Mount Olympus was revered by the Greeks and Romans because of it’s crystal clear streams. Gill demonstrated this phenomena at the start of our walk today by walking straight into a river whose water, being so clear, she had not seen. So the walk was started with wet feet. The picture shows a re-enactment, I was laughing too much to photograph the initial event. However at times it seems the river is less benign as you can see from the photo at the top of the page.
Many visitors to the area climb Mount Olympus which, being 9,000ft high, is a three day hike. You drive up 3,000ft then walk up another 3,000ft to a refuge, stay the night then climb up and down another 3,000ft, another night in the refuge and then back down to the car park. Being adventurers of course we were tempted but I was concerned that to maintain our strict Greek diet I would have to carry 2 litres of wine and four cream cakes up to the refuge where we would spend two night in close proximity to a great many Israelis who make up at least 50% of the tourists in this area.
I normally have nothing against Israelis but at the moment Israel is covid central so spending time in a dormitory with a lot of them seems high risk. It turns out I was wrong on all counts; firstly the refuge is kept supplied by mule trains who carry up essential supplies like wine, beer and the odd cake. Secondly because Israel is badly affected, the Greek authorities insist on any visitors from there having a covid test, so in practice the Israelis are probably the safest people to share a dorm with!
But as you can see from the sign we were still living dangerously as we don't walk quickly up hill.
Why so many Israelis? It is their holiday season, according to Wikipedia Yom Kippur is Sept. 27-28, Sukkot Oct. 2-9 and Simchat Torah Oct. 10-11. No idea what all that means except all the children are off school so a good time to go away and Greece is not very far, has some nice green trees, high mountains and plenty of space so something of a treat for them.
Despite Gills accident in the water we had a very nice walk through the forests which cover the slopes of the mountain followed by goat soup in a little mountain cafe. The soup was advertised on a chalk board outside and all the walkers were stopping by for some. Each bowl seemed to have a 1lb of goat meat so several animals must have been slaughtered to feed us all, it was very good.
My prayers to the Gods on Mount Olympus have been answered, Barnet won last night!