What we thought would be a particularly tough day, turned out to be not so bad but the chain saw was in use through-out. Two huge trees had come down at Ag Ianni Skleri, blocking the trail. There was no way we could move them, so we just removed all it’s branches and hikers have to duck under the trunks to pass. We had a bit of time to spare so went down to Panormos to do a quick trim. Wrong. More trees had fallen over this final piece of the trail. So we did some work and today we will get the chain saw going again and thus will have completed clearing the entire trail from Skopelos to Panormos.
We’ve just said ‘Good-bye'(9 October) to Emily from the US and Jack from the UK who have been working here since 18 September. They were excellent volunteers and worked very hard indeed without complaint! We did a bit of maintenance on the Retsina Trail but concentrated mainly on the new Monks Trail, Glysteri. We’ve widened the first portion up to the Tsukalus spring and actually reopened the trail from the spring upwards, where we found a buried calderimi. Having done that, with a view to joining it up to the trail leading to the rubbish tip, Jack found ANOTHER calderimi leading AWAY from that direction. It’s very wide and in excellent condition. However, on their last working day, we reached a collapsed avraya (supporting wall) with rocks so large it would take more than a couple of people to lift back into position. But where does it lead?