As the crow flies …….. Now, where does that come from? Why crow,
why not eagle, sparrow or homing pigeon? I had to Google it. This is what I
found:
"As the crow flies" or "in a beeline" is an idiom for the shortest distance between
two points (on a map, disregarding the vagaries of intervening terrain); the
geodesic distance. A parallel idiom, as
the wolf runs, is sometimes used to indicate the contrasting (and
possibly much larger) distance required to travel between the two points over
available surface routes.
I took it from that it could be any old bird and a crow
doesn’t have a unique ability to fly a great circle route between two points.
As the crow flies Mystra,
our destination for today, is less than 30km north east of Stoupa.
Unfortunately the Taïyetos mountains prevented us from taking the direct route.
Satnav came up with a ‘wolf run’ trip of 100km taking over two hours with the
first hour spent driving south following the road we took to the Mani on Monday
as far as Aréopoli where we could turn eastwards and then north.
First thing Jane visited
the camp shop to buy bread and milk. The latter was mainly to enable her to
feed the cats a bowl of milk and yesterday’s bread. They have come to expect to
be fed visiting us every morning and evening. They would be very disappointed
to find we had left today.
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| Mabel and Smarty At Stoupa |
The gauge showed our
fresh water tank to be 25% full but as the gauge clicks down in 25% increments and that meant we had somewhere between 25% and zero. I asked the woman at
reception when I went to pay where I could fill up. Unusually, for a camping
ground she told me there wasn’t a facility for filling our tank, the only
drinking water supply was from a chiller designed for filling water bottles
(there might have been a language problem there). We made do with emptying our
grey waste tank that now claims to be 100% full when you have just drained out
the last drop.
The road from the camping
ground to the main road south was very narrow and usually contained lots of
parked cars reducing it to a one-lane road. We decided it best for Jane to
drive Smarty ahead of Mabel to act as a pilot vehicle and, if necessary stop
any oncoming traffic at pinch points. It wasn’t necessary, there were few
parked cars and no oncoming traffic. We agreed we would hitch up at the
supermarket at the end of the road where we needed to stop for a few supplies.
I was perplexed by Jane parking Smarty facing north in the layby outside the
supermarket. Jane’s response to my “aren’t we heading south?’” was “doh!”. The
hiccup was overcome by doing a U-turn in Mabel and hitching up on the other
side of the road.
As usual, Jane drove the
first leg which involved lots of steep climbs into the foothills of the
mountains followed by descents to bays and more climbs. Mabel coped very well
with the terrain being able to pull away strongly from virtual standstills as
Jane took her round hairpin bends. The road was narrow in the countryside,
sometimes so narrow it was necessary to pull over to let oncoming traffic pass.
In the many villages we travelled through the road was often just wide enough
for a single lane of traffic requiring a two person crew to get Mabel safely
through. On right hand bends my job was to look out for oncoming traffic by
pressing my head against the door window – I could have stuck my head out the
window but it was too hot for that.
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| We Get Glimpses Of Smarty In The Door Mirrors On Hairpin Bends |
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| Required A Second Pair Of Eyes To See What Was Coming Around Right Hand Bends |
Once we reached Aréopoli
the road became much better and it was my turn to drive. While the road was
only two lanes, they were wide enough to adopt the Greek style of driving on
the shoulder to allow traffic to overtake. I commented to Jane I had got the
easier leg today, she agreed. That all changed when we reached the busy town of
Sparti. As we drove slowly along our side of the dual carriageway was reduced
to a single lane by parked cars, then ahead the road got even narrower with a
truck parked by the kerbside and another in a gap in the median. Getting
through the narrow gap required the left door mirror to be folded temporarily.
Then we inched forward with Mabel’s windows that stand proud of her side barely
a centimeter from the trucks' door mirrors.
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| Easy Driving In This Part Of Sparti |
Turning into Camping
Mystra in the small town of Paleologio we were greeted by a short man whose
girth more than made up for his lack of height, he was so big he wouldn’t look
out of place in Las Vegas. He had good English and was extremely helpful
telling us to park where we liked and go back and see him later with a
passport. We pulled forward a little and walked around to select a good spot
for the night. We could see why we could park anywhere, there was just one
other campervan there and the long grass surrounding it suggested it hadn’t had
much use.
As we returned to Mabel
our host walked down and suggested a pitch in the shade of trees would be best.
He wasn’t wrong, it was stinking hot. He also told us all the taps in the
ground were drinking water. We were parked by a hose and took the opportunity
to fill with fresh water. As we were only staying one night we opted just to
set up our chairs and small table outside.
I returned to reception
to hand over my passport. I also asked if we could use two washing machines. We
could and he would get the ‘boy’ working close to Mabel to show Jane how to use
the machines. I had noticed the ‘boy’ earlier, he was at least 70. His
demonstration consisted of watching while our host showed him how the machines
worked.
We ate lunch under the
double shade of trees and Mabel’s awning. It was our usual in Greece of bread,
taramasalata and tzatziki. We wanted to visit Mystra, but it was very hot and without a breath of wind. We decided to leave it until later in the day. I went
to the bar area to use the internet and get some more blog ready for publishing
while Jane sat in the shade reading.
When I got back to Mabel
she was hidden by all our washing strung out on a line between the trees.There
weren’t any machines in Stoupa so we had accumulated a bit of a backlog.
At 15:00 we set off in
Smarty for the short drive to Mystra. Her temperature gauge showed 34°.
A Frankish prince built a
castle on the hill at Mystra in 1249. The Franks were driven out in 1262 by the
Byzantines and Mystra became the last province of the Byzantine empire and
virtually its capital as Constantinople was in decline. The Turks captured
Mystra in 1460, seven years after the fall of Constantinople. The Venetians
held Mystra briefly from 1687 before it was recaptured by the Turks in 1715.
During the 14th century and the first decades of the 15th
Mystra was the cultural and intellectual centre of the Byzantine empire. It
attracted schiolars, theologians and philosophers. Mystra was home to 20,000
people, the better off lived in the upper town protected by a fortified wall
while poorer people lived in the lower town, also within a wall. The two towns
were built on a steep hillside and were a maze of winding alleys too narrow to
take wheeled vehicles.
Upper and lower gates
provide access to the town. We decided to start at the upper gate figuring it
would be cooler 600 metres above the plain on which our camping ground was
situated. It was, it was only 32° up there.
High though the upper
entrance was, the castle was a long way above us, perched on the very top of
the almost pyramidal hill. We decided we had to walk up there, it was hard
going on rough polished cobbles with lots and lots of steps. The combination of
the climb and the temperature necessitated frequent stops to catch our breath
and drink water. The effort was well worth it. The castle’s defensive walls
were well preserved and there was sufficient remains inside to get a good feel
for the layout of the buildings. From a walkway around the keep there was a
commanding view over the surrounding countryside and into the steep sided
valleys to the west. It was easy to see why the site had been chosen for a
castle.
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| Castle A Long Way Above Us |
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| Hard Going Up To Castle |
 Easy To See Why This Site Was Chosen For A Castle (Sparti in the distance)  |
| Inside The Castle |
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| Rest Needed After Climb Up To Castle |
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| Ayia Sofia |
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| Fresco In Ayios Nikolaos |
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| Despot's Palace |
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| Monemvasia Gate To Upper Town |
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| Vrondohion Monastry In Lower Town |
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| Perivleptos Monastry In Lower Town |
Not wanting to go down
any further and be faced with a long walk back up, we decided to return to
Smarty and drive down to the lower entrance to the site from where we could
walk uphill into the lower town. By the time we reached the lower entrance we
agreed we had probably got out all we were going to from Mystra and decided to
head back to the camping ground.
Jane decided to cool off
with a swim in the pool, I cooled off with a beer while publishing another 5
day’s blog.
Dinner was a Greek salad
and bread.
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| Today's Trip (171km) |
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