What with one thing another, I haven’t arranged for any paths to be cleared this season – sorry folks. I thought I’d list the changes, on one page, that I know about and consolidate. So if you’ve recently purchased a copy of my book, you need to go through it and make the necessary amendments. I have only a few copies left from this print run so a re-write is looming for this winter. I just hope I can afford to get the book printed again; last time it cost over E2,000. If I can’t, there’ll be no more Skopelos Trails.
page 17 – sketch map. Don’t try and use the track from pic.3 to Lalaria spring. It’s only passable from pic. 3 up to the road. If you want to explore to the spring, you can get to it from the other end near pic.4.
Walk 3 Agnondas page 24. Don’t take the track behind all the rubbish trucks etc. Continue on the road until pic.14.
Walk 5 page 32. There is an illegal fence just down from pic.30. I’ve been trying to get this resolved with the local government but am running of power. A local land owner is playing God.
Walk 7 page 35. The triangular stone has gone and the track widened until where it used to be.
Walk 9. Lots of illegal fences as more and more apartments have been built on the Stafilos road side of Kokala hill. Pic.47. The path is now a road.
Walk 14 and 15. When you get as far as the junction before Mon. Barbara, don’t try and find the track up and over the hill. Continue on towards Mon. Prodromou and take the dirt road around the hill.
Walk 16 page 56. The area of Cypravrissi has totally been destroyed with a buldozer.
Walk 22 image 87. The track that leads down and traverses the hill is closed. I hope to get it open at some stage. I’ve made a start from the other end but lack help.
Walk 26image 87. As above.
Walk 27. This walk is closed.
Walk 29. The track from image 100 onwards has totally been destroyed by buldozer. Heartbreaking.
Djilili
Have just returned from inspecting the stream bed down near Djilili spring. The recent storm has made some amazing changes and created waterfalls and deep holes.
WALK 29 – RIP
Today we drove towards Glossa but on the way, encounted a group of walkers, who turned out to be with The Ramblers, totally lost. They had also mislaid their leader! After about an hour, and selling a copy of my book, group and leader were reunited with instructions on how to get to Stafilos.
Loaded up with cutting tools, Richard and I made our way along the track, pic.100, hoping to reopen the way to the lighthouse. We needn’t have bothered. A bulldozer has opened a two-way traffic width road where the path used to be. It has totally destroyed this walk. I couldn’t recognise anything. And where does this highway lead to? Nowhere. It stops abruptly in a field. I can’t tell you how I feel about this destruction.
However, we then drove back to Old Clima and did a bit more to the old path above the village, that links up with the road to Ag Iannis. A lot of work still to do there.
END OF SEASON
So, the season is nearly at an end and the autumn walks went very well, with lovely people joining in. Thanks to everyone who came on my hikes this season and I look forward to seeing you again next year perhaps.
Tomorrow, my helper, Richard and I are off to Glossa to start work on reopening the old lighthouse path. After trying in vain to get permission to cut the fence there, I’ll just cut it and wait and see if anything happens!
Thanks to the SCAN budget, I’ve invested in a pair of battery operated lobbers. Since the RSI, I can’t cut anything thicker than a twig!
A SCAN volunteer has errected two styles down in Djilili. Images will be posted soon. Big thanks to Mike.
Forthcoming hikes
In case you are already on Skopelos or planning to come shortly, I have arranged the following:
Glossa Area hike – Wednesday 16th Sep – meet at Glossa school 11am
Coast to Coast – Saturday 20th Sep – meet Internet Cafe (near Bardom) 9.30am
Town Walk – Tuesday 22 Sep – meet by seat next to the Kiosk op central car park/bus station 11am
All Welcome
Other hikes will be arranged until the end of September
Keramoto Cove – Walk 27 closure
I’ve been informed that Walk 27, Keramoto Cove in Glossa, is impassable. I’ll let you know when I’ve had a change to inspect it.
The Leharnes
Some things never change
Rob: Charing Cross Hotel please
Taxi Driver: You just been to M&S then
Rob: Yes
Taxi Driver: They’re about the one thing left that’s British. This country’s gone to the f****** dogs. That f***** Labour party, just a bunch of w******. The country’s run by limp-wristed, Guardian reading, muesli crunching, couscous sucking, plastic sandal-wearing, tree hugging, bicycle clip tossers….[two minutes on immigrants)…and so I have to work 8 days a week, 400 days a year…(two minutes on the reason for the move of the cross-channel train station to St Pancras – the French refuse to travel to Waterloo)… metrication….(two minutes why its normal human behaviour to drive on the left – medieval jousting explains it – and everyone else has it wrong)…………………
Well at least London taxi drivers haven’t changed.
Walking up Charing Cross Road noticed something else that has changed – some of the bookshops for which the road is famous – have disappeared. See an article in a shop window written by the actor Simon Callow talking about the bibliocide ( a new word on me) on Charing Cross Road and, sure enough, at least seven book shops – including all the art shops – have gone. The only redeeming feature is that what used to be the world’s worst bookshop – Foyles – has completely changed and won Best Bookshop in London in 2008. Despite this reduction in bookshops, it still took me (as usual) nearly a couple of hours to get up to Oxford Street.
Travelled to Southampton yesterday to visit Southampton Solent University — a ‘teaching only’ University. The weather was like an Auckland winter’s day – cold and wet, unlike today which was like an Auckland summer’s day – warm and humid.
The British are even more depressed by the recession than Kiwis (much more) but the hot subject is not that, but a TV programme – Britain’s Got Talent – a sort of talent show with some spectacularly weird, and useless performers. The likely winners include a fat greek man and his fat greek son who do greek dancing. The other news is of all the MPs fiddling their expenses. So the international crisis fades into the background and the British plod on. Some things never change.
Ed & Jan
I’ve been wanting to do a pictorial blog for some time, to share with you my collection of postcards of ‘old Skopelos’.