9th. Persephoni trail, Trodos – Platres, 11th. Atalante circuit of Mount Olympus
We made two walks from Trodos, the highest village at 1725m., with dry and mostly sunny weather but there was still a cold wind the whole time in exposed places on the highest mountains. The air temperature was only 10deg.C at 1700m. Soon after we started walking the Persephoni trail (54), we came to some remains of snow, or rather hail, from the storm of the previous day. There were good views through the pine forest down to the coast, where there were still had some clouds, below us. After the high level walk we descended (50) along a river passing the Kalidonia waterfalls. It was necessary to cross the river several times and one person ended up with his foot in the water. At the end we reached the inevitable trout farm and a restaurant occupied by several other walking groups. The fish was good and a German sing-song lead by one of the other groups rounded off the meal.
Two days later we made the larger Atalante circuit (47) of the highest mountain, Olympus. The path skirts round the mountain at exactly the same height without going to the summit. There is a road and a ski-lift at the top which I suppose is the reason it is not so interesting to visit. The views to the coast were somewhat obstructed by cloud which blew in over us at times. However we did get a view of the other range of peaks on the Turkish occupied side at the end of the day. We took our own pic-nic lunch for the first time and I had saved some of the grilled meat from the tavern lunch which I could offer round to everybody.