Our final stop of the day was at Karytaina, where there is an old Frankish fort (from the time of the fourth crusade) which at present you can only see a little of, and a very fine Byzantine church, albeit with far less of the decorative use of Roman style brickwork than the others I have featured.
Enjoy some excellent pictures…
The Lousios, the coldest river in Greece (although as the travel writer of the ancient world, Pausanias, is honest enough to point out, not by any means the coldest in the world), is a tributary of the Alfios, which featured in one of my earlier posts: https://aspiblog.wordpress.com/2014/10/16/leaving-olympia/ and it too flows all year round. The chapel of Ayios Andreas was closed, but there was a missing pane in the glass cross on the door, so I did get some internal pictures. Enjoy these…
From Dimitsana we descended into the Lousios Gorge, where there is a Byzantine church and the remains of ancient Gortys, not be confused with Gortyn on the island of Crete.
There is not the hugest amount to see at Gortys but I did get some good pictures….
The open air museum of water power at Dimitsana is a remarkable site, worthy of several posts. This post covers the first part of the site, leading up to the tannery, and including some stuff about fulling, and some introductory stuff about water and energy.
Pictures tell this story better than words…
A final coda to my post about Olympia (https://aspiblog.wordpress.com/2014/10/14/ancient-olympia/), a lively and amusing version of the story of how the ancient Olympics got started is told by Tom Holt in the novel Olympia. Any book with his name on the cover will be a good read.
After an excellent stay at the Hotel Europa, we set off as intended just before 10 o’clock. For the next hour things did not go quite as planned…
First we could not find our way on to the road from Olympia to Tripoli as intended, and then having got on to a suitable route we picked up a hitchhiker which delayed things further.
However, we still arrived at our first stop of the day, Dimitsana, in good time to go round the open air museum of water power.
So
me pictures from this portion of the day…
Between those on display at my parents holiday home, the stuff at cape Tainaros and a good mosaic at Olympia I reckon I have enough to justify providing a collection of mosaic pictures…
I am currently in a hotel room in Olympia, having visited one of the most famous of all Greek sites and swum in the hotel pool, but this post is about yesterday (today will come later – probably after supper). Susan Shimmin, who helped my parents to arrange the purchase of their Greek house turned 70 yesterday, and I was among those invited to the party. This featured a very pretty walk between Stoupa and a place called Kalliope’s. Some of us, including me, did the walk twice, while at the other extreme were those who did not walk at all. Back at Stoupa there was a royal spread of wonderful Greek food and then the unveiling of the cake – and what a cake it was!
Even though I decamped shortly after the cake was unveiled I have some fine photos from the day…
The Inner Mani’s particular version of the very traditional Greek habits of feud and vendetta led to the building by anyone who could of fortified tower houses. They were defending themselves against each other, much like the border reavers of Northumberland with their bastles. As usual, I have plenty of pictures for you…
In ancient times this was home to a temple and death oracle of Poseidon (the ruins of which can still be seen), and was a notorious spot for ship wrecks. At least one reasonably eminent Roman had a villa here as there are some old mosaics left from his tenure. The end of the Greek mainland is signalled by lighthouse, which is moderately attractive. Being in the driest most arid part of mainland Greece, the path is as one would expect bare and rocky, but I was able to walk it in beefed up flip flops.
This region also contains my nomination for the most desperate attempt at cultivation I have yet to see evidence of – indescribable, so wait for the photo…
Having finished exploring the remains of ancient Messene we repaired to a guard post on the old walls. These walls, a circuit of nine kilometres, were built by Epaminondas of Thebes after he had liberated the Messenians from four centuries of Spartan rule as an insurance policy should the Spartans try to recapture Messenia. This did not happen, because within a generation Philip of Macedon was in charge.
Just a few photos from this location…
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