Tuesday 11 September 2007

From Olympia to Delphi


The road to Delphi started out by back tracking along the road i had already travelled. I stayed at the same two campsites as before but not for as long this time! I left Kato Allsisos on the Monday morning and headed north along the coast pass Patra to the town of Aiyio. I was intending to spend the night here at the campsite that was shown on my map. However i couldn't find it, so i took the ferry across the sea to the southern shore of northern Greece instead. On both of my maps there was a campsite marked just near the ferry port....guess what, there wasn't one (are you starting to see a pattern here....don't worry it gets worse!). By now it was about 14:30 and hot so i triked 10k down the road to a little fishing port and stayed in a hotel. It was only 30 euros a night and it had a balcony! For once i had a "night in". You can't beat a cheese and ham crusty roll with a bottle of local wine. All the was missing was a pork pie....i really want a pork pie, have done for about 5 days...i need help!



The following day i was on the road at about 9am after having a nice lie in. The road followed the coast line winding its way up, down, around and over the headlands. The sun was shining (can't say that was anything but expected) the sky was blue and the sea was just gorgeous. After about 3 and half hours of triking i came to the town of Itea. From here Delphi was only 16k away. Sadly the last 12k were up hill (with a vertical rise of nearly 600m), so it was time to get hot and very sweaty. Mind you it was nice to have a decent climb to go up.

So here i am in Delphi, the campsite (which has a swimming pool...nice) is about a mile out of the town. I got here yesterday (Tuesday) and I'll be back on the road tomorrow. According to "my map" i can get a ferry from Itea to a little town about 10k from Corinth (my next port of call if you like). Sounds great....I'll only have to pedal for about 80minutes in the day. Unfortunately the ferry doesn't actually exist!!!! Great....now i have about 180k to pedal to Corinth or if you like 3 days on the road....i was really looking forward to the ferry ride.

Today (Wednesday) i spent the morning going around the ancient site at Delphi. It is built on a series of terraces which wind their way up the hill for about a 100m gain in height till they reach the top of the site where the stadium is. I could tell you all about it but sod that...look at the pictures instead (www.sfauphotographs.com).

No comments:

Post a Comment