23 March
2025 – Archaia Epidauros
Miles
driven today = 0
Total Miles
to date = 2,216
We had a
bit of a re-jig of our itinerary last night.
We were planning to move on to Mycenae today but previous experience has
taught us that Sunday is the day when most Greeks are out and about and a lot
of tourist attractions become fairly crowded, or at least relatively so for the
time of year. So instead we decided to
have a third night here at Camping Nicolas II in the hope that the ancient
sites will be relatively quieter tomorrow.
Next on the
agenda after Mycenae had been Ancient Corinth, but we’ve come to the conclusion
that we are in danger of overdoing the ruins.
There really is just too much to properly take in around these parts in
a single trip and as always we want to leave some things on the shelf to
attract us back another time. Tuesday is
also Greek Independence Day and therefore likely to be another day when the
archeological sites are teeming, so we will be using it as our opportunity to
bid a fond farewell to the Peloponnese and head on towards Athens. It really has been a fabulous 3 weeks though.
So we
really hadn’t planned to do anything much today other than sit on the beach,
but unfortunately the weather had other ideas.
The skies were overcast and the temperatures felt relatively chilly, so
we busied ourselves with giving the van a thorough clean out and attempted to
get to the root cause of a few of the squeaks and rattles the van has developed
on the less than perfect Greek road surfaces.
After lunch
we got itchy feet so we took a stroll along the beach and when that frittered
out we walked along the orange blossom scented lanes leading to the nearby town
of Archaia Epidauros.
We noticed
several rusting old pieces of machinery like this one in people’s gardens.
I’m guessing it’s an olive oil press of some
nature.
There were
some rather strangely translated information boards next to an archeological
dig from which I managed to glean that here has been a settlement here for at
least as long as the town's big brother, Epidauros, a few kilometres inland.
They even
had their own, albeit much smaller, theatre here.
We found a
footpath through more citrus groves to the town’s natural harbour.
Most of the
craft moored here were traditional small scale fishing enterprises.
There were
plenty of people out and about in the restaurants and tavernas for their Sunday
lunch so we stopped for a drink before making our way back on a different path
which took us past a small aloe vera plantation.
I think we
have a new record for the biggest and knobbliest old olive tree.
Lisa for scale.
You really
can’t go anywhere around here without stumbling upon some old ruins of some
description. I've no idea what these were but the setting was very atmospheric.
As we
walked back along the beach the Sun finally made a short appearance.
Not exactly barbecue weather but we didn’t
let that stop us.
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