Freya & Us

Our road trip started with a drive to Delphi. On the way we stopped at Galaxidi, a very beautiful village on the banks of the the Gulf of Patras, where we went for a stroll and invested in some very fetching sun hats. We had left ours on the boat and in the heat these were essential. When we arrived in Delphi we checked into our hotel, which as advertised had fantastic views, if you ignored the electricity pole and transformer which was right in front it! We sat out the worst of the afternoon heat before venturing out for a stroll in the evening. The village really only exists as a tourist base for visitors to the ruins, but it was a nice place nonetheless.

We spent the next morning exploring the ruins which were walking distance from our hotel and they were as impressive as we had hoped. The Oracle of Delphi, was a woman who, in the Temple of Apollo, sat above a fissure in the rocks, through which (in ancient times) gas escaped from deep within the earth. If this wasn't enough to send the woman into a trance (mad?), she was dosed up on three plant extracts including cannabis. She would babble incoherently and priests, who sat a safe distance from the fissure would interpret her ravings into prophecies for the visiting nobles who paid handsomely for the privilege. The ruins where quite large and in addition to the Temple of Apollo there were temples to other gods, Treasuries, built by most of the Greek City States that contained expensive gifts and statues to curry favour with the gods and the Oracle. There were also buildings to house the priests and visitors and a large stadium and amphitheatre that hosted the many festivals that were held in Delphi. After a visit to the thankfully air conditioned museum, we returned to our hotel to sit out the heat.

The next day we drove north into the region of Thessaly to Meteora. Our first stop was to visit the Corycian Cave on the slopes of mount Parnassos. Excavations in the cave have determined that it was inhabited in Neolithic times and that it was sacred to the ancient Greeks. It was a site for astragalomancy - annimals were slaughtered and their knucklebones were looked at to determine the prophecy. Around 24,000 knucklebones were excavated from the cave in the 1960s. We parked half way up the mountain and walked the two miles to cave. The cave was enormous perhaps 50m across, 30m deep and 6m high. It was quite awesome and very atmospheric.

On the boat we occasionally watch DVDs and like to watch films based where we are. A few days before we left we watched The 300 Spartans. Back in the car, we realised that our route to Meteora was going to pass quite close to the pass of Thermopylae. This is where King Leonidaes of Sparta led a force of 300 Spartans (and 700 Thespians) against an immense Persian Army. They managed to hold the pass for three days against overwhelming odds and so we had to stop and pay our respects. Too much of a coincidence so we had to go, although there isn't really much to see.

In Greek, Meteora means literally the "middle of the sky" or "suspended in the air" and Meteora lives up its name. It is an area full of immense monolithic pillars (hundreds of metres high) and huge "hill like" boulders which look really alien.

There is evidence of human habitation here from around 23,000 years ago, including outside a Neolithic cave, a stone wall which is claimed to be the oldest existing human construction yet to be discovered. Unfortunately when went we to see the cave and wall it was closed due to "technical reasons".

Monks and hermits lived in Meteora from as early as the 10th or 11th centuries but in the 14th century, to escape ever more frequent raids from the Ottoman Turks, the monks moved their monasteries to the tops of the pillars. Initially the only way to access the monasteries was to be winched up in a basket, but now they have carved (a lot of) steps into the mountainside to reach them. The area is truly stunning and the views from the top are well worth the climb. One of the monasteries featured in the James Bond film "For Your Eyes Only" where Roger Moore climbed up to the top and after killing a few baddies lowered the basket to his waiting colleagues where they went on to save the world (again). We clearly had to watch this film (again) when we got back to the boat.

We spent a couple of days touring the area and visiting three of the monasteries and also walked into the hills to visit some of the caves/hermitages used in the 11th century. Walking back down a steep rocky path from one of these, Lorraine lost her footing and fell somehow landing upside down across the path. She was quite shaken and had a number of scrapes but luckily no bones were broken. She did however knock her head quite badly and the right side of her face had a very impressive bruise on it for a while.

The link to our map seems to be stopping people leaving comments on the blog, so I've removed it from these posts for now. I will be keeping it up to date so simply go to one of the special map only posts and click the link there to see it