Car Hire Day Lemnos

On Sunday 1^st September we hired a car for the day to explore other parts of the island we hadn’t visited by sea.

The night before all the boats had had to move up the quay a bit to create space for a “Kontiki” like expedition boat that was arriving in on the Sunday. No sooner had we all relocated the Port Police advised they weren’t coming after all!! (more later……..)

Our route took us South from Myrini through Platy (where we had anchored earlier in the season), Thanos, Kontias (Widmills) out past the airport to Moudros.

  

Platy in the distance & Kontias windmills

Ormos Moudros is one of the finest fleet anchorages in the Northern Aegean and was from here the ill-fated Gallipoli campaign was launched.

In the plan of Moudros bay there are 4 hills irreverently identified as Yam, Yrroc, Eb and Denmad which when read from left to right shows what the British Surveyors thought of their commanding officer who was alleged to have worked them too hard and stopped all leave.

We had the most expensive and worst cup of coffee here in all of our travels. Shoulve gone to the one up the hill ! Moudros however was worth the visit. We did contemplate coming round in the boat and staying for a few days but the bay is open and quite windy, we’ll see?

     

Moudros and the worst coffee taverna ever !

From Moudros we headed east to the archaeological site of Poliochni, close to Kaminia village. It dates back to the 3^rd millennium BC , was the 1^st organised city in Europe and the 1^st Parliament. (Hope tae feck they were better than our mugs!)

     

Poliochne and an exited Louise

It was here after visiting the main site we went down to the small harbour to find the “Kontiki” like Aborah IV vessel, mentioned at the start of this blog, anchored off shore.

 

Aborah IV

Some of the multinational crew were making their way ashore in a rib. We took their lines and good humouredly berated them for us having to move our boats, the night before.

They were looking for somewhere to eat but the nearest village was a good hours walk away so we shuttled them all to a Taverna.

Some of the crew

The vessel was heading for Santorini and then finally to Antalya in Turkey.

The ancient Greek writer Herodotus said, “Egyptians sailed through the Black Sea to get materials that they could not have from the east Mediterranean,” and to prove this was a factual statement Aborah IV is going to undertake this voyage in reverse, in a specialty reconstructed Egyptian reed boat.

Having booked our dinner reservation, we set off to see Hephaestia (mentioned in an earlier blog).

    

Salt flats, Hefaistia and our earlier anchorage in the distance and that may be Dionysus bottom left ?

It was an beer meze for lunch in a wee mountain top village, Kotsinas I think it was called.

 

After lunch we headed for Propouli & Gomati where we would see fantastic rocky formations and “other worldly “sand dunes recommended the German on the boat next to us. Well the rocks were strange, granted,  but to be honest I’ve seen better dunes off the beach at Troon.

     

The rock formations

  

The dunes

However the drive & scenery itself was great and as usual on our car hire epics we took a wrong turn up an increasingly difficult off road track!

          

The beach at the dunes

On our way back we passed goatherds on donkeys who with great skill shepherded the beasts to the side of the road to let us pass.

      

Meeeeh !

Dinner itself at the highly recommended Ennia P’ochs Taverna in Lychna lived up to expectations.

     

Lychna village & the restaurant

It was then just an hour or so’s drive back to Mirina.

A lovely day