust in his eyes. You can then see how very tiring it was trying to head into the wind. I walked all the way up because poor George had enough to do to keep going at all. You know how it is when you try to rides a bike into a headwind and the front wheel keeps turning back, and in the end you get off and walk? Same with George, except no front wheel. One other thing. As we started up this track, from somewhere near Thisbe, a large foreign number plated and driven lorry was just coming off it. The poor driver stopped, wound up his windows and was having an urgent phone conversation. In England recently a driver, following the instructions of his GPS had taken what appeared to be the most direct route to deliver whatever he had to deliver. Unfortunately the GPS told him to go through a small village. Here he got stuck. Couldn`t get over a bridge. Couldn`t reverse back round the corner, couldn`t go straight on. So he did the only thing he could do. Closed his windows and burst into tears. This driver seemed on the very edge of the same thing. But why would his GPS have told him to go over a precipitous track, hard going even for a horse, right through what obviously seemed to him to be bandit country? Because, naturally, there is soon going to be a road over the most precious part of Mt Helikon, and the GPS thought it was already there. Maybe the economic crisis can at least save us from this sacrilege. Because I know in my heart that that green place where I camped, and the shepherd and all the villagers were going to celebrate Mayday, has been a sacred place since time began. There are even the remains of some kind of ancient temple being excavated up there. Anyway, the way down was better, and we even saw a snake.. our first on this trip..so photo included. The wind was awful the next night too. We camped at a lovely place called Stiri. The local priest told us to camp near the Church. If it hadn't been so windy it would have been perfect. But when its windy like that everything blows away all the time, and anything that isn`t weighted down with a stone is gone for ever. This is very tiring and after 4 days of it I was exhausted. Luckily there are still tracks to follow in that area, so it wasn`t til we got to Dhistomo that the full awfulness of that road becomes apparent. In Marlow`s Dr Faustus, when Faustus is in the process of selling his soul to the Devil, he has a conversation with Mephistopheles. The road from Dhistomo to Desphina brought this to mind. Faustus remarks on the fact that Hell doesn`t seem that bad, as Mephistopheles is free to come and go, paying visits to people on earth etc. "Think`st thou that this is not hell?" replies Mephistopheles mildly "Nor that I am out of it?" Anyway there was no way out of this hell, because although the map shows tracks, I know from 6 years ago that the track is in very bad condition, and was impassable in places even then. So we went along this road, which every lorry in the world uses ..from where to where? I don`t fully understand the logistics. There`s lots of mines, and there`s lots of strangely secret installations along the coast, but all those trucks carrying trifili or frozen fish, how can we explain those? Anyway, near to Desphina is a little church Agios Trifonos. I wanted to revisit it, as 6 years ago I had found it a truly holy place. I know, I know, you can`t go back, I know, I know I was foolish to hope that such a beautiful place could be as it was. But I did. St Trifonos is another version of St Valentine, and he is also Bacchus, Christianised. So one thing that I had adored about that church was that it offered protection to birds. St Trifonas is responsible for birds, so this was appropriate. See the photo. A rock nuthatch has nested in the doorway, and a notice appears below it. Please use the other door, it said. I just LOVED that. But as we reached the Church I was filled with forboding. The fence and gate had been redone and the –lets call it a wild garden- around the church had been paved over with revolting pink and white cement slabs. (I know, too much pink is usually not enough pink for me ..but here pink just wasn`t right .) And the nest.. destroyed.. see the photo. Yes, something truly beautiful, truly a work of a deity had been smashed, because someone thought that it wasn't the right thing for a church door. Inside the Church there was a remarkable Icon of Agios Trifonos. It is in an unusual style and is extremely moving. But I couldn't get into the church to pay my respects to it. It was locked. So I peeped through a window. The icon was still there ( see photo) and at least one person had understood its meaning. Trifonos had been garlanded like the Bacchus he really is. At least folklore can still keep us in touch with the truth that myths can show us. I didn't stop at the church. I had promised myself that if it was still as full of truth and beauty as it had been I would stop for the night there.No need to stop. And besides, all unbeknown to me, I had already sold my soul to the devil in exchange for a view that I would see from my tent next morning. Faustus was prepared to sell his soul in order to possess Helen of Troy . I went through the hell of the road to Desphina in order to see the view from Delfi, I realise in retrospect You leave Desphina and climb into Mt Kirfi on a small but lovely asphalt road which soon becomes a very steep and demanding track which leads down into the deep Gorge below Delfi. I had to endure a bit more hell.. going through what must be the most iconic valley in all of Greece is… a cement canal…no!!!!!! not where the tourists might see it, natch, but where any wanderer in search of truth and beauty cannot fail to be offended by it. Below Delfi are wondrous olive groves and purling springs and nightingales. Where we stopped for the night I pitched my tent on the edge of a terrace where the view was of Mt Giona. Just as Dr Faustus says of Helen, when she makes him immortal with a kiss "Her lips suck forth my soul" So this view, and all the beauties of this incomparable place, sucked forth my soul. As they have sucked forth many a better soul over the millenia. And, like Faustus, I`d consider my soul well lost for this happiness. Certainly it was worth every step of that hellish road from Dhistomo to Desphina. Cheap at twice the price, even. The next morning we set off towards the mountain I most love in Greece , Giona. We went up from Chriso through the ancient olive groves towards Amphissa. The best olive groves in Greece . Certainly the least likely to be treated with herbicide, and so, exhuberantly green and full of life. The map show that this track doesn`t go all the way to Amphissa. 6 years ago I believed it, and so turned, as the map told me I had to do, towards Agios Konstantinos, and then up the asphalt to Amphissa. This year I didn`t believe it was possible that the track didn't go to Amphissa. So I didn't turn, and I found a way that led straight to Amphissa and my hotel. I had decided to have a break at Amphissa before taking on Giona, which is a very tough mountain. The people in the hotel recognised me from before. Soon George was happily grazing, I had found a place to buy grain for him, and I had a room with a bath and a bed. I had spent the trip from Delphi to Amphissa in some discomfort because my right foot and leg had swollen up grotesquely and were red hot and very sore. I had to have antibiotics and keep the foot up, emerging from my room several times a day to check on George and to get food etc. MY problems with vodaphone have already been mentioned. I also had the chance to check out my mattress for holes, because I had a bath to do that in. It did have a small hole, which I mended. It still didn't stay inflated. Grrr. I did ALL my washing. Spent the first night in my room working at my blog absolutely starkers while my entire wardrobe and sleeping bag dried. The next morning my entire wardrobe except those things dry enough for me to wear hung from my balcony. The hotel Amphissaeon is not pretentious or posh. But it is an excellent place to stay. Everyone is kind and helpful. I have still got the bathmat they gave me to make George`s pannier bags more comfortable. I loved staying there. When I needed something nothing was too much trouble. When I felt too ill to do anything everyone left me in peace. What more could you ask for?