Walking with gods in the Greek Peloponnese

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Arcadia. The title conjures photographs of goat-hoofed god Pan enjoying ditties on a reed flute to shepherds and nymphs in a bucolic wilderness. So it’s a shock to find that Arcadia is an actual place, situated in Greece’s Peloponnese. On earlier visits, I’d been too busy speeding to the historic websites round its fringes, akin to Olympia and Mycenae, to discover its rugged mountainous coronary heart. Now, with the likelihood to expertise this Paradise Lost, I couldn’t refuse.

I’m in Langadia, getting ready to trek by Arcadia’s Menalon massif. The stonemasons who constructed this village had been famend as the area’s greatest – they needed to be to tame these impossibly steep hillsides. Just dwelling right here retains you match. And even in loss of life you’ll be able to’t escape the climbing – the cemetery straddles 4 tiers.

As the coaches roar off to Olympia, I ascend a signposted path into pastures studded with historic stone threshing flooring and golden grasses. A shepherd hurries previous with a flock of sheep with clinking bells. I’m on the 75km Menalon Trail, arguably Greece’s best-known long-distance footpath.

Just 4 monks inhabit Prodromou monastery

(Clare Hargreaves)

I go to in late October, eager to eke out summer time as Blighty plunges into darkness. The twentysomething-degree temperatures are good for strolling, and the tree colors spectacular. Spring is wonderful too, thoughts you, with the bonus of wildflowers and longer days. The strolling is reasonably simple – it’s hill strolling not mountaineering – though be ready for loads of quad-stretching climbs as you turn from valley to valley.

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In Valtesiniko, the second of six mountain villages I keep in, and predictably precipitous, I descend to the sq. the place a click-clacking attracts my eye to an open balcony. It’s the walnut harvest and two aged girls in black perch on a settee, one smashing nuts with a hammer, the different winkling them out with a knife. I be part of them and am supplied tea – which in rural Greece means mountain herbs, primarily sage.

We chat, however after I reveal I’m strolling alone, shelling stops and the girls stare in disbelief. “Where’s your husband?” asks one. When I break the information that there isn’t one, her jaw drops additional. She swiftly modifications matter. “It’s no coincidence walnuts look like brains. They’re excellent for brain power. Here, try some.”

My last leg follows a river mattress aflame with aircraft timber earlier than climbing right into a limestone gorge, its cliffs glowing salmon-pink in the now-evening gentle

At breakfast the subsequent morning I replenish on fried feta pasties and spinach pie (muesli’s now a distant reminiscence), forward of what’s billed in my strolling directions as the longest stretch – 21km, which “can take up to 11 hours”. I’m not taking any probabilities.

The day is a blissful blur of silent, moss-clad pines, pink cyclamen that burst from the leaf litter like tiny fairy tutus, and a 14th-century monastery that served as a ”secret faculty” the place Greek was taught throughout the Ottoman occupation. My last leg follows a river mattress aflame with aircraft timber earlier than climbing right into a limestone gorge, its cliffs glowing salmon-pink in the now-evening gentle. Fields of lifeless mullein flowerheads, like stooping dinosaurs, escort me to the engaging lights of my subsequent stopover, Vitina.

The following afternoon I attain mountaintop Elati the place I lodge in the chalet-style dwelling of Vanna and Kostas. “Mrs Clarey, we’re eating kokkoras kokkinisto (reddened rooster) tonight, would you like to see how it’s made?” Vanna asks. The kokkoras, it seems, is the couple’s Transylvanian cockerel who bought the chop a few days earlier. “He got too heavy for the hens,” sighs Kostas. Its meat is as darkish as the juniper berries I’ve seen alongside my path and we redden it additional with garden-grown tomatoes. It’s served on a mattress of do-it-yourself hilopites, minute pasta squares made out of native goat’s milk, eggs and flour. It’s stellar – even higher than coq au vin.

The walnut harvest is in full swing in Valtesiniko

(Clare Hargreaves)

My subsequent cease, stone-built Stemnitsa, is understood for its gold and silversmiths and nonetheless has a silversmithing faculty. I glimpse the college students hammering inside, then pattern the village’s skaltsounia (little socks), miniature pasty crescents stuffed with native walnuts and honey.

In the sq., I meet economist Ioannis Lagos, who first conceived of the Menalon Trail in the Eighties. “I believed that by using our historic trails we could save both them and the region’s villages. Some locals said I was mad.” Undaunted, Ioannis drew on the data of shepherds and huntsmen to map the space’s paths and hyperlink them right into a 75km path that formally opened in 2015. “Hikers came from worldwide,” he says. “My critics admitted they were wrong. Everyone from taxi drivers to shopkeepers and hoteliers has benefited.”

He accompanies me on my last leg by the lush gorge of the Lousios river, apparently the place nymphs gave new child Zeus his first tub. To our proper, a monastery hangs precariously from the limestone cliff like a swallow’s nest. Inside its womb-like chapel, hewn from the rock, flickering candles illuminate sombre frescoes.

To our proper, a monastery hangs precariously from the limestone cliff like a swallow’s nest. Inside its womb-like chapel, hewn from the rock, flickering candles illuminate sombre frescoes

Today simply 4 monks inhabit Prodromou. Visitors are supplied Turkish delight and tea, as engaging cooking smells waft from the kitchen. “The food’s good here,” a bearded monk confides. “We take it in turns to cook. But I don’t often get asked; my style’s considered rather experimental.”

More monasteries, silver olive groves and an 18th-century gunpowder mill carry us to medieval Dimitsana, piled onto a mighty rock overlooking the gorge. As standard, there’s a last climb, however I’m amply rewarded by its cobbled streets and stately stone homes. I may not have been serenaded by nymphs, however I’ve encountered shepherds, wilderness and Christmas timber to final a lifetime. Arcadia has not upset.

Clare travelled with On Foot Holidays (onfootholidays.co.uk).

Dimitsana is all cobbled streets and stately stone homes

(Clare Hargreaves)

Travel necessities

Getting there

Wizz, Ryanair, easyJet, British Airways and Aegean all fly direct from the UK to Athens. From there, rent a automobile or take a bus to Tripoli.

Staying there

Amanites Hotel in Dimitsana affords conventional rooms and a each day buffet breakfast.

More data

Find out extra at menalontrail.eu.

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Walking with gods in the Greek Peloponnese