Tort's Travels

25 February 2025 – Dodona & Parga

Miles driven today = 95

Total Miles to date = 1,354

We hadn’t done a proper shop since we’ve been in Greece and supplies were running a little low so we hunted down a Lidl on the outskirts of Ioannina. It’s fair to say that we were quite taken aback by the prices. We bought enough meat/fish, fruit and veg for probably 4 decent meals plus 4 bottles of wine and a few other bits and bobs and the bill came to €87, which is probably not far off a 50% mark up on what we would expect to pay for the equivalent shop back home. Maybe we’ll save ourselves a few euros and just live off chicken souvlaki for the remainder of our time here. Diesel on the other hand is relatively cheap. Although we haven’t needed to top up yet, I’ve been keeping an eye on prices and the cheapest I’ve seen has was just €1.54 a litre.

20km South West of Ioannina is the ancient oracle site of Dodona, so before we blasted our way back to the coast we popped in for a look around.

Dodona is believed to have been an important religious site since the first Hellenic tribes arrived in the area nearly 4,000 years ago. The oracle centred around an oak tree whose rustling was amplified by copper vessels suspended in its branches and interpreted by the priests. You wont be surprised to hear that this isn’t the original oak tree. It was planted by a 19^th Century archaeologist.

From the fifth century BC a temple, acropolis and sanctuary, dedicated to Zeus, started appearing around the oracle.

The Bouleuterion or Senate House was added in the late 4^th or early 5^th Century BC.

The most impressive structure at Dodona is the theatre. It was built during the reign of King Pyrrhus between 297-272BC.

It was capable of holding 17,000 spectators and as such was only rivalled in size by the theatres at Argos and Megalopolis.

When the Romans moved in they built this drainage channel around the orchestra as an adaptation to cater for their blood sports.

The modern village of Dodoni sitting below the occasionally visible snow capped peaks.

A quick lunch then we got ourselves back onto the A2 and retraced our steps back towards Ioannina, freewheeling for the majority of the way. Shortly before reaching the coast we turned South and headed for Parga. My brother Jaime has been there before and recommended it but the campsite doesn’t open until April and all the other possible park ups were equally shut or had “No Camper” signs.

There was hardly anybody around to object other than a few builders so we parked up next to Valtos Beach and went for a quick wander round the town.

We climbed the steep path up to the castle which sits on a rocky bluff overlooking Valdos on one side and the main town of Parga on the other.

The Castle was originally built by the Normans in the 11^th Century to protect the locals from pirates but it was rebuilt by the Venetians and torn down by the Ottomans several times between the 15^th and 18^th Centuries. It came under Napoleonic French control and then the British owned it for a mere 5 years before selling it to our old friend Ali Pasha, who remodeled it and installed a harem there.