Wednesday 1st August
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Pramanta Monastery |
Tonight I’m sat in my room in The Hotel Elena in Edessa.
It’s the first time I’ve used a hotel since leaving home on 9th June
and it’s due to Taz not feeling too well so we thought a bit of luxury might
just help her recover her usual joie de vivre! For 25 Euro for a single room,
it’s clean and comfortable and also well placed for a stroll around the town
and down to what are supposed to be quite spectacular waterfalls just on the
edge of the town.
It took us a long time to drag ourselves away from the
Pramanta Refuge on Monday, leaving behind some really good new friends which I
am sure that Taz, Joel and myself will surely keep in touch with. Dimitris
looked totally exhausted, although that wasn’t helped by the fact that he was
up till 4am drinking with Babis and a few of the refuge staff! We had all opted
for a fairly early night before the Tsipouro got flowing too liberally.
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A last Coffee with Effy in Pramanta |
We left Hanno and Alex sorting a few minor repairs to Alex’s
bike whilst Mila had a lie in! Martin is now riding with us although I think he
may well head off north towards Bulgaria tomorrow which will leave our original
trio to head over to Thessaloniki to meet up with Lefteris, whom we met at the
HU meeting, for the weekend. We have had a really nice 3 days meandering
through the mountains since leaving Pramanta traversing a new pass which involved riding over 8km on
the unmade section of roadwhich is still
being worked on .
Lunch/Swim spot |
Then this morning after leaving our wild camp by a load of
telecommunication masts we had another 10km of great unsurfaced road to cover
which took us to a lovely little town high in the hills called Kleisoura. It is
yet another town where all the inhabitants were shot by the Germans in 1941
with the town then being completely burnt to the ground. I had no idea before
this trip just how much devastation was wreaked upon Greece and it’s people by
the Nazis during the 1939-45 war. In most of the mountain ranges you come
across village after village, town after town of what are described as “Martyric
“ villages.
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Kleisoura |
The previous night had been spent on a free camp site just
out side of Petruli. Apparently it was originally a training base for the local
Forestry Wardens but it was then left as just a free camp site. Somebody looks
after it, cleans the toilets and empties the bins… but nobody seemed to know
who! However it was a good place to spend the night, peaceful and cool at just
over 1100 mt. high.
Time now to try and find some food, something which is
fairly easy in Greece as every town and village appears to have a plethora of
bars and restaurants, far more than the local population and the occasional
tourist could possibly support. How they all survive is a complete mystery to
me!
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Just left of center near the bottom you can sea the road we were on ! |
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