Way, Stage 12)
There is a certain melancholy in the overgrown fields and crumbling houses. Yet, paradoxically, there is more life and investment than there has been for years. The children of those who emigrated have become prosperous enough to rebuild family homes for holiday times. Village squares are freshly paved. Churches are restored. There is at last a sense that there was something valuable about the life that has been lost, and people have begun to take a pride in saving what they can.
A little history
Mt Veloúkhi and the site of old Víniani (Píndos Way, Stage 9)
In the north and west of Greece you still find descendants of the shepherd clans, the Sarakatsani and the Vlachs, who have preserved a separate and distinctive identity to this day. The Vlachs in particular are interesting because their language, in contrast to all the other Balkan tongues south of Romania, is Latin-based. No one quite knows who they are or how they come to speak Latin. Traditionally semi-nomadic, with no written language, they have left no records. They call themselves arumani – Romans. While they are obviously not Romans, the language they speak is probably not much different from that heard round shepherds’ campfires 2000 years ago.
There are villages throughout the mountains, and you wonder why places so rugged and inaccessible should ever have been populated. But it is this very inaccessibility which provides the answer. People sought refuge in these natural fastnesses, especially from the Turks, who overran and controlled the lowlands from their capture of Constantinople in 1453 until, in the case of northern Greece, World War I. The outlawed sheep-rustlers and brigands – the klephts – made their hideouts in the mountains and formed what we would now call the liberation army that finally drove the Turks out and instituted the beginnings of the modern Greek state in the 1820s.
During World War II, many Greeks took to their mountains again to form one of Europe’s biggest Resistance movements. With the outbreak of Civil War in 1946 – for which many Greeks blame the British – a new generation of outlaws made the mountains their base. This time they were Communist guerrillas, mostly veterans of the Resistance, who felt that Anglo-American domination, restoration of the monarchy and the return of the old politicians from their safe wartime haven in Egypt was not what they had fought for. It was this war which occasioned the promulgation of the Truman Doctrine and America’s first attempt to halt the feared domino effect: the conviction that if one state fell under Communist influence, then others would follow.
The mountain communities endured 10 years of war in the 1940s, more than their fragile economy could stand. Populations were evacuated to the lowlands to prevent them supporting the guerrillas. Children went to school, adults found jobs. By the time peace came in the 1950s, village fields had reverted to nature and there was no other work. Many families never returned to their mountain homes.
Kernítsa convent (Peloponnese Way, Stage 5)
Flowers and wildlife
You see surprisingly little wildlife for such wild and remote terrain. The occasional fox or hare, perhaps a deer, an adder, salamander, or tortoise, the odd eagle or griffon vulture, and smaller species like chough, partridge, wheatear, accentor, perhaps a wallcreeper. If you are lucky you might see mountain goats or a wild boar in the north-west. Bear and wolf exist – both, reportedly, in increasing numbers – but you would be extremely lucky to meet either.
Flowers, on the other hand, abound. The best season for seeing them depends on altitude and latitude. In the first half of May in the Peloponnese and southern central Greece, for instance, you will find fritillaries, orchids, ophrys, violets, aubretia, iris, anemones and Daphne oloeides up to 1200m or so. As you approach the melting snow patches, around 1600–1800m, there are crocuses, squills, Corydalis solida, saxifrages and many others. Further south, spring comes earlier; further north, later. Tulips, gentians, narcissus, campanulas, geraniums, aquilegias, lilies – all sorts of glorious species are to be found, over 600 of them endemic.
Clockwise from left: Autumn crocus; Marsh orchid; Lilium albanicum, Astragalus angustifolium; Lilium heldreichii
Navigation and maps
The problem of finding reliable maps has been largely resolved by the appearance on the scene of Anávasi, specialist mapmakers and publishers. They are essentially a mother-and-daughter team, themselves experienced mountaineers. Their maps, varying in scale from 1:25,000 to 1:50,000 and 1:100,000, cover the majority of the most interesting walking areas of the country. No other maps are remotely as good. Penelope Matsoúka also produces beautiful books of aerial photographs which cover islands as well as mountain massifs and make a wonderful souvenir of Greece’s spectacular landscapes.
The maps are all GPS compatible. The digital versions in various formats can be downloaded from the Anávasi website (www.anavasi.gr). Until we are able to get the routes properly and consistently waymarked, they are an absolutely crucial tool. Where their traced paths and our routes coincide – which is not everywhere – and the path on the ground is not easy to follow, you can absolutely rely on them, which is why we strongly recommend using a GPS. If your GPS shows you have wandered off the route, you can trust it.
GPS set-up
Add the metric grid Greek Geodetic Reference System (GGRS87) to your GPS as follows:
User grid
Longitude of originE024°00.000
Latitude of originN00°00.000
Scale factor+0.9996000
False easting+500000
False northing0.0
User map datum
Dx–00201
Dy+00076
Dz+00246
In the UK, maps are available from Stanfords (www.stanfords.co.uk) and The Map Shop (www.themapshop.co.uk). In Athens, the Anávasi Bookshop is five minutes’ walk from the central Síntagma Square. For addresses and contact details, see Appendix D.
There is no uniform system of waymarking in Greece. You will find Bonne Maman jam-jar lids, fading red discs, splashes of parti-coloured paint, more sophisticated plastic squares and diamonds with variously coloured symbols, E4 and E6 signs left over from 40-year-old attempts to hook Greece into a trans-Europe network of paths, plus ribbons, streamers and paint spray added by us – and long stretches with no waymarks at all. It is all part of what the Greeks call ‘the Greek reality’.
A practical tip about path-finding
Right up until World War II in many parts of Greece and up to the 1970s in the furthest mountains, there were few roads. The paths were the roads. The traffic was four-legged and two-legged and had been for many centuries. As a consequence, the paths, even in rugged mountain terrain, were well worn into the ground, a bit like sunken cart tracks in England. The line of them, even when they have not been regularly used for a long time, is often still quite clear to a practised eye. They were made principally by the mules, who have a much better feel for
