A wonderful walk with Morgan, right from the door of our hotel in Kastraki. Over the past few years, we've developed a tradition of doing a mountain day as part of our family holiday. That was an option this morning, but with the stunning terrain of Meteora on our doorstep it seemed far more sensible to fashion an outing there instead. The day before I had run up the road to the Agiou Stefanou monastery and we had all done a family walk in desperately hot weather to Varlaam. It was a tad cooler this morning, so we found the paths through dark woodland taken in places by the E4, with the towering walls of Altsos hemming us in to the east. I had seen a potential way to reach those peaks, so looked out for it and we took a side path up a spectacular narrow cleft which turned out to be the Lianomodia Couloir. This was somewhat claustrophobic and stifling but short-lived and we soon arrived into the light on a big sun-drenched plinth in a spectacular position surrounded by the Altsos pinnacles and with huge trench valleys ahead and below: memorable. Back down, then round to the descent below the Monastery of the Holy Trinity. This led through an even more narrow cleft to evenutally pick up the standard Trinity Trail and then the first houses on the edge of Kalambaka. One of these was a delightful taverna, so we stopped for local sausages, Greek yoghurt, local honey and freshly-squeezed orange juice. Then back to the ladies in Kastraki. The day after this I did a longer early morning 15k running loop of a similar circuit: absolutely stunning.
No comments:
Post a Comment