Walks five and six

 Wednesday 2nd November - Panagia,  Sykamia, Galani, Pyrgos

This walk was combining two walks on the Terrain map, walks number five and six. A friend on the island, who has a car, wanted to do this walk and the starting place was Panagia. This village is probably the next biggest community in terms of the number of houses after Livadi and Hora. I did go there, when I first visited the island, there were quite a few empty buildings, but during this visit it seemed there had been some that have been repaired and occupied. I was actually offered a house to rent here, but it’s a bit too quiet for me I think. It has a lovely church in a small square. As we walked through the village looking for the start of the walk, I remembered the house where a bee keeper lives. 

We  found the path marked number five, heading downhill through fields with fennel and dried up grasses. Eventually we met a track and when this ran out we joined a path with low walls either side. This church called Anastasia was in route.

We crossed a bridge over water, the sight of which doesn’t surprise me so much now! I could not see any terrapins or frogs.  Eventually to our right was an amazing ravine with fantastic views. We did meet some farmers and asked if we were on the right path and we were. At one point there was a huge grape vine draped over the ravine, the bank fell away steeply and the vines were covered in grapes. There was a small bunch we could get to safely, so we satisfied ourselves with those. 

We heard a donkey braying, we could not see it, but suddenly in front of us on the path was a donkey, very friendly, wanting a treat I think, but unfortunately we had nothing to give. Eventually it relented and let us continue along our way. Soon after we heard people and they were picking olives, nets around the trees, to catch them as they were removed from the branches. 

We were heading to a beach at Sykamia, which when we got there I did remember. It was empty apart from one couple, the taverna on the beach  was closed. It has lovely views of the next island, Kithnos. 

From here we decided to take  path six back. This path started at the far end of the beach. The path wasn’t clear to start with, but soon was, and after some more help from locals we were climbing a narrow path heading towards Galani. There was a lot of climbing uphill, a reminder if one was needed not to do these walks on your own! When we got to Galani, we met this lady who explained our options on getting back to Panagia. Again I did  remember Galani, it’s very quiet. 

The option we took was the road, that climbs and goes around the valley, first meeting Pyrgos, then getting us back to Panagia. We had wonderful views as we went around the road, seeing little churches and roads and paths, twisting around below us in the valley. We could also see from where we came, the sea and Galani. Before we got to Panagia, we saw this lovely church. 

There was a church we could see in the distance, it has a graveyard like Flevariatisa, but it wasn’t on the way, so it was left for another day!