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My Blog
A Greek Tour
My first visit to Greece was recent ( March 2015) with Andy and Cynthia. We went to Nafplio, it rained but Andy was keen to get out whenever the rain stopped.
After that I had trips to Kalymnos (like everyone else!) then returned to mainland Greece last month.
From Athens we drove north to Meteora on empty roads with many tolls.
We had arranged to meet Todd and Donette (friends from California). I had wanted to visit Meteora for many years but suspected the climbing might be bold, I commented after Todd led us up one pitch that with double the number of bolts it would still be bold.
The fine apartment Donette booked was dominated by cliffs.
Todd arranged to meet the local climber, guidebook writer and fireman Vangelis. He told us there was a ground up ethic for new routes and bolting and gave me a copy of his climbing guide signed ‘To lovely Scotland friends’!
There were 24 monasteries on the pinnacles of Meteora where the monks were safe from the Turks around 700 years ago, there are six functioning monasteries now. The monks carved holes in the cliffs for timber beams.
James Bond was in Meteora in 1980 but the monks were not happy and tried to stop the filming.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FDX6_BSas8
Meteora is ‘lofty’ like a meteor.
We left Todd and Donette to do a new line (leading with a drill!) and headed south.
We stopped briefly at the Roman town of Nicopolis, this was built after the naval defeat of Antony and Cleopatra in 31 BC.
We then went through the only Greek undersea tunnel ( it is less than half the length of the Clyde Tunnel) and on to Mytikas.
Mytikas is south facing with a very short walk in and sits above a beautiful fish farm. One corner line we did was sustained and interesting, worth the three stars it was given.
Next stop was the fine historic town of Missolonghi where we got a room on the third floor. In the night I woke up and was puzzled by the shaking bed until Cynthia pointed out it was an earthquake. Everything shook for over a minute, later there were two lesser quakes (this was very different from the Welsh earthquake that woke me up at Tremadog which was a big boom, but the quake was only a couple of miles away at Porthmadog).
The Greek quake was about 70 miles away and was strong at 6.8.
We then spent a couple of days climbing nearby at Varasova, one day on multi pitch and one on single pitch.
Then two more fine crags, Kalogria above a loch and Frygani (well bolted conglomerate in a wine producing area).
Sunday, 11 November 2018