I dropped by this morning at 10.15 and was sat down by the window almost at once, my hair cut with finesse in hardly 10 minutes for €8. Mike, Welsh by birth, is at least bi-lingual, clearly respected by his Greek customers. "Just leave your folding bike outside. No-one will touch it" Of course not.
After I went to the butchers on M.Theotoki, and bought one and half oven chickens. I'm having friends to supper on Wednesday.
Thursday, Friday, Saturday were days of grey weather, wet and even chilly weather...
...doing a last minute check on our upper steps just before 9.00am, then pedalling slowly and steadily upwards...
...Leaving behind the village dogs barking and cock's crowing. Just before St.Isadoras I turned sharp right off the road and up the rouhgh track that cuts across the sides of the mountain above the village heading for Spartillas...
Hardly half a kilometre up the path I heard foorsteps behind me. Stephanie on her morning walkjog with the dog. "Blimey Steph I thought I had the mountain to myself this morning" She continued just ahead to a small perch in the verge, made by Wes, to have a drink before turning home...
...and touching a tree reciting Julian of Norwich "All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well".
My path continued eastward, turning the corner towards different views from the slopes, my path roughened by rain washing fissures in the path so that I'm wheeling over rubble...
...before my route smooths and leads over slopes, up and down, onto the mettalled road that leads though vineyards to the road from Spartillas...
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| This is the track that Fokian, Mayor of Ano Korakiana, would like to see metalled all the way from Isadoras to Spartillas |
...and so to the turn upwards just south of Sgourades into the mountains where the landscape - north to the peaks of Albania and south towards Parga - grows panoramic.
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| The road that leads through vineyards and vegetable plots to the Spartillas Road |
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| Albania from the grounds of the monastery on Pantokrator |