Dramatic Delphi

Sunday 14 July 2013

Positioned in the foothills of Mount Parnassos, historic Delphi was traditionally believed to be the geographical  centre of the world – the meeting point of two eagles dispatched by Zeus. For many centuries it was also the religious and spiritual centre of the ancient Greek world and the Delphic oracle was consulted by visitors from across a wide region. 

Theatre and temple set high on the hillside

Who doesn't love a 3D model?

Today visitors of all nationalities form an orderly line behind the rope cordons and obey the rules signposted everywhere – don’t touch this, don’t climb on that, no smoking, don’t remove any artifacts, no flash photography. Hot and bored guards are ready to crack down on any misbehaviour.

Having spent the last 6 weeks in Turkey where you can roam freely over almost all ancient sites it comes as a bit of a shock to have to keep behind a rope cordon. The theatre feels empty and cold without people sitting in the seats and testing the acoustics from all the different levels. The agora and gymnasium need exploring, the temple is a place to stand on and admire close up the huge columns reaching into the sky. Walls with interesting rock shapes scream out to be touched and tombs just have to be peered into. We arrived at 8am and had a lovely morning there but it did feel quite clinical after our rough and ready rambles over Turkish sites.

Treasuries - small temple shaped buildings built by Greek city states as a thank you for the oracles advice

Well preserved polygonal retaining walls of the Temple of Apollo

Stadium - 6500 spectators, 177m long, 25.5m wide - now at danger from rockfalls

The beautiful Tholos which originally had 20 columns

It is a spectacular setting, built on terraces overlooking a vast unspoilt gorge. At €9 for the combined ticket for the site and museum it was well over our ‘attraction budget’ but we couldn’t drive by and not see it. Excavated first in 1893 by the French Archaeological School many precious artifacts unearthed at the site are beautifully displayed in the museum. 

Demigod Antinoos who died before adulthood from drowning in the Nile

No photographic posing allowed - so sneaky (and cheeky) walk by rear shot will have to do!

Lovely lion freize

Bronze Charioteer of Delphi

The Temple of Apollo is believed to be situated over a sacred chasm emitting vapours which were inhaled by Pythia – an older woman of blameless life chosen from amongst the peasants of the sea - who would become the oracle. She would enter a state of delirium and her incoherent rantings would be translated by the priests and relayed to those seeking advice.  Over time earthquakes, changes in beliefs and some dubious predictions brought about the demise of the oracle and it was closed in AD 395. Shame - she could have perhaps given this lady walking around today in a very dubious outfit some wardrobe advice – not sure the mini-toga / baseball cap / trainers look is a good one!

When in Rome...?

Dress down Friday!

Friday 12 July 2013

For the best part of 20 years I turned up for work every day in black trousers, demure tops and sensible shoes. Public sector work doesn't lend itself to Dress Down Fridays!

Ooops - slightly under-dressed at my current desk!

There's more to life than sleeping, eating and swimming! That's what I keep telling myself as the time will soon be here when I have to rejoin the world of work. So to keep my brain from completely turning to mush I have been keeping up with my diary and have also written another 'Country Guide', - on our trip through Turkey this time. 

The couple who have the 'Our Tour' blog have uploaded it and shared with all their followers - they have been travelling for 2 years now with their little dog Charlie in a Hymer van they call Dave.

Here's the link to the page 'Your Tour'

Our friend Annie who we stayed with for 3 weeks in Turkey has also done a lovely post on her blog BacktoBodrum about our time with them. Happy days.

Such fun!

Wednesday 10 July 2013

The van hasn’t moved for 3 days and is parked up on a beach in Agiokampos. As the crow flies it’s about 40km north of Volos - gateway to the Pelion Peninsula - which is where we hope to be heading next. If we want to avoid the motorway though it will probably be at least treble that in road miles.

View from our 'lounge' window

Dr Katerina Davidamos (that’s me) has prescribed rest for Dave as his foot is getting no better and he’s starting to get grizzly now – he wants to be running around and climbing up things and he can’t. He went to see a ‘real’ doctor in a very English holiday resort on Monday, I didn’t actually see the guy just heard his deep cartoon style voice coming out of his lovely air conditioned office. Like a good patient Dave summarised the 2 month history – a stoutly built Romanian stood on his foot whilst he was trying to help them push a car out of a river ford it had got stuck in – and it’s hurt ever since. He didn’t actually examine his foot but asked a few questions including how old he was. At the end of the ‘consultation’ he politely suggested Dave ‘act his age’. This leaves us wondering exactly what a 55 year old male Brit on holiday is supposed to be doing. Getting drunk, having fights over football allegiances, picking up some nasty venereal diseases or suffering from blistering sunburn maybe? Wanting to keep fit and healthy is obviously beyond him now?

Trainers or flip flops - I know my footwear of choice!

There could be worse places to be confined. We are parked up a few hundred meters from where the road ends abruptly and a little harbour juts out into the sea. The steep shelving beach brings in crashing waves which have a huge expanse of open sea to the east to build up in.  Each day a few people arrive at the beach, plant brightly coloured umbrellas in the sand, swim and sunbathe. Then they pack up and go, leaving us alone with the stars.

We have had a great time like all the other kids here, big and little, being tossed around in the waves as they crash onto the shore.

I'm in there somewhere....

I have deemed he can cycle as it’s not putting weight on the part of his foot that hurts - I’m getting the hang of this new role I have, and a short cycle ride away is one shop and a row of bars and cafés so we won’t starve when the food/beer supplies on board run out.

Last night whilst we BBQ’d the remaining contents of the fridge we watched a huge electrical storm on the distant horizon. Playing around with the camera on a tripod with a fixed 50mm lens and some extremely long exposures we hope we captured a few stunning images.

‘Miranda’ the BBC comedy series is a bit of a Marmite thing – people either love it or hate it. We have to confess it is a guilty pleasure of ours and Penny, Miranda’s mother played by Patricia Hodge, has many catchphrases – one of which is "Such fun!"……. which really sums up our few days here!

 

Highway robbery

Tuesday 9 July 2013

We were wild-camping on a very quiet beach just north of the busy resort town of Paralia, heaving with oiled up bodies, bustling café’s and numerous redundant (in this heat) fur shops. A couple of Polish registered camper vans travelling together pulled in and parked up really close to our van. Having travelled thousands of miles out-of-season and used to being all alone we haven’t quite understood the need of some campervanners to be so closely corralled together. Safety in numbers maybe?

The driver of one of the vehicles approached us and asked, in very broken English, if it was OK to park up here. We’re always careful about not upsetting anyone when we park up and haven’t been moved on anywhere by the police yet,  so we smiled sweetly and nodded. His wife then appeared, anxious to find out if we were staying the night making ‘tilted head on pillow hands’ gesticulations. We nodded again. She was happy to hear this as she scanned the horizon and babbled a sentence in Polish which included the word ‘bandits’. We’re not sure how safe touring is in Poland but the only dodgy characters in this neck of the woods seem to be the crew on the Pirate Ship day-trips running from Paralia. 

Having said that we have been the victims of highway robbery here in Greece courtesy of the Aegean Motorway S.A. We aren’t in a hurry to get anywhere so have generally taken the slower, more scenic routes on our travels and have managed to completely avoid the toll motorways of France, Italy, Switzerland and Turkey. We intended doing so in Greece too. In Slovenia we made the decision to pay to save time and diesel, and in Hungary the compulsory vignette covers their motorway system and cost us €9 for 10 days.

Greece has adopted a very different approach to collecting obviously much needed revenue. Stealth motorways. On arrival at the border you have no option but to follow the motorway, it doesn’t go far and ends very abruptly but thankfully it was free. There are other toll-free motorways around but they conveniently don’t seem to make any distinction between these and the ones with tolls. All our maps show each of the motorways as one continuous stretch when in reality they stop and restart to catch out the unsuspecting. We have been driving along innocently on what we thought was a normal blue sign ‘A’ type road only for it to ‘turn’ into a green signed motorway with no means of escape before the toll booths. Caught out once we were peeved, caught out twice we resolved to be more careful, caught out a third time we were incensed!

Minor road running parallel to the motorway

What to do....???

The poor girl at the cash booth felt the full force of our wrath – as we had a real Victor Meldrew moment….”and another thing…..” we continued with our barrage of complaints. Lots of shoulder shrugging and eyebrow raising ensued. “ I shall call my boss” she then announced as a queue built up behind us but not before extracting another €5 for the measly 10km we had just travelled. A young man arrived with a well used complaint book and pen in hand – Dave explained our issues while I filled in the form. Our gripes were -

1. Campervans are charged the same price as a 70 seater bus. It’s calculated on height so a car towing a caravan is the standard price – around €2 per section - peanuts. Anything over 2.2m high is charged full whack - €5 in this case. There are another 8 sections on this particular motorway heading towards Athens which would set us back about €50 in total. 
2.  They conveniently have no maps or leaflets available explaining how it all works. We suspect the locals know how/where to avoid the toll booths leaving us muppets to fund the system.
3. There is no advance notice of the charges. 
4.  Most annoying is that there is no clear sign to say you are about to enter a paying section of the road.

   

From the triplicate book we were given the pink copy of the form, a flashback to life in the real world of work, and he kept the white and yellow copies. We drove off wondering what, if anything, they will do about our complaint.