December drew to a close the eighth year of hosting volunteers via www.workaway.net.
Anne, a very fit 70 year old from America and Simon from South Africa were the last volunteers of 2021. During their month’s stay, we reopened a closed trail between Sotiros monastery and the lower mast road, carried out maintenance on part of The Retsina Trail in Pirgos and and made a start on reopening a long disused trail between Pirgos and Kyperissi spring.
Luckily there were no volunteers booked in for January. Luckily because the weather was so bad we wouldn’t have been able to work anyway. Just as the weather became drier (although sadly not warmer) two new volunteers arrived; Alexandra from France and Mitchell from Australia. Our first day straight in at the deep end was cutting a fallen tree from the Kimissia trail (see pic). It went surprising well, first cutting off the branches and then rolling the trunk away. Job done.
The following day we drove out to Kyperissi which is a little known area of Skopelos, nestling in a small valley in Pirgos. It has several houses and it’s own spring. It’s there that we have been working the last four days, reopening a disused ‘scalapaty’ (ladder path). Thankfully there aren’t too many of these scalapaties on the island; they’re extremely steep.
Continuing the work of December volunteers Anne and Simon, work out at Kyperisi has not been so straightforward as this trail has been abandoned for a very long time. No wonder. It is a straight slog up from the spring to the Pirgos hill. Still, it’s finished now, all 225m of it.
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