New and updated!!! 30th May 2012
Day one 25th May
We finally left having not been 100% certain if things were going to happen up to Thursday morning, fortunately all was in order, papers organised, disguises prepared (Stu's been before)so rendez-vous set for 4.00am at Gatwick. I'll see you at the check-in said Stu, no problem but given there will be quite a few people about how will you spot me? Oh, you'll be the fat bloke that stands out like a sore thumb, shame you're short otherwise I'd spot you double quick time! Unbelievably we passed through check-in, passport and security in less than 15 minutes and found ourselves with time to kill before the gate opens, I.e. cheap airlines be on the plane and sit on it for 60 minutes, so breakfast was ordered, and to be sure the vitamin and iron levels were maintained a pint of Guinness was required to wash down the overpriced homogenised tasteless offering, however we bravely managed it
The flight was uneventful and we arrived on time in Corfu, looking at the island from a great height gave totally the wrong impression, that doesn't look too difficult does it, looks a bit flat from here should be easy!!
Upon landing the truth dawned, the landscape could best be described as 'rugged' at worst - well having yomped Ashdown Forest and surrounding areas for the last 6 months i was beginning to wish the effort had been concentrated in Snowdonia perhaps.
We were duly met by Alexis at the airport and taken to the Travel Company offices for some advice about the trail, we were rather expecting a short lecture on the best way to get round, however we were presented with some ammendments to add to the information already received, it was beginning to look like the notes folder was going to be heavier than the backpack.
we were deposited safely at our first overnight stop in the south of the island along with a complimentary bottle of Ouzo to make us feel at home, a decision was immediately made we should do a short walk that afternoon to gauge how easy it was all going to be, also discovering we were not a the very beginning of the trail that the first bit could be covered in a short circular walk.
Four hours later back in our room it was very clear this was going to be an interesting journey.
Having struggled to work out the trail itself and finding the map to be not very detailed we only managed to get lost 3 times, and the terrain as shown below is quite demanding!
Day 3 - 27th May Sunday Day one 25th May
We finally left having not been 100% certain if things were going to happen up to Thursday morning, fortunately all was in order, papers organised, disguises prepared (Stu's been before)so rendez-vous set for 4.00am at Gatwick. I'll see you at the check-in said Stu, no problem but given there will be quite a few people about how will you spot me? Oh, you'll be the fat bloke that stands out like a sore thumb, shame you're short otherwise I'd spot you double quick time! Unbelievably we passed through check-in, passport and security in less than 15 minutes and found ourselves with time to kill before the gate opens, I.e. cheap airlines be on the plane and sit on it for 60 minutes, so breakfast was ordered, and to be sure the vitamin and iron levels were maintained a pint of Guinness was required to wash down the overpriced homogenised tasteless offering, however we bravely managed it
The flight was uneventful and we arrived on time in Corfu, looking at the island from a great height gave totally the wrong impression, that doesn't look too difficult does it, looks a bit flat from here should be easy!!
Upon landing the truth dawned, the landscape could best be described as 'rugged' at worst - well having yomped Ashdown Forest and surrounding areas for the last 6 months i was beginning to wish the effort had been concentrated in Snowdonia perhaps.
We were duly met by Alexis at the airport and taken to the Travel Company offices for some advice about the trail, we were rather expecting a short lecture on the best way to get round, however we were presented with some ammendments to add to the information already received, it was beginning to look like the notes folder was going to be heavier than the backpack.
we were deposited safely at our first overnight stop in the south of the island along with a complimentary bottle of Ouzo to make us feel at home, a decision was immediately made we should do a short walk that afternoon to gauge how easy it was all going to be, also discovering we were not a the very beginning of the trail that the first bit could be covered in a short circular walk.
Four hours later back in our room it was very clear this was going to be an interesting journey.
Having struggled to work out the trail itself and finding the map to be not very detailed we only managed to get lost 3 times, and the terrain as shown below is quite demanding!
Over dinner in the evening we strengthened our resolve (Drank some local wine) and decided we could do this and it would just be a case of getting used to the trail.
Day 2 26th May - Saturday
Well here we are preparing for our first full day on the trail - the guide book suggests 6 and 1/2 hours walking, hopefully manageable by both of us, we bade farewell to the Taverna owner with the previous evening's promise that "her fathers homemade wine was the best ever" ringing in our ears, and sadly our heads too, we set off.
Without wishing to give a blow by blow account of our travels the day was a series of revelations, walking through quiet shady olive groves with ancient blackened trees, through forest and open countryside and small Corfian villages where it seems everyone wants to say good morning.
We stopped for a coffee in a small town called Lefkimmi where we sat by the quayside of a small river and enjoyed the tranquility.
We moved on and walked to within an hour of our next destination and stopped for lunch at an isolated taverna where we enjoyed greek salad picked in the owners garden that morning with cheese from a local producer, it was fabulous.
Moving on we then had our first serious hill climb over the coastal ridge and down to a tiny resort called Santa Barbara where the accommodation was beachside
.
We then spent a couple of hours checking if any of the bars had wi-fi and you will probably already realise they don't as this blog is being written 5/6 days into the trek.
Again a really pleasant dinner and a good nights sleep ready for whatever lay ahead on day 3.
Woke up looking forward to a walk along the beach to start today's mission, looked out the apartment to see it had rained during the night, so the bits and pieces put out to dry were going to be packed in plastic bags with the vain hope there would a chance to dry them out in the evening. The forecast for the day was possible thunderstorms, we had our fingers crossed this wouldn't happen sadly not to be the case.
The walk along the beach was about 3km and then cross into the dunes between the sea and lake ........ if any of you have ever been in a maze think 100 times bigger as we looked for the track to cross the bridge where the lake exited into the sea, we got there in the end and you can see the bridge in the photo below - there is no trick photography involved
On the route details it looked as though there was a Taverna coming up so we decided to stop, sadly still early season and it was closed, so after a sumptuous lunch of cereal bars the walk continued.
Coming around a corner it was a surprise to see the route partially barred, certainly for cars, but our trail continued past the barrier so we continued - the photo below shows that a car progressing along here would not be a particularly good idea.
Just after passing this obstacle the heavens opened, waterproofs were hurriedly unpacked and donned, my £5.00 cape to cover me and the backpack and Stu's expensive new rainwear, a black bin liner! We still ended up drenched but I have never been in such a heavy storm before at one stage it felt like we might get washed away. The rest of the day was pretty uneventful in comparison, arrived at the evenings accommodation in one piece, a small block of apartments set on a hill above a tiny bay with one restaurant where we could get dinner and breakfast, there was a beautiful sunset during dinner.
On walking back to the apartment we realised that in the morning we would be adding an extra half kilometre uphill to our journey, what the hell eh? We might have been a bit less sanguine later on into the walk as we realised the person who thought up the trail was a complete sadist, and every day would begin with a " brisk uphill walk or steep incline to start with"!!
Day Four 28th May Monday
In the morning we had our first encounter with the German party who were walking a similar itinary to us, the relevance of which is described in the reproduced email below, the response to my enquiry as to whether I could walk with another group if Stu hadn't been able to make the trip!
(Sorry must have deleted email but the gist was the Germans might not mind as long as I walked some way behind them!!)
The walking behind became a standing joke with them and at a later stage was very relevant.
The days walking began with a sharp climb up onto the coastal ridge, the views as you get up to the higher points of the island are pretty breathtaking
In the afternoon we got our first sight of Mount Pantokrator, at a height of just over 3,000 feet dominates the hills to the north of Corfu. A beautiful view tempered with the knowledge we would be walking up it in a few days time.
Today we had our first real off-piste experience, the travel agents had given us some additional directions to get to Benitses, a coastal village for our overnight stop, however they obviously hadn't walked it themselves so the map and compass came in handy. More by luck than judgement we entered the village right next to our hotel for the night which was amazing as we had expected to spend the next hour searching for it.
Benitses was apparently the tourist destination of choice on the island, and in years gone by there would be as many as 30,000 visitors at one time, now it is much quieter but did mean there was a good choice of restaurants to visit, we decided to go with the recomendation of the travel agent and ate at Paxinos restaurant, a fantastic fish restaurant. They had fresh grouper in the fridge at 30€ rer kilo, would I like a steak from it they asked, when it arrived it covered the whole plate, and when the bill arrived it had cost 30€!! Delicious.
Day Five 29th May Tues
The travel agents collected us this morning and took us back up the hill (thank god!) to start the days walk much to the chagrin of the Germans who were walking from the hotel back up the badly marked bit of trail.
Today's walk took us to the summit of Agii Deki, the second highest peak on the island, and as you can see from the photo below it took quite a lot of energy to get there, but rewarded with stunning views across the island.
We arrived finally in Pelekas village to stay at Jimmy's Teverna, where the Germans were also staying, they arrived about two hours behind us courtesy of our lift in the morning. We took a walk up to Kaisers Chair, a high point behind Jimmys, where you can see almost the entire island, apparently it was Kaiser Bill's favourite picnic spot!
After dinner the son of the bar owner joined us and Aki, the German guide for a nightcap, and introduced us to a drink called Tsiporo, a white spirit, I think you could certainly have cleaned your paint brushes in it!
Day Six 30th May Weds
Woke up in bed, not entirely sure how I got there but vowing not to believe any more Corfiats about the benefits of their special drinks. This was the first day we made a mistake on directions and set off in entirely the wrong direction down a really steep road towards the coast, after about a kilometre, we re-read the trail guide and belatedly worked out we had left Pelakes in entirely the wrong direction, thus adding 2kms to the days distance (one of which was back up the bloody hill!!)
We descended towards a beautiful beach overlooked by a monastery, the beach was for nudists and we spent quite a while discussing whether the monastery was built before or after it was designated naturist on the shore.
The ascent back onto the ridge was up a long steep concrete track in blazing sunshine rising to 350m above sea level, so when reached the top it felt like the hardest ever gym workout and we needed to sit for sometime just to get the heart rate back to normality.
Today's walk took us through the Ropa valley in the centre of the island, this is where a lot of the farming is done including vineyards, we discovered the trail had been reorganised here as on the original trail the Greeks have made a 3km stretch of Tarmac road which doesn't go anywhere European Union funding that needed to be used apparently).
Aki, the German guide asked if they could walk with us as his details were for the old trail, we of course agreed they could, there followed quite a bit of banter about them keeping a distance behind us!
We managed to get through this section ok even though there was a very vague description about crossing a olive grove with no path or signs to aid us. We split from the Germans once back on the original trail where they were stopping for lunch and we wanted to press on.
We managed to to get to Liapades village and decided to stop for a beer in a lovely square thinking we only had walk a short way down to the beach to find our hotel. 3km later we arrived at the beach and looked for our hotel which was only 50m from the beach - ha ha, after walking up and down the hill from the beach back to the top of the road with hotels we finally established there was no signage for ours and that is was in a complex with the Cricketers Taverna at the front. In Stu's words I had a grump about that!
Finally ensconced in our room and settled we took a walk to the beach and I had a swim to cool off, which it certainly did as the Med is not all that warm in May still! We had a nice meal, a few drinks with the Germans and turned in for the night.
Day Seven thurs 31st May
Had a little bit of trouble finding the path to start from today, eventually realising we had to walk through the pool area of a hotel and out the back of its grounds, our next surprise was a warning in the guide about a short cliff we needed to get over and there would be a rope and footholds, when we got there we found an aluminium ladder propped against the cliff (read approx 8ft high!) to help us get over.
We then had our pre-requisite uphill trek and this particular one included a footpath up a high cliff which worked its way back and forth.
We stopped at a hilltop bar for orange juice and took the photo above.
The route was now leading us to the west coast of the island through olive groves and then a heavily cultivated area (for Corfu that is) and finally through a gap in the cliffs overlooking the stunning bay at Agios Georgiou where a steep zigzagging cliff path took us down towards the beach eventually where we the found our hotel.
Because this was a shorter day we actually had a chance to sit by the pool and have a chance to chill out with a few cold beers.
Day 8 June 1st Friday
A short day of 4 and a half hours walk today and probably needed as our feet were beginning to complain about the punishment they were getting. Being beachside overnight meant we had the pleasure of an uphill walk first thing to start the day.
The day was pretty uneventful apart from stopping for an ice cream and scaring the girl who served us when an advert on the TV behind her was using "always look on the bright side of life" from Life of Brian, and we had to sing along with it, she was about to call the men in white coats we think.
Further along the route we came across a native tortoise (below) which lead Stu to speculate whether it would be a better, and probably faster walking companion than me!
We then had to find a bus to take us to our evening destination, a very pleasant hotel on the north of the island in Roda, we again got some pool time with cold beers and then went to the sea front to look for a restaurant, we found the town very English oriented but there was a traditional Greek place opening that evening for its first night of the season.
We were served by two lovely Greek ladies and Stu was once again convinced they fancied me and at one stage thought I was going to get up and change a light bulb for them when their lights weren't working.
Day 9 2nd June Saturday
Having repacked our bags for the ninth time we had the luxury of knowing the next hotel was for 2 nights so we would not be repacking for once, bliss!
Back to the bus stop to get back to the trail, we discovered the buses were on Greek time, so at 11.10 waiting for the 10.30 we were just about to look for a taxi when the bus arrived, we duly rejoined the trail at Rekini to make our customary ascent at the start of the days walk, the good thing was today was only going to be about 5-6 hours walking as a warm up to day 10 which was going to be 9-10 hours.
The days walk was pretty uneventful to the extent that no photos were taken, we did however have to trail blaze through a forest as the instructions had become very vague and the trusty compass came into use again. We arrived at Spartillas our starting point for the next day and decided to have a beer as we thought it was a fairly short walk down to our overnight accommodation, little did we realise it was still about 4kms. The chap whose bar we went into was really pleased to see us, it was a traditional village bar, i.e. seemed like his front room. His English was really good and we had the usual discussions about politics, the Euro etc, he described village life and it transpired this was a locals bar and was heavily used when everyone came back from their summer jobs.
Gratuitous photo!!
We made our way down to Barbati where we were staying in the Pantokrator Hotel and got ourselves checked in.
We thought an early night would be a good idea then we discovered the German party were staying in the same place, you must meet up with us for a goodbye drink they said as our paths were not going to cross again, we were being picked up at 8.30am to be dropped back to Spartillas so one drink wouldn't hurt? Got to bed about 1.00am I think, fortunately I had remembered to set the alarm so we would be getting into day 10 fully fit and prepared to walk the highest mountain on the island in the morning!
Day 10 Sunday 3rd June
We realised the Germans had a rest day so we would see them again in the evening, so last night was possibly going to be repeated later, if we actually got through today. Alexis collected us and took us back to Spartillas to pick up the trail to the north of the island. We soon discovered the uphill starts each day had just been to prepare us for this one day, the climb from the beginning was more or less vertical as we made our way up to the Karst Plateau, it took us 55 minutes to cover 1km and even Stu broke into a sweat, something that hadn't happened very often on the trip.
Once on the plateau we fixed our bearing on the Pantokrator peak and set off towards it, up at this level there were free ranging cows, goats and sheep, and with this the usual droppings which attracted a host of flies, so we crossed the plateau each with our own personal swarm which stuck with us nearly to the top.
On reaching the road to the summit we had an option of whether to come off the trail and up to the peak or to continue along the trail - guess what we decided the peak had to be done as it was there, yet more uphill 20 minutes to the top but what a view, this Island is stunning.
As with all greek hills there was the statutory church at the top, the view of which is only slightly marred by the small broadcasting tower built over it!!
And this is inside
So after doing our first touristy bit of the trip we se off back down the mountain to pick up the trail once again to take us to the northernmost point of the island.
The walk takes us through the village of Old Perithia which is a deserted village that has become a tourist attraction, given most villages that were occupied only seemed to have the "front room" Tavernas we were surprised to find three busy full on restaurant type Tavernas, so we decided to stop for a snack.
The trail then crossed a steep gorge where the going got quite interesting and finally brings you down to the coastal path, this is followed to the lightmast at the northern tip of the island.
The path then follows the coast round to the village of Agios Spiridon, it crosses a 2 km stretch of eroded limestone rock which you can see in the photo below was extremely hard on the feet!
Finally reached Agios Spiridon where the end of the trail is a Taverna overlooking the beach, we were warmly greeted by the owner who asked if we had just finished the trail and having answered in the affirmative two ice cold large beers appeared on the table!!
Whilst we congratulated ourselves on having managed the trail we realised there was an optional walk the next day which took in an old part of the trail and was a circular walk through the mountains, well having got here, done the trail south to north, it seemed a shame not to cover the whole of the trail so we decided to do just one more days walk.
The Taverna owner organised out taxi to Kalami where we would be staying for 2 nights, no more unpacking, and we were dropped of at Thomas Place to be directed to our apartment.
We discovered that the Durrell family had lived here for a number of years in a beautiful property called the White House which was now a retaurant and decided that would be our last nights venue to eat.
We were safely installed in our apartment with two bedrooms, so no more disturbance listening to the other person snoring!
Whilst waiting for Thomas to sort out where we were staying we thought a cold beer would be good and realised as we ordered that our German friends were staying there as well and they welcomed us like lost comrades, they had already eaten but insisted as soon as we had we should join the in a small bar just over the road so we could give each other a proper send off.
How far are we walking tomorrow said Stu, oh about 5 hours I replied, well no need for an early night then!!
Day 11 Monday 4th June
We discussed "optional" in a bleary-eyed fashion this morning but agreed that we are here and the walk must go on.
The usual uphill walk ensued and took us rapidly back into the mountains where we walked through a village called Porta, as we passed a little Taverna we could hear singing but carried on for about 50m and then decided to investigate further, it was a public holiday in Greece and this was a little after 11.00 but we think the two guys singing may well have already been on the Ouzo!
We sat down ordered cold fizzy orange drinks and listened to 5 or 6 songs which we can only assume were folk songs, the old boys singing were really in harmony and it was a pleasure to spend half an hour listening to them.
The trail eventually took us through a deserted village called Mengoulas, and we couldn't believe our eyes, there were waste bins every 50 metres, new walls and paving everywhere and substantial streetlighting, we now know where some more EC money had been spent!
The rest of the walk that day was pretty unevenful aprt from seeing a 2m long snake which we think was probably one of the poisonous ones scientists had introduced to the area!
We descended back down to the coast and made our way back to Kalami for our promised last night feast.
This is the view from the White House restaurant
And this is inside
We celebrated finishing the walk in style, village wine and seafood, yummy!
And I will sign off now with a final beautiful sunset and the thought of meeting up with Gill tomorrow and a weeks R & R.
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