Gambling on a good walk

Just north of Athens lies a national park. After two days of intensive sightseeing and culture, it would be good again to stretch the legs.

It is one of the more abstract places that we have parked Dora. A large car park that sits at the base of a cable car. Its destination, high on the hill, a casino.

There it is high above us, little did we realised it would play a part in the days entertainment.

We have parked Dora behind a small building. We didn’t want top hide her, that is pretty much impossible, but we also didn’t want to blatantly express her presence. We do not exude the ‘going to a casino’ look. Of all the places we have parked, this was the one where we expected a quiet knock, knock on the door, and a ‘you cannot park here’ It never came, far to polite.

The peak of the mountain is somewhere up there amongst the telephone masts.

We drove up, there is a road all the way to the summit. Susana had prepared us well. There are two refuges and a nice gorge. This was our objective.

The road is fantastic. But a strange thing, this is meant to be the national forest, but there was a distinct lack of trees. More about that later.

We leave Dora next to the first refuge and go in to investigate. A really helpful custodian. He is taking a group of children on a trek, would we like to follow them.

No thanks, we were looking for something a bit longer, maybe 5 or 6 hours.

Nothing really of that length, suggest you follow us.

How long is it to the next refuge?

About one and a half hours.

And isn’t there a gorge that goes down to the start of the cable car.

Yes, that would take about 3 hours.

Could we get the cable car and then walk back to here.

Yes that would take a another 1 and a half hours.

So we get our six hour walk then. Sometimes you just need to negotiate a little. The facilities at the refuge look excellent and they are really so helpful.

Could we buy some bread.

No, just take some.

You cannot really call the landscape beautiful, more decimated. Fallen trees lie everywhere, but it looks like they are aligned to the contours and secured to the ground.

It is strange it looks like someone has felled all the trees and lined then all up. Are they like this to  prevent erosion?

The path drops and soon we are walking back amongst trees, back within the shade where it is cooler.

We are traversing around the valley, around the summit which is a short distance above us.

It looks really crowded up there. It is not on our itinerary but maybe we will drive up there later on. It doesn’t look like it will be a particularly impressive summit.

The path isn’t particularly difficult to follow, although the signs do leave us baffled. This Greek is pretty difficult and bears no resemblance to the translation in our alphabet.

We have walked a fair way from the un-forested area, it seems to cover a vast area. A real blot on the landscape.

We reach the next refuge. Another group of children are making the most of the countryside. They are playing games aimed at group working. Six trying to simultaneously walk on planks with strings. How many children can you fit on a couple of bottle crates.

Susana says they used to do the same games at her last work. Every year she would go for a weekend when the whole company would ‘bond’.

We spend a good half hour watching them before they head off on their walk. We never made good use of the countryside at our schools, this seems a really good policy.

We  wait for the refuge custodian to return, apparently he has a lot of trekking experience and we want to ask some questions about area we are due to visit; the Vikos gorge and the Olympus mountain. We also notice that they have trekking maps for both areas.

The trouble is he cannot find the price. Eventually he charges us €6 each. It seems pretty cheap, we later see them for €8.5!

We have frequently seen this attitude among Greeks. When it comes the time to pay, they start the price negotiations, almost as if they fear you won’t like the true price and end up not buying the item. So they negotiate the price themselves, with no input from our side  and eventually giving it to us for a couple of euros less. SM.

We head down into the gorge.

We are surrounded by christmas trees. Maybe this is why the mountains are bare, Greeks come here during the festive period!

It is a steep drop as we descend down to the dry river.

The gorge gets more and more dramatic.

I cannot go pass without getting my eyes caught in this flower which so far, I have only seen in Greece. Dressed in bright lemon and lime colours, it sticks out nicely among the dull and homogeneous dark green of the shrubs. It likes the altitudes, it puts up with cold well and it still manages to keep up nice and fresh. SM.

It is a beautiful path, just how we like them.

The cliffs loom high above us, apparently there is a lot of climbing in this area.

We come across a tortoise having his lunch.

He isn’t particularly happy when we disturb him. We put him back down and he wanders back into shrubs, munching away at the greenery.

It is beautifully shady under the tree canopy.

The gorge is beginning to open up, are we nearing the end?

All of a sudden, at the end of the gorge we see houses precariously stacked against the cliffs. We also see a couple of climbers exploring a particularly difficult move. Not really free climbing as they hang on the rope.

A couple of minutes later and we are once again at the cable car. This is the first FREE cable car we have come across, and by far the most opulent. All part of the casino experience.

The cable cars are really large, but not many are going up at this time of day.

It is quite a steep climb. There is a path below, which zig-zags underneath the cables. It would have been a good walk up, but probably another two hours.

This way only takes ten minutes. At the top we exit into the casino. The purpose of the cable car is not for trekkers to explore the surrounding forests, but to lose money on the gaming tables. The exit door is really difficult to find and we spend twenty minutes walking along long corridors trying to find a way out.

Eventually we are out and we can once again see our end objective, the refuge where Dora is resting. We are now back amongst the war zone, where there are no trees left standing.

From the outside, the casino looks particularly squalid, all the money is spent on the luxurious finishes of the interior. Few will see this aspect of the building, those that do will probably not be into gambling.

The views over Athens are particularly impressive. It is not a large city, and you can see all the way to the sea beyond.

We eventually get it. This area has been devastated by fire. Somewhere in the backs of our memories we recall the disaster.

Greece has had a problem with wild fires and fires started deliberately for many years now and they are having horrible effects on the environment.

This one happened in 2007 although their were even more extensive fires in 2009.

The fire apparently destroyed over 150 km².

This also devastated the animal populations with the tortoise particularly badly hit, so our earlier friend was a lucky one indeed.

But they also expect the fires will have a more profound impact on Athens. The forest acted as local lungs to the city and also provided a cooling effect. They expect warmer summers and more flooding to occur especially within the northern suburbs.

The response at the time was impressively international, with fire fighters, planes and helicopters being sent from many countries in Europe including Spain, Russia, Canada, Turkey and Israel.

Nothing from the UK though!

Further fires have occurred in 2009 destroying many homes. The WWF has been very critical of Greek policies suggesting an inability to tackle the problem. Are they are likely to suffer more.

We are nearly back at the refuge and Dora.

The valuable casino seems to have survived the repeated fires, maybe a secure source of tax revenue.

On the way back we pass a small sculpture park and some other survivors of the fires.

They look healthy but quite exposed out here, with no tree cover.

Maybe they need to get used to it, maybe this is their landscape of the future.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

GDR