We spent the last couple of nights in a rather touristy place called Litochoro. It might be several miles from the sea but it has a maritime museum which was a surprise, not surprisingly it was closed, not many people come to Litochoro to learn about the sea. It did have a nice collection of torpedo's in the garden.
Two days ago I promised no more ancient sites, I lied, we spotted a nice castle today (Platamon) and could not resist going round it. I suppose as it was 13th century it does not count as ancient. As you can see the views from the castle were good, the seaside resorts on closer examination were a bit run down but one had a disused railway station which still had a great many rail artefacts and the ticket office, which was not locked, had piles of completed forms listing the details of tickets sold. It seems there are not many train spotters in Greece, if this was in the UK it would have been stripped bare by now.
When I worked in Athens we quizzed all our Greek colleagues as to where was a good place to visit. They all of course promoted their own home towns or islands but when pushed further – “where do you like to go on holiday” many of them said the Pilion. Following this advice we had a couple of weekend trips from Athens and since then Gill, Sian and I had a fortnights package holiday here, I would guess in the late 90’s.
It has everything going for it, beautiful sea, some nice sandy coves, picturesque hillside villages and, in winter, skiing.
You can probably gather we like it and have now established our base camp in a village called Portaria in what seems to be a lovely hotel right in the middle of the village square (pictured).
We hope to spend three days walking along the trails which connect the villages together, perhaps visiting the odd taverna for refreshment along the way.