Saturday / Sunday
It can be daunting arriving somewhere new late at night. I'm rarely daunted but I needed a nice holiday. Doesn't everyone need a nice holiday? No one goes out in search of a shit holiday.
I left my tattered nerves in the security area at Manchester airport. Somehow we got through with all our belongings in tact, including a pair of knitting needles. We had short delays, missed the car hire shuttle bus so hiked the half km and even dealt well with Little Miss Hustle at the car hire centre who wanted to up-sell us everything from a convertible Fiat 500 to the excess insurance you already paid for because you *Need* a nice holiday.
"Car hire?", you say, scathing. We were away for a week. I needed easy. It was late. Bike hire was shut. I wasn't waiting for buses and they would never have arrived at 9pm.
I managed to drive in a foreign country while TSK navigated - incident free - all the way to our destination town. I wasn't worried about the driving. I've driven in France, Italy, Portugal, Romania, Sardegna but I'd no idea about Greek rules or drivers, despite the RAC's reassurances, and there were plenty of un-helmeted Moto riders to worry about. My eyes were glued to the road - and other road users - as TSK fired directions at me. Even if I'd had the chance to look at the scenery I'd have seen nothing but blackness. Perhaps a distant twinkle of a mountain monastery.Crete has dark skies nailed.
• • •
We dropped of the A-road into the town where we were staying at about 10pm. Lads buzzed about on motos and dirt bikes and hung around in packs outside bars. I was pretty nervous. We reached the one way system. I needed to do a 3 point turn without hitting any of the random pot vases lining the road sides. It was too close for comfort. I had to find reverse in a car I'd had for 40 minutes. It was the first time we'd gone backwards. Other motorists waited patiently.
Finally we drove up the road past "our house". I thought there was parking further up but we started to get quite far away and plenty of others were parked tightly on the roadside. We did another turn in a wide bit and parked like locals - wheels tight into the rock wall, wing mirrors folded in. Of course you kicked your passenger out before you parked. Cats seemed to crawl from the very fabric of buildings - some clearly well looked after, that slunk back to their homes. Others were scraggy and hung around long enough to ascertain whether you have food to share but were on tenterhooks, ready to skedaddle at the first sign of approach.
Bags dropped we went out in search of dinner - at 1030 on a Saturday evening.
As well as the cats we now noticed the dogs - completely randomly sprawled. Some collared, others not. Belonging to someone - probably.
It took us 3 walks by the main square, hedging our bets we'd find something more than a Taverna open. The only place that still seemed to be serving food was absolutely banging and a hot house of local activity. In fact I got the distinct impression that if we went in we'd be gatecrashing Grama's 80th. Finally we settled on a pizza restaurant - well, it was skantily a takeaway with tables. We were served by a friendly waiter who brought great English to the table. Dad stretched dough while mum prepped food out the back. 3 sons served, lounged or scooted pizzas in boxes around the town. We propped ourselves against the wall with some cold pop and tried not to fall asleep. The whole thing had an air of endurance sport about it, desperately trying to down your dinner at 10pm, hoping you can get a box to take the leftovers. Complete mental annihilation.
As I tried to eat my pizza crusts, the immaculately turned out late-teens girls from the next table went to the counter to pay. The boys smiled coyly. Glances were exchanged. By this time of year they were ensconced in leather jackets as we looked on, sitting near the door in thin trousers and just the one long sleeved top.
The least handsome boy caught the eye of the least comfortable girl. She was on my wavelength. While her friends wore biker jackets, her leather was best described as a 'coat' and was more "50's nan" than "biker chick" Still, they had a spark.
The kids left, we got our pizza box and gripped it tightly as we threaded home through the bezzing motos and stray animals.
• • •
Our bellies full and we hovered in the no-mans land between exhaustion and no-exercise with too much excitement on the side. At 4am I got up to eat more pizza then nearly fell asleep on the downstairs sofa. Back in bed it was too warm but I managed another 4 sound hours sleep, getting up at 8 to tackle the next foodie challenge.
Stepping outside in daylight the whole place was less daunting. Gone were the young kids on motos. The streets were lined with wrinkled old men with fabulous moustaches who nodded respectfully in recognition. Much to our relief the bakery was open and, almost purely by accident, we ate spinach* pastries for breakfast washed down with almond cream pies and coffee.
*We thought she said "Spanish" & decided Chorizo was a very acceptable breakfast.
As we feasted we watched a man clutching handfuls of windscreen wipers being beckoned by an older "customer" to his truck. The guy tried a few out before settling then turned and called out loud in the street to pedal his wares. Another small car bounced through the carpark potholes eager to get his own rear wiper replaced. Since it is missing from our hire car too we wondered if it was worth beckoning the windscreen wiper man ourselves. We wondered how much of Crete's black market economy is centred on the theft and resale of windscreen wipers.
• • •
With our bellies actually filled and more than we bargained for, we wobbled home, still hoping to find more fresh produce which wasn't otherwise committed to a baked product.
A pickup truck drove by with an Alsatian dog on board. It was tied on because it picked a fight with every other dog in the village. Two small dogs ran around the tyres of the pickup as it threaded through the tiny streets. They yapped and the Alsatian hollered and snapped his salivating teeth as the little dogs chided "come down here and say that; haha you can't".
The feral cats of the square continued about their business of cleaning assholes and basking in the sun.
• • •
We walked a loop of the old town in hope of finding an open shop. We found ourselves in streets where real people actually live and tend their gardens of lemons, lime, clementines, pomegranate and exquisite flowers spitting trumpets of colour and tissue papers of white down the sides of houses and over carports.
We got wonderfully lost in the murals and found more cats. The call to prayer rang out from the churches and we wiggled our way home. We'd already scaled 1/3 the elevation of the mountain we were planning to climb today but we were on the wrong side of the valley.
• • •
Without any new fresh food, we returned to the bakery to get sandwiches. The language barrier got us turkey sandwiches, not olive & feta, and we got that on "black" bread (wholegrain), which is - obviously - the opposite of "white".
A short tour through one of the few construction sites and we joined the Grand Route (footpath) 4 which crosses Crete E-W. At first we passed genuine roadside olive trees, threaded our way past the pressing farm, then Olive groves and a few farmed plots growing more citrus and pears as well as keeping goats or geese.
Then a sign took us away from the concreted track and onto (from me) "ooh a real path". For the next hour we scrambled over limestone lumps and bits of scree - all loosely held together by brush, spiny plants, miniature holly, sage and plenty of things we couldn't ID. As I over balanced while trying to pick up some litter I soon realised you can't just catch yourself in the undergrowth here - the undergrowth bites back with spines. Some just scratch, others embed themselves in your skin and refuse to leave.
We were horrified to find others were following. A blonde lady refused to pass us no matter how long I spent staring at Eagles with my binoculars. There were 2 others somewhere behind us.
As we topped out onto one of the mountain" roads" (gravel), I had my wobble. I staggered up onto the road like I'd just summited a 6ft heap of 40% dust and scree. Which I had. Not sure what everyone else's excuse was but they were making that idle roadway look awfully tricky.
We gained a Belgian teammate for awhile before he scrambled off along the ridge intent on "summitting". We took the time to visit the monastery, photograph and go inside.
Next up on the ridge walk was the Minoan Sanctuary as we threaded our way between families picnicing and tour guides. It was locked to visitors so we skirted around it, despite the illegally trampled rusty fence and peered in from the rundown weather station/ transmitter station then continued along the ridge and the GR path. At some point we went off route. At some point I thought I could see tracks on the map (they were contours). Oh how we chuckled to ourselves. You don't always have to go where they tell you to. Ha!
On the map we had a lovely rolling slope down to the route at the end of the ridge. As is often the way, the terrain was very different.
It started to go wrong really when we realised we were following goat tracks and then we realised the goats were coming towards us because they had run out of ways to get down the hill.
After a bit too much scouting about between limestone crags and bushwhacking the spikiest undergrowth known to man and the hardest scrambling I've done since the 90's, I had a major panic as the weather suddenly turned the light levels down a notch.
Paranoid we still had a long way to go, even when we got to the path, I had sudden visions of us either fumbling about in the darkness or falling off a crag to be ripped to ribbons by Greece's equivalent of a hawthorn bush.
We spent what seemed like an eternity back-scrambling out of the gorse and scrub forest to finally set eyes on the path 100m downhill of us AND with a clear line to get to it. Once on it we marvelled at how a good bit of getting lost and misadventure is just the ticket to turn a sedentary everyday accessible ramble into an" Ahhh isn't this nice?"
As I walked down that slope I thought about the man with the shouty Alsatian dog in his truck. About how cool he thought it would be to have a dog he could keep in the back of his pickup. About how wrong he was. Our GR route brought us back to the nice quiet sedentary road from where we watched eagles some more and emptied the grit from our shoes. Farm workers passed in their trucks, they seemed to be checking we were OK and waved happily as we munched on snacks before the descent to town.
On our way over the hill, a man was welcomed home by 5 cats and his dog who was busy trying its best (getting close) to leap over the 7ft gate at the property. Just as we'd let our guard down, I had a stand-off with a female dog as she saw us off her property and I defended my puppy (Tsk). We backed away. I tooled up my water bottle to at least be armed with something. There was no further trouble.
When we got back to town it was a different place - 3 or 4 different restaurants were open throughout. We'd already stocked up so passed through in awe. From couples up to big family dinners. The place was alive! Men discretely fed ham to the ferral cats who sat patiently (or tapped a gentle reminder)
Dogs sat tethered to their owners wrist while the town dogs begged for something special, now turning their nose up at the bread scraps they'd been given. They knew something better was available.
Monday
After our first all-day hike we settled on a beach day to recharge the batteries. A poor level of research led us to spend many hours traversing a mountain pass which only led to a dirt track that our car could not handle and a dusty, rocky bowl. It was all very nice but our legs were not good for the 12km return hike from where we felt the need to abandon the Fiat Panda. It was not the high-clearance 4WD version but the woosy city hybrid version. I abandoned it in the middle of the dirt road and got out to - at least - check that we had an inflated spare tyre so I could drive over the rocks instead of risking ripping off the exhaust with them. At that exact moment, a cement truck appeared. We moved out of the way then agreed on a 3 point turn to head back to tarmac roads where our rental agreement would permit recovery, at least. At the top of the mountain pass we parked by a chapel, sat in the Lee of the stone wall and picnic'd on our lunch like a couple of old biddies. At least we got out of the car.
It was 2pm by the time we reached Tsoutsouros. We parked in an empty carpark and walked straight to the village harbour where a beach of grey sand offered olive tree shade and modesty changing facilities. My modesty was protected from an old man walking by with a cane and two guys driving by in a pickup more concerned by getting to their boat in the harbour than some random English couple on the beach in November.
The sea was chilly to the skin but pleasantly so. After a bit of adaptation and faffing with sunglasses and jewellery I did a few pleasant laps of the bay and was amused by sea urchins bobbing and waving with the flow of the ocean. I've only ever seen the dried carcasses of their shells in Scotland. We stayed a while to dry off then walked the length of the village.
One leathery old man was swimming further along. A few workmen hung around. The big hotel seemed closed except for a few end-of-season staff or possibly, its owners. We holed up at the only open restaurant for a coffee and watched the cats prowl for food and squabble over begging rights at the tables.
Tuesday
On Tuesday we set off for a hike. It was 10km, I didn't realise it was fairly easy. It passed a local archaeological site which we would later discover to be of quite some significance for Greece, not just Crete. It was fenced off - though not completely impenetrable. We were more interested in the modern forest of conifers offering plenty of glorious shade and for about 20 minutes we walked someone else's tidy, collared, well-behaved dogs around the forest paths. They stopped for a pet, then trundled along with us for some time. They disappeared after we left the parking lot next to a big house. They either live at the house or the carpark, subsiding on tourist picnics. Our route took us on a tour of olive groves and vineyards where we sat amongst the scrub on an olive grove access track and consumed our lunch under the watchful eye of an eagle which soared overhead.
Our view was of our village to the North and Irakleon in the South. We nestled in the undergrowth to avoid the breeze that would have a skantily-clad English hiker shivering after a while, no matter how much they welcomed the same breeze while on the move.
We hauled back up through the terraces only to find I had confused a fenceline on the map for a path. Instead we picked through the olive groves, bee hives and carob pods to find our out route to re-trace back to the village.
It was a short day, a wonderfully short day which in retrospect was much needed. We ate dessicated pineapple overlooking ancient Greek wells then dropped into the village for some modern Greek coffee.
Rouvas Gorge 2/11
It was supposed to be a beach day after yesterday's hike but yesterday's hike would only have been a strenuous run. As a hike it was a bit mediocre. Done by 3pm, we had to head out again later for a walk around the village which turned into dinner, accompanied by two rounds of divine Feta cheese the size of supermarket Camembert. It was a restless night of cheese uneasiness so we'd had a bit of a lie in.
I knew a beach day wasn't going to cut my thirst for exercise and a damn good adventure in the high mountains.
We packed up our lunch and wobbled on wiggly lanes through olive groves onto the South of the island, then West, then started to climb back inland to Zoros where a nice little cafe tempted us in for a coffee top up and pancake for second breakfast. Our next stop was the carpark for the gorge walk where we were the only customers except for a Lada 4x4 which had become part of the local flora, it had been there so long.
We set off up the way marked path. The only real navigational challenge being to negotiate our route through the JCB and tree surgeon re-working the path out of the Gorge following recent landslides. This purposefully avoided a particularly bouldered steep section, that we would be pleased to have avoided, later on.
At these low levels there was a gentle trickle of water in the gorge though it mostly seemed to come from a water overflow pipe from the hotel near the bottom and numerous "accidental" fractures in a catenary of irrigation pipes that hung from any available wall, boulder or tree lining the gorge. The higher we proceeded up the gorge the fewer pipes and fewer leak points though it didn't feel like water would be a problem, we were both carrying plenty.
After the landslide, The path soon rejoined the gorge. Temperatures were starting to peak but between sections of steep walking over a rocky, exposed river bed we were treated to paths up through oak and other relatively water-starved trees like Eucalyptus, Cretan maple and random spiny things.
Their shade was welcome and reaching out to touch their boughs conducted the heat away from hot, swollen hands. Just before I completely expired I found us a shaded spot to sit and alongside was a water trough filled with clear water. Sure there were maple leaves settled in the bottom and a thoughtless poo on a nearby rock but I soaked our hats which gave us both some cooling and I set off with small rivulets of water coursing down my back.
Beyond this point of tranquillity, the rush started. We passed - or were passed by - Americans, French, Germans, Dutch, Greek and Triathletes. Our secret get away had become a little busy. The path took another turn out of the gorge avoiding 30-60ft high vertical/overhanging limestone cliffs stuffed in between with boulders the size of SUVs and terraced houses. Instead we climbed a 6 inch wide footpath up the hillside where "safety" barriers were intermittent. At one point they gave up and built a bench on the inside curve of the path where a family of Greeks were taking a rest, causing us to teeter by on the edge of the slope as we all greeted eachother gaily, like it was no problem.
Andrew dreamed of a cooling breeze on top of the mountain and I promised him there was a full forest to enjoy then qualified that with "according to the map". I had no idea how forest-like it would be.
Soon enough the breeze started and we cooled down a little as the path clawed up the dry river bed and crossed over what would be cascading boulders and waterfalls in a succession of wooden bridges - all fabricated from local materials on the surface but supported underneath with more rugged steel I-beams.
I realised it was 1:30 and, despite our 11am calorie loading, it was probably best to eat. Right on time a stone wall in the shade offered a comfortable seat to rest our feet and eat half our lunch.
Back on the trail we were climbing less now. Kms clicked by on the watch. It felt like hours to reach 3.25km and then we reached 5 km in no time. Route markers on trees talked of 25km distances, I kept quiet - knowing that our planned route was 20km, although I hoped to cut it shorter if we needed to.
Eventually some gritty, cloudy puddles appeared then trickling water with no apparent source led us to a fully equipped picnic area. We went off route to walk around it, marvelling at our good choices to visit this place in the off-season and imagining every one of the 50-ish picnic tables occupied by families and squealing infants.
Back at the Refuge we passed the only other tourist family left on the hill and checked out the Info-board which explained why the gorge is a Unesco protected heritage park and why some dead-looking twigs were protected by construction rebar, supporting tiny chicken-wire cages. Greek orchids. Clearly very much in the off season.
We set off along my mapped route. Rather than retrace our steps I'd plotted our way over to the Euro 4 route which Traverses Crete end-to-end - future life goals. I looked around me at the landscape, desperately trying to remember what I had in store for me/us. Although the refuge was at the top of the gorge, the forest plateau was only atop a minor blip of a hillock surrounded by a much larger cauldera. A ring of Mountaintops surrounded us about 500m above. I didn't 'actually'? Did I? I was open, honest- "knowing me, I probably routed us up that" I said, pointing at the biggest one in our general direction of travel. We agreed to go take a look but started off by completing our forest route before picking off on the new path.
I was relieved we'd checked the refuge - not that we had enough warm clothes or food for a comfy night there. But it was a potential retreat point that would keep us alive over night.
Our new path immediately started picking its way up the spine of one of the other minor hills in the cauldera. After a brief ad-lib with the garmin across deep beds of acorns that made feet scatter, we finally found the E4 and a series of useful stone cairns. The surface turned into chossy rock and the trees got thinner then non-existent as we emerged from the protected forest onto open mountain slopes. Three things happened at once:
I checked my watch. 3pm. We'd left the refuge at 2:45pm. No matter what the distance to go on the Garmin, we couldn't make it to the top of "that thing" and down an unknown route before dark. In fact, I was dubious we'd make the top before sunset.
Andrew caught me up, huffing and sigh-ing and I unromantically proffered a passive-aggressive "Do you want to go down?". Terrified by this outpouring of affection he satisfied himself that things were about to get easier since the apparent "line" involved a rambling ridgeline and then a descent.
The ridgeline now in view sported an array of buildings from farm to shepherds hut to chapel. We had absolutely no idea where the rest of the route would go but agreed to get as far as the buildings and assess because anything was preferable to the scree run down steep gravel covered with acorns and back the way we'd come.
The E4 skirted around the mountain farm rubble patch in the back garden. Goats bleated at us as we passed, hoping for hay.
Next we passed the hut. 2 doors had locks but the third had a key in it. I peered in the window. The tidy made bed, food at the table & coat hanging on a hook made me feel very guilty for prying.The little chapel seemed to be accessed via the track we were on but we could not see the track leading away from it. I racked my brains back to the October evening when I sat in my centrally heated house plotting apparent short-cuts between mountain roads to get us off the hill the most direct way. Please don't tell me I'd done this at 4000ft.
We still didn't fancy backtracking but at least we were now at the point of inflexion where my route finally took a turn South before eventually wiggling its way down the hillside. But which hillside? We still didn't know. What we did know is, at least it wasn't going to go up "that thing".
• • •
I let myself forget the route and actually enjoy the mountain - just for one moment - I mean it was exactly what we'd come here for and we'd finally got away from the crowds. If, by crowds, you mean 15 or so like-minded people.
We moved through the farm's goat pens. Pungent smelling and unpleasant until you accept the smell as something close to tasty tasty cheese.
I photographed the cauldera then got back to the business of worrying where the route went interspersed with worrying about time versus distance to travel.
• • •
Finally I got it through to myself that the longer I spent second guessing, the longer it would take to descend.
While this sounds like I didn't have a clue about map reading lets be clear, the number of curves and escarpments and bluffs in the caldera made it nearly impossible to tell which face was which on the map and steepness combined with cypress tree-cover made it impossible to see clear lines on the hillside. Only by going there would we find out and we reckoned we had enough head torch to get down either way.
We continued onwards past the farm, starting to descend now at a roadway rate of around 3%. Goats feeding on scrub above us threatened to dislodge boulders and scree down on us from above when they became alarmed. It was best not to stand next to the wall of rock at the roadside. Our trek was harmonised to the clunk of animal bells.
• • •
When we approached the chapel we were relieved to find it nestled beneath the track and the track continued beyond. It was here that the map markings turned to "road" albeit Cretan roads (sketchy gravel).
I boldly suggested we would be down before dark. Although our first steep uphill 5k took us 3 hours, surely we could do 15k down in 3 hours before 6 pm. Should be good on a 5:30 sunset.
Past the final ridge building we continued to speculate what direction our route took. We were rapidly running out of hillside with nothing but steep valley walls ahead and to our right and a precipitous drop to our left. I opened up the prospect that, although we weren't going to summit the cauldera, we may well be about to climb out over the saddle of its rim, though deep down we hoped not.
We tried to pick out lines on the opposite wall but all of them looked like goat tracks.
To my relief, by the time we arrived at this death wall we had reached the first of many switchbacks but they went upwards, not down. Well, at least we knew how we were getting out of here and the switch backs at least meant we could maintain a good steady marching pace with which to eat through the remaining 12 Kms. We switched back about 5 times until we eventually emerged from the trees to a moonscape. Any remaining greenery was wild and wind blasted and very spiny. The Libyan sea sparkled silver ahead, surrounded by Crete headlands and a large Island nestled in the impending sunset.
Water storage and irrigation infrastructure gave us hope that the road would be good all the way down. Indeed, after a few switchbacks, the first working farm appeared and while we cut through the goat yard track, the switchback was concreted to make it vehicle-friendly. We called them out as concrete corners and Tsk strode them out whilst I jogged them to mix things up a bit.
• • •
Despite our plans to put on coats or jumpers for the downhill (we caved in much earlier on the way up to the ridge) we started to warm up rapidly. We were descending fast into warmer air and were back in full sun even though it was on its way to the sea.
I had hoped we'd be able to shortcut some of the switchbacks but any weak lines had already been exploited by goats and turned into gravel chutes. Everything else was high cliffs, boulders, trees or spiky brush. My last hopes to cut the journey short were a couple of switchbacks around 150m from the gorge walk up.
We had been promising ourselves the second half of our lunch on the way down. At close to 5pm, Tsk got excited when he saw a concrete water tank with 3 and 4inch flanges sticking out the top and hallucinated a picnic area with benches. Just as his disappointment dropped as he shared his vision with me, I noticed a 1×4 planed plank of wood nailed to a tree which piqued my interest. Sure enough, behind the tree was a classic greek picnic area. Made from polished flat rock and cemented into benches and tables, they are paradise. We took off our shoes, put our feet up on the table and stared at the sun continuing its trajectory towards the sea.
"How far back? Tsk asked. It was perfect timing. I was hoping he'd forgotten my earlier admission there were 15 kms to go and now I could happily report there were less than 10km. In fact 9.75. He seemed most happy to learn that we were still on my plotted route and I had not just been ad-libbing the last 5km. He trusts sofa-me more than I do.
When we got moving again, I was finally able to let go my fears of being caught out in the dark in a foreign land and settle into my long distance mode of enjoying the best and quietest part of the day. Reminding myself that 20hm hikes are made up of plenty of surprises - not just the whiz bang moments you came for but the seemingly never ending trudge of either getting there, or getting back home again.
We left our roadside comfort and skipped back into the forest, absorbing ourselves in the pinkening sky and the aromas of ponderosa pine, sage and goat. The only greek tragedy was that the sun did not dip into the sea but merely disappeared behind the headland leaving us with a dramatic melange of orange and purple sky. As we approached farm territory in the dark the dogs started barking leaving us both with the fight or flight response to have a wee and tool-up. Having been "seen off" by a pack of unruly loose farm dogs earlier in the week, neither of us had any intention of doing so in the dark.
TSK carried his stick. I found one with a knot about 5 inches from the end which acted as a great handhold for a walking stick. We delayed putting on head torches as the afterglow of the sunset was enough to hike by and the half-moon soon took over as a perfectly acceptable light source give-or-take the occasional stumble over loose rocks when walking in the shadow of an olive tree The walking stick was put to good use as a walking stick but thankfully all of the dogs were fenced-in.
The last task of the day was a bit of foraging. TSK promised mushroom & mountain sage risotto for tea and damit he was going to deliver. By the light on his phone he harvested a handful of sage & I had the honour of carrying the aroma down the rest of the descent in my easy-pocket. My one remaining concern was a drunken wobbly line on the garmin which I interpreted as "the bit I made up" on the computer using an obvious track on google maps that did not obviously translate as an access route on real maps.
Once we hit the "residential" road of glorious tarmac, my wiggly line turned into "Service Road". It clearly was a gated driveway and we decided not to bother. A recalculation gave us 1. 5km more trek along pristine tarmac - nice but dull - before resuming the Route National which gravelled us back towards the hotel.
Our head torch (the one that was accessible) went on for all of 10 minutes before the bright lights of expensive mountain properties took us back to the carpark in its original state, one rubbishy Lada 4x4 and a slightly dusty Centauro hire car. I'd followed the trip advisor review not to park in the shade as the goats will use your car to access the trees so we were relieved to find there were no hoofprints on the roof.
The stick went in the footwell behind the drivers seat in case I needed it the next day.
The high-sugar foods came out in order to get us home with some level of alertness for the drive through the olive groves.
Thursday.
The day started with the inevitable yet unpredictable arrival of 2 coach tours to our village. Dutch and American tourists talked at by their guides while 50% of them looked bored and we felt privileged to be doing our own thing, simple - shopping in the local economy & interacting (if somewhat badly) with local people.
• • •
Our guidebook for Crete is from 2000, when I had a cursory thought about visiting Greece. All prices are in dr and obviously very outdated but I expected principals to be similar. Our second beach experience was based on finding something more spectacular to goggle at. I had visions of coral reefs, angel fish and such. We headed for the rocky shores around Elounde fuelled by the peninsular and the promise (for Tsk) of a slightly more vibrant village life than Monday's excursion to Tsoutsouros. After a long unenjoyable motorway drive then a re-trace along the coast (we missed the mountain road and had to trundle uncomfortably behind a police car for 40km) we parked out of town then skipped past town in search of crystal blue waters.
• • •
Lunch was consumed en route as my legs refused to co-operate further following yesterday's exertions. Even after eating, the small hill over the peninsular was a solid effort, fuelled only by the promise of sand as an easier way to access the water compared to the solid and spiky volcanic coastal rocks. We followed the local's trail to the sandy beach. As we timed our arrival for about 1pm we couldn't get in the water fast enough and left our kit in the shade. It took all of a couple of minutes for me to commit to a swim. When I did my face went full in where I checked on the fish. Telltale cramp in my feet had me back in the shallows and out of the water but it didn't take much sitting out in the sun for me to be ready to go back in.
This time I was ready for a swim out and back across the bay in deeper parts. It was an absolute pleasure. Clear views of the bottom and crystalline fish with iridescent fins or stripy bodies. It was not, by any stretch of the imagination, a coral reef, or teeming with life (more pottering) but it was pleasant. I spent enough time in the water to get proper cold then relocated us onto finer sand to bask dry in the sun and finish lunch.
Even with a change into dry clothes the sun was insufficient to warm me up. We snacked and watched kids playing, then beat a retreat to check out the church.
There was bird watching and more sitting as I intermittently re-heated and over-heated.
Back
in the town we were grumpily refused a coffee so beat a hasty retreat,
reserving judgement on this holiday resort. Instead we found the
mountain road back. A few switchbacks led us to a "traditional" aka
run-down mountain village where we stumbled on another more open-looking
taverna. In the interests of international relations, I added a modesty
top to my bra-less swimmers dress. Still the leathered old ladies
glared at us and the middle-aged (presumably) owner rocked back &
forth in his chair laughing - commenting (presumably) drunkenly.
Thankfully he dispatched the younger chap to serve us coffee in pidgin
English with the added bonus I got a cold brew and we were dispatched
with 2 ice cold bottles of water. That is hospitality. We sat outside
talking amongst ourselves, backs to what-might-have-been staring then
left them to talk openly about us - presumably for the rest of the day,
if not the whole week.
The rest of the day passed without comment - the briefest of mountain experiences inevitably blitzing the tourist pazzaz, yet again.
Finale
My thirst for salt water and mountains sated, on Friday I declared it a rest day. My ageing body needed one. Following a few hours reading and crafting, I realised what day it was - our last full day. I instantly rued "wasting" it but in equal measure, continued to be thankful of the rest. In honour of it being our last day we did a lap of the village along lanes we'd not used before in search of a waterfall. If by waterfall you mean a trickling stream, then we were successful. We had a nice little trespass into a vineyard and nicked the odd grape or two but otherwise it was leisurely, easy and mainly involved me photographing and sniffing the undergrowth. We ate out and as rest days go it was a roaring success.
On Saturday we returned to the airport, parked completely illegally outside it in the bus lane with everyone else while TSK dropped off left-luggage then got rid of our hire car at the rental shop and headed into town for the day. If anyone's reading this and thinking of a Crete holiday with a late flight out of Irakleon - do yourself a favour and ditch the city. Head to the big island museum of Crete and spend the day in there. The city's selling points leave little to be desired. I've seen bigger fountains in my local park and the old zoo park site has been converted into a carpark and construction site. A new kind of chimpanzee now inhabits the monkey sanctuary.
The highlights were attending the harbour and looking through the glassy water to see the underside of the boats through the still clear water and the ice cream consumed next to said-fountain. The harbour walls museum contained many replicas, some stone cannon balls, cannons and a lot of Civil Engineering history which is easily tired of. The 12km walk was, however a good precedent for getting on a plane and sleeping uncomfortably for 2 hours. I'm back to my comparisons with ultra racing.
