Nestos delta, Rhodope mountains and the Magnesia peninsular

 

                          

                         Thursday and Friday
Travel east towards the Nestos delta  - the area is close to the border with Turkey to the east and Bulgaria to the north. Geoff is keen to visit the delta as it is a wetland area (= mosquitoes) and there are also steppe birds – so he is looking for Rollers, Lesser Grey Shrike, Mediterranean Gull to name but a few. Park up on a campsite on the side of a small beach where there are a lot of permanent caravans/chalets and a very welcoming owner.
 

Saturday
People start to arrive with speed boats and kayaks for a weekend of fun just as we are leaving for the Delta.  Stop at Keramoti - a small port where ferries go to Thassos, for a breakfast of coffee and cake before driving down some tracks and into forests around the west of the delta. The area feels very abandoned – there has been a visitor centre and picnic areas but now they are all overgrown. There are plenty of mosquitoes and flies though and to think we could have stayed on the beach.
 

                                                   

 
Drive further down the coast and park up in a spot overlooking the sea of Thrace, with Turkey visible on the horizon. The parking spot is beneath a small chapel which didn’t look much from the outside but was beautiful inside.

                        

                         Sunday
Geoff decides to start the day with a swim and snorkel. It’s a bit cold for me so I watch encouragingly from the rocks and look at fish and crabs in rock pools, a very enjoyable and a much less chilly activity.
Go into the nearby town of Abdera to visit the archaeological museum. For a small town museum it has some wonderful exhibits including jewellery, pots, coins, lamps, toys all from 3^rd & 4^th Century BCE.   The museum was opened in 1997 to house artefacts that had been found in the area, which has been excavated since the 1950’s. We hadn’t realised this was such an area of historical importance - the ancient city of Abdera was founded in 654 BCE and has been occupied to various degrees since.
 

Monday
Up at 5am to go to one of the wetland areas Geoff has identified so he can record and photograph. We have a fantastic look at a Penduline Tit nest which are very special – they hang from branches of trees and look like a small shopping bag.
 
 

Penduline Tit building it's nest. Photo by Geoff

Just near the recording spot is a monastery which is built out into the lake. Another beautiful place – so calm and atmospheric.
 
 

Go into Porto Lagos harbour for coffee and warm spinach/feta pastry and Geoff notices a big mixed heronry in the woods opposite the harbour so we take a look. He sets about recording the array of sounds that are being made whilst picking up a fair few mosquito bites in the process. Off to an Airbnb for the night as no campsites around. It’s nice – quite quirky, clean and mosquito free.
 
 

 
Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday – days of ancient ruins and Rollers.
Spend the next few days exploring the area. We visit the ruins of the ancient city of Abdera and a temple on a hill. Both are impressive and are where a number of the artefacts we saw in the museum had been found. At one point we manage to inadvertently buy two loaves of bread at a village bakery when we only wanted one - Greek is such a difficult language to fathom and we get offered some very fresh, still alive prawns by a local fisherman but politely decline as don’t really have the facilities to deal with live shellfish. We visit deserted beaches and go for a drink in a very nice but completely deserted beach bar which I imagine looks very different in the summer.
 
The highlight though is a very special Roller experience. Rollers are birds Geoff loves and they are very splendid. They are very colourful and at times, as they fly around they look like they are rolling over. The birds are focussed around a disused building where it seems they are prospecting for nest sites. Not the most glamorous location as in addition to the building being a bit of an eyesore, it’s on the side of quite a busy road but the birds seem happy with it and Geoff is happy too as he gets some fantastic photos and recordings.
 

 

Roller photos by Geoff

                            

                         Friday
Leave the coast to go into the Rhodope mountains, but just as we are leaving we are rewarded with a fantastic view of Jackals – we have heard them howling at night on a number of occasions and we finally get to see them.

     

Golden Jackal photo by Geoff

        

 
We are heading into the mountains via the city of Xanthi as we want to visit for a look around. It is busier than we expected – 6 coaches pull up as we are parking (day trippers from a cruise ship moored on the coast somewhere) plus it has a university campus so there are lots of people milling around. Before we go to the Folk and History museum to find out more about the history of the city we go into an art gallery  ‘The House of Shadows’. I haven’t seen anything quite like the work on show – it’s a space dedicated to 'shadow art'. The artist takes us around his exhibition of sculptures made from rubbish -but - when the sculptures are lit they produce recognisable shadows, including Marilyn Monroe, John Lennon, Albert Einstein and SpongeBob SquarePants. All very clever and rather different.

                        

 

 

Then go to Folk and History museum which is also very good.  Abdera is the place for the ancient history of the area and Xanthi for the more recent history. The key developments started in 1856 when the area started to produce tobacco. It was (and still is) grown locally and exported widely including to America.
                                                                                                                                                            
Saturday
Geoff connects with an Eastern Boneli’s warbler and Hawfinch around our overnight parking spot, before we drive up a steep mountain road to visit a waterfall I liked the look of when I was researching places of interest – the Livaditis waterfall. The road goes quite a lot higher than we were expecting and not surprisingly it’s a fair bit cooler when we get to the top. Park up and set off to walk to the waterfall – the signpost tells us it’s 2km. What becomes clear when we set off is that the walk out is 2km down a steep track which means a 2km climb back out. The waterfall is impressive though- the largest in Greece (depending on what info you read) at 60 meters. It is also, according to the information boards, a place of ‘Orphic Mysteries’ (which was a 6^thcentury BCE fringe religion /cult) and Thyrsus-bearing Maenads. I also read that fairies bathe in the waters and weave on stone looms so all in all, a rather special place.
 

                          Sunday
Cool, misty and drizzly morning but the rain holds off as we drive down the mountain. Pull up part of the way down for a coffee and have a magnificent view of the surrounding mountains and the village below. I have spent some time looking for bears as they are around and about, but the area is so vast and so wooded I’m surprised anyone ever sees them.

Get to a hotel room we have booked for the night (no campsites around again) and it’s very nice, with a great view from the balcony. 
 

 
Agree we are a bit bored with van meals so decide to have our first meal out of the trip. Although we are staying in a small village, there is a Taverna.  We arrive just as they are winding up for the day but they agree to feed us so we are excited. Geoff goes for Souvlaki and I go for Greek salad. The menu is basically different meat dishes and different salads and as I don’t eat meat, salad it is but I really enjoy it. Also have a lovely bowl of fried potatoes which arrive at the end of the meal. Not sure if they forgot about them or our poor grasp of the language meant we accidentally ordered them to arrive at the end but either way they were delicious and get eaten.

Back in the hotel room we put on the TV. Not surprisingly, all the programmes are in Greek but we do  come across an obscure 1967 film in English (with Greek subtitles) starring Audrey Hepburn and Albert Finney called ‘Two for the Road’ – I really quite enjoyed it although that could have been the novelty of watching TV for the first time in a month!

 
Monday
Drive up into the mountains, following the Nestos river as far as we can and get to a huge dam which looks like something from a film about WW2 dam busters.

                         Park up and see Eagles, Honey Buzzard a wild cat and then a spectacular Longhorn beetle which I’m informed are rare so we are lucky to be in the right place at the right time. As the evening goes on, we hear Nightjars, Nightingales and various owls including a Scops owl. The Scops owl ‘song’ (which sounds like a sonar bleep) starts at 8.30pm and it was amazing to hear it so clearly. It did however carry on until 3am, really loudly, really close, so by then, having been excited to hear it initially I was thinking that I wouldn’t mind if I never heard one again. It’s a little bird – only about 20cms in height - I’m amazed it could keep going and not get tired.
 

Longhorn beetle photo by Geoff

Tuesday
Leave the mountain to stay on the coast before attempting to go up a high mountain tomorrow. Stop at a small shop for a few provisions and the guy asks us where we are from. It turns out he knows Newcastle as he’s a football fan and tells us what position they are in the premier league – he knows more about our local team than we do (which isn’t difficult as neither of us are too fussed about football)
 
  
 
Wednesday
 Drive to the top of mount Pangaion. It’s quite a climb –to 1650m from pretty much sea level, up a winding road which has some huge pot holes. The map shows a ski station at the top but looking at the state of the road as we drive up, I don’t imagine it is still in use and when we do get to the top, it certainly is disused and looks as though it has been for some time. It’s deserted, very, very quiet and very, very misty which is eerie but atmospheric. The mist lifts a little at times but it is difficult to get an idea of what the views are like. In the evening as we are sitting in the van there is a terrific thunder storm – it seems as if it is directly overhead and as we are high up a mountain it really does feel close. It is then followed by an impressive hail storm. We both have the same fleeting thought that we would be well stuck if the storm made the road down impassable, but try not to dwell on the idea. 

 Thursday
 Mist has cleared and it’s a bright (cold) morning. Geoff wanted to come up the mountain to see if he can track down a Shore lark  and Alpine Accentor so we go out for a walk up a track and higher into the mountain. Don’t see them but do see lovely mountain flowers and of course the most spectacular view across to the Agean sea.  Also have a great look at a black woodpecker on the way down the mountain. 

                       
  
We decide to leave this area and begin our journey to the coast south of Thessaloniki, which is where we are planning to visit next. We won’t make it all the way but have seen some potential park up spots on the side of a lake along our route. When we get there we discover that the ‘roads’/tracks to the park up spots are in a very poor state – it looks as if they have been washed away with the recent storms and we don’t want to risk going down them and getting stuck, so we find somewhere to park up, just off the main road next to what is a completely abandoned hotel, spa and holiday complex. It’s not ideal but it’s raining heavily and we are tired so it we decide to go for it and get up early tomorrow morning to continue our journey. As the evening goes on, a van then a car drive past. We think this is a bit odd as it’s a dead end road so they must be checking us out. This culminates with a visit at midnight by the police, asking us what we are doing. When we explain that we want to stop for a few hours sleep and leave early tomorrow morning they are fine about it and wish us goodnight as they leave!
 

Deserted holiday complex

                         Friday

                         Early start – and onto the motorway. Greek motorways don’t have a lot of service stations, but there is one just beneath mount Olympus, the highest mountain in Greece and the home of the gods. We pull in and over a breakfast of a mozzarella and tomato pasty thing (hot, delicious and very filling) we get chatting to a guy who works in the service station. His nephew is a dentist in Winchester and he’s another football follower who knows more about Newcastle United than us. Get to our destination of a beach side campsite in a small seaside town.
 
  
Saturday

                         Go to the town harbour and look up at mount Olympus whilst enjoying the best spinach and feta pastry of the trip so far.

Looking up at Mount Olympus

Drive down the coast for an explore. It’s a very mountainous, wooded area with small coves in between the mountains. I’m tempted to take a dip in some ‘spa’ baths which we come across – they are iron rich and have restorative properties but I decide against it as the water is brown (and there’s no shower to get rid of the brown) and the water is very cold and I’m a bit of a wuss when it comes to cold water.

Robinson crusoe style beach bar

 
Park up for the night in a field next to a beach taverna. The owner lets you park overnight for free, if you have a beer in the bar, which we do. But then we see the menu and can’t resist a meal too. Courgette fritters with feta/chilli dip for me, greek salad to share and squid for Geoff. Get chatting to the owner – a Liverpool football fan and yet another person who talks to us about Newcastle United.
 
 
Sunday - Monday
Head over to the Magnesia peninsula for an explore and to find a campsite with facilities as we need to do washing and fancy a hot shower - for the last week the showers have been tepid at best. One campsite shower had a very complicated key system and although I’m sure I followed the instructions, after many attempts the hot water didn’t materialise so a tepid shower it was.

Campsite lemon tree

 
Get to a rather swish site – it is in a lovely beach side spot and has terraced pitches so the views are good. When we arrive, we are taken around on a golf buggy to see which one of the available pitches we would like - we’ve never had that before on a site. Choose our pitch (there are few available as it is very busy) and park up. The site is full of huge motorhomes – our van is the smallest – and we ponder how much money is parked up around us as a lot of the vans will have been extremely expensive. The showers are indeed very hot though and the staff are very welcoming. Washing day tomorrow then we are leaving to go further down the peninsular.
 
 
Tuesday - Saturday
Spend the next few days exploring the Magnesia peninsula. It is beautiful– very green and wooded - mount Pelion runs along the middle and the coast is dotted with small, rocky coves. It is where Jason is said to have launched his travels with the Argonauts in search of the golden fleece and also where the Centaurs (half man half horse) originated. More recently, it is the area where Stanley Johnson (Boris’s dad) has/had a house as one campsite owner reliably informs us - he also  tells us about meeting Boris –laughing and raising his eyebrows as he does so. 

                         We stay in some lovely calm and quiet spots where we relax, snorkel (well Geoff does – I dip in the sea and out again) and get ready for the next part of our travels, to the tourist hotspots of mount Parnassus, the ancient site of Delphi and we may take a trip down memory lane and visit Athens. Geoff last visited in 1974 and me in 1982. I’m sure it won’t have changed at all!!
 
 
 

                                       Livaditis waterfall