A beautiful day for our trip.
The plan had been to walk into Milina for 09:00 and hire scooters.
Originally Brian & Sara where also coming but changed their mind at the last minute not wanting to leave the boat unsupervised on the mooring having, like us, lifted it on spec.
We hired a scooter, probably one of the worst I have seen. It was an old two stroke that apparently, we were told, would conk out at some point and I was shown the convoluted way of restarting it.
Now the Pelion mountain is probably up there with the highest ranges in Greece and at times I had to push with my feet and use full throttle to get us up the hills. lol
The idea had been to visit the mountain villages of the Pelion, two in particular Pinakates & Milies but the guy who hired us the scooter omitted to tell us that long term road works would prevent us visiting what we believed to be the most picturesque. However it was still stunning never the less
Our first destination though was Argalasti – along the coast road where we stopped for coffee & a wander.
Argalasti
Thereafter again along the coast to Kala Nera.
Kala Nera was not our cup of tea just tourist tat, sunbeds and not nuch else.
Kala Nera
From Kala Nera we started our climb up into the Pelion proper, heading for Pinakates.
Pinakates
We did try to get to Milies but as I said above we couldn’t due to road works so it was a tortuous return back down to Kato Lechonia.
This was a good bit !
We were not that far from Volos now having covered a bit of ground
Volos is one of the most important commercial harbours in Greece, handling most of the exports from Thessaly. Until the disastrous earthquakes of 1954 & 1955 it rivaled Piraeus. The large flattened areas of the city were rapidly rebuilt and once again it is propspering
As we weren’t going to visit Volos on the boat I suggested we go on the bike and have lunch only a further 15 kms or so north. It was a mistake the roads got bigger, busier and faster and Louise who isn’t the best lover of bikes in any case found it too nerve-racking so we turned back.
A visit to Ano Lexonia to see the narrow gauge railway that snakes its way up the mountain to the villages we had just visited and we called it a day.
A lot of fun, but a long day in the saddle & sun.
