Monday 18th August 2025 – border crossing easy, nobody there. Stayed the night at Nea karvla by the sea. Had a very bad meal in a restaurant here. Met Wim a Belgian traveller who has been away for a couple of months and used to have a Unimog but surprisingly it proved to be unreliable and a nightmare to own. He used to work in Turkey so knows the region well. He got out his Michelin maps and gave us some useful suggestions. Rain in the night.
Tuesday 19th August 2025 – getting the ferry to the island of Thasos for a couple of nights, a 40 minute crossing. People are feeding cheesy wotsits to the gulls, not a good idea!
Excellent meal this evening at at Taverna on the edge of Potes. I had Chanoumissa (beef brisket with chargrilled aubergine and three kinds of cheese) and Rachel had Calamari stuffed with Feta. They bought us Kataifi for dessert gratis.
The bay where we are staying near Potes:
We plan to explore inland on the island tomorrow. Tonight’s sunset:
Wednesday 20th August 2025 – having breakfast on the beach. Lovely. Greek infection control advice!:
Visited a series of small waterfalls called Kefalogourma with rock pools between near the village of Theologos:
The village is very picturesque, the gardens have peach trees and pomegranate as well as productive vegetable plots. Some houses have stone tiles:
Beautiful stone house in the centre of the village:
There are so many olive groves on the island, many of the trees are very old. Thasos is known for the quality of its oil, there is no available numbers on quantity of oil, it is nowherenear that of Crete that produces aroud 1/3 of the countries production:
Our Serbian friend reports that there is more widespread unrest in Serbia and brutal reprisals against demonstrators.
Thursday 21st August 2025 – getting the ferry back to the mainland. George attracts a lot of attention. A couple were posting pictures of him on their social media and googling adverts of Defenders for sale!
Staying near Mount Olympus. Our host Panos invited us for a drink and some of his neighbours delicious water melon. He has a farm with vegetables and livestock – goats pigs, chickens, ducks, Guinea fowl , turkey, donkeys and horses.
Friday 22nd August 2025 – hoping to do some walking around Mount Olympus today.
Went to the Orlias waterfalls. Not huge but very pretty. A bit too many people there though!
Drove through huge plantations of Kiwi fruit. Greece is the fourth largest producer in the world harvesting 320,000 tonnes of Kiwi fruit annually!
Another hitchhiker on the roof tent today. This time an African Lined Mantis! Not native to Greece but introduced by human activity.
Saturday 23rd August 2025 – visited the Enipea canyon. Another great suggestion from our Serbian friend Aleksa.
We were followed by a dog (we named Scoobie). Some other visitors asked if they could pet him and I had to explain that he wasn’t my dog!!
Visited the local village and got great coffee and Bougatsa (with a dusting of icing sugar and cinnamon). They do sweet ones (which we had) and savoury with Feta. They cut it into small squares for you:
Nice view of Mount Olympus this morning, yesterday too obscured. Albeit some wispy cloud.
Sunday 24th August 2025 – went to visit some of the six active monasteries. Visited three in fact. 1. Monastery of Varlaam, one of the six active Eastern Orthodox monasteries located in Meteora 2. Great Meteoron 3. Agia Trias (Holy Trinity). The monasteries are perched on the rocks in a stunning location. Originally monks were living in caves as hermits before the monasteries were built. One of the monasteries Agia Trias, was used for a James Bond film ‘For your eyes only’ starring Roger Moore. There is a net lift to bring up supplies (or people with a strong stomach!).
Had a good lunch of Tzatziki, Aubergine dip, bread, salad with fig, pine nuts and grilled Manouri cheese. Rustic but very tasty.
Our Bulgarian SIM card is working fine in Greece. I went to top it up online today and it has given me a further 20GB of data for free. I have no idea how this is possible but I am not going to complain!
Monday 25th August 2025 – drove past the monasteries again. This one is Stephanos Monastery :
We visited Vikos gorge in the Pindus mountains. It is 32 kilometres long and has a maximum depth of 1,350 metres and width of 2,500 metres:
The local geology is amazing with thin strata of rock. You can see why they have stone tiled roofs. Locally they call it the stone forest:
Dinner is trout from the local trout farm, starter was zucchini and eggplant fried in batter with Tzatziki:
Tuesday 26th August 2025 – visited a Packhorse bridge on the river near where we are staying. Lots of ancient plane trees (native here), false olives, alder and Kermes oak.
Kermes oak:
Huge plane trees:
Free range tortoise:
Rafting on the river here:
We saw sizeable trout in the crystal clear water.
We saw signs on the way for wild boar, deer, bears and wolves but didn’t see any!
Stayed with a lovely couple and talked with them quite late. They gave us fresh vegetables from their garden and hugs when we left. Such lovely people.
An astonishing number of fur factories and shops here, even a fur federation and fur exhibition hall. Kastoria (northern Greece) has been a global center for fur production since the Byzantine era (9th century).
Wednesday 27th August 2025 – visited Lake Orestiada, also known as Lake Kastoria:
There is a one way route around part of the lake. There are wonderful reflections in the still mirror surface of the lake.
We drove throughout a mountain pass at 1,700 metres through mostly Beech woodland. There were some skiing resorts up there.
