It is hard to express what is brilliant about cycling like this. The pace is perfect to see the landscape and stop for sights, but unlike walking, one can cover a lot of terrain in a week. On this trip, one of the exceptional experiences is the scents - mostly from plants, sometimes inexplicable (such as a heady gust of honey). Sometimes interesting rather than fragrant e.g. goats. The goats here are wonderful, each different, bearded and piebald. They are endlessly curious- or perhaps as at home they expect any human to carry food.
Dogs worry me, but they have shown me that I can always put on speed if I really have to. I wish I could be like Christine, who just says 'aaah, he wants to play'. It seems she is right, but I used to walk a dog who went berserk when he saw a bike (or pram) and his plans for play were based around biting.
So, today more cycling. Great to do, a bit repetitive to describe.
Headed to the North of Evvia to take a ferry to the mainland. The change in vegetation was striking: even before landing. The whole landscape was bluish rather than green. The hillsides were clothed in olive trees, grey-green leaves and green-to-purple, rounded fruits weighing down the boughs. They are harvesting, so labour-intensive it seems to belong to a past world.
Quite hilly, a Mycenean tomb made a great lunch spot, then down to the plain of Thessaly. Olive trees heavy with fruit on all sides. Making good time on the flat but getting lost in towns..A perennial problem. It's easy to head out of town on the wrong road and go 5k before realising.
Then it started to rain, as had threatened all day. Then it got very dark and the hail started. With no buildings in sight, I pressed on. I passed a petrol station but it was on the other side of the road. It didn't feel safe to cross, with visibility about ten feet and waves scudding across the road, about 3 inches deep in flood.
I carried on -no point in not- and at last saw a chance of shelter, a hut by the side of the road, selling pots and pans. Not sure of my reception I approached, to be waved in with a welcome. The tin worker was an Armenian from Russia, who has been in Greece for twenty years. His fascinating tools, home-made clamps and jigs and his shiny pots and chimneys hung at all heights in the little shed. Waiting for the rain to lighten, we chatted in sign language and my minimal Greek. Oddly, I suppose inspired by ' weather' as a theme, I taught him the English word 'snowball'. He reckoned it was 100 metres to my destination. A little less time resting, or being lost in towns, and I might not even have got wet. But then I would have missed the pleasure of chatting with Gyorgy. Serendipity again.
In my seafront hotel by 3.30, I was almost scared by the sounds of metal things whacking other things. All kinds of bangs and crashes. The street had water streaming down it. I could not see as far as the sea, though it was only about ten metres away. It really felt like a tropical storm. I was happy to sit in bed and eat my picnic
No comments:
Post a Comment