We’re very happy with today’s ride plan, which is a last minute change. It’s a long story, but we originally planned to spend tonight at a mountain hotel high up in Rentina, and follow it with a long 72 Miler to Meteora the next day. Facing a mile or two with an awful 15% grade on the climb to Rentina, we looked at the map and came up with an obviously better alternative. We’ll bike to Karditsa tonight, which still involves some climbing but doesn’t look crazily painful; and we’ll have a more reasonable run in to Meteora on the next day.
I didn’t mention it yesterday, but for the last part of yesterday’s ride we were biking up the valley of the smallish Percheios River. This morning we follow it a few more miles before turning north and crossing the high ridge that separates us from the broad plain of the Pineios. The entire first half of the day was very beautiful, as we approached and then crossed this ridge. So far at least, we’re quite surprised by how quiet and beautiful Northern Greece is proving to be.
Actually, it’s time to orient myself a bit, and start differentiating a bit rather than just referring to all of this as simply Northern Greece. Right now we’re in Thessaly, the large region that centers around the Pineios River and it’s large agricultural basin. Northern Thessaly is bordered by the Pindus mountain range, which extends north to Albania and Macedonia; and to the east is the northernmost extent of the Aegean Sea.Thessaly is a very fertile agricultural region, and referred to as the breadbasket of Greece.
Leaving Loutra Ipatis, we look back for the last time at the mountains south of the village. With that impressive cleft in the rocks, this looks like a formation you would see in Crete.
We’ve just started seeing these in the last two days, but we’ve also seen it elsewhere in Southern Europe. I think it’s allium ampeloprasum (wild leek).
Andrea BrownMaybe! It's definitely an allium, which includes chives, onions, and garlic. There are ornamental alliums as well. Reply to this comment 5 years ago
Storks! Beautiful, but a bit frustrating because I couldn’t find my zoom camera. I had packed it away somewhere when we feared a possible rainstorm, and now it’s not handy when I need it.
Shortly after crossing the Percheios we started in on our major work of the day, an eight mile, 2,100’ ridge climb. Beautiful, not terribly steep. We just kept reminding ourselves that it’s not the 15% monster we’d been dreading.
Over the top, we paused for lunch at a bar in tiny Perivoli, eating the bread, cheese and ham we’d brought along from this morning. After that we bent west again, angling off the northern face of the ridge and dropping to the Pinaeos basin. The last fifteen miles to Karditsa were a pencil straight shot through wheat fields, country we haven’t seen the likes of in Greece before. It’s not the most interesting riding, but we were in a hurry anyway because rain was threatening.
Much of today’s ride passed through very attractive farmland like this. It took awhile for it to register that part of its beauty is the absence of fences.
A favorite subject, back by popular demand. Very common in this green belt - I’m sure we saw more hives this morning than in the entire rest of the tour so far.
After a few more miles of scenery like this, we eventually leave this beautiful, quiet road and drop from the ridge to the basin of the Pinaeos River. The remaining miles of the day are much less scenic.
So close! We’ve been speeding it up for the last five miles, hoping we’d get to our hotel before the rains hit. About a quarter mile shy, we take some shelter for a few minutes and wait for them to abate.
Karditsa is a beautiful little place that I quickly fell in love with. It’s got a vibrant, youthful culture - there must be a college here. And, amazingly, it has a bicycling culture too - this is the only place in Greece where we’ve seen bikes widely used for transportation and enjoyment. It’s a bit different though - they’re ridden quite casually, almost like fast walking. Bikes weave in and out of crowds, people on their bikes straddle them chatting with friends on foot. I couldn’t get the camera out in time for a photo I’d love to have, of a young couple moving down the street: he’s on his bike, with his arm draped across her shoulder; she’s on foot, pulling him along. Toward sundown there’s the usual social milling you see everywhere in Europe, but with a twist I’ve never seen before - the passeggiata with bikes.
Karditsa is unlike any other city we’ve seen in Greece, with a real bike culture and infrastructure. I could live here.
