So here we are up at ‘Chamon’ and we’re taking a look around inside the chapel where the floor is pebbled in traditional local fashion. What’s not so traditional about this church is the graffiti in the floor, some of which dates back to the 1950s, maybe before. I saw dates in the 1970s as well.

Besides the chapel is a house and there are people living up in this little settlement. It’s strange but I’d never been here before, well, not exactly here. We did, many years ago, once walk past the place but slightly further down. We’d walked from Horio around the road to Agios Efraim, and then turned off towards Kokkimides, wandered around towards Chamon and then headed across country and ridge to come out above Pedi, where we then traversed the hillside, heading down, following a donkey track to finally arrive back at Ag Marina cemetery again.

This was a four hour walk and had started due to a ‘let’s go for a short walk after lunch’ conversation; we just carried on walking and I can remember the exact day. It was November 5th 2002, because after we returned home we went to Jenine’s house for fireworks; it was the first time we met Ian.

But that’s an aside. Back up at Chamon, the path becomes more made up, concreted in parts as it is used as a road by nearby farmsteads and homes, though there are few, and in other parts is just sand, washed away by recent rains and showing pits and holes and boulders. We stopped now and then to admire the wildlife, chaffinches, ravens and coal tits, apparently.

It’s a beautiful place up there, with trees on the further hillside, and on this side of the valley, views across and up to Kokkimides, and towards the sea (not that you can see it) and the cliffs above St George. Peaceful, warm in the sun when it appeared through the clouds and with nothing but fresh air scented with herbs.

We haven’t come very far today, tomorrow’s post will be a bit longer as we get into some archaeology (i.e. guesswork on my part) and have a look around an ancient mystery. Meanwhile, in real time on Symi, we’ve been having more grey skies, storms, rain, winds, but some warm weather, and there’s no great news to report.

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Today we start a walk from Horio to Horio, via the top of the hill, a ridge, some ancient sites, a church and a road, among other things. The area we’re walking towards, at the start of the walk, is called Χαμές, or Hames, of Chames on some maps depending on how you want to translate the Greek letter X. It’s pronounced kind of like the ‘ch’ in the Scots word ‘loch’, unless it comes before and i or an e in which case it’s pronounced as the h in ‘hew’, so in this case it’s more correctly ‘Chames’ though not as if the ch came from ‘church.’ Try saying ‘loch-ames’ without the lo, and pronouncing the ‘ames’ not as in ‘James’ but as in two syllables so: ‘loch-am-es’ and with the accent on the ‘es- part. Got it? Good, now you know where we are going.

By the way, I don’t know exactly what Χαμές means, it’s not a word in my dictionary, but the closest I can come to is χάμω, an adverb meaning ‘to, or on, the ground,’ and χαμένος, the adjective ‘lost’ or ‘the loser’ (as at cards, which is what we were on Saturday night before this tale starts). Being Greek, the word also means: break off, spend (money), wear out, reduce quality of, pull down (building), undo, change, seduce, kick up a row, move heaven and earth, deteriorate, spoil, go bad, get out of order, lose one’s looks. And if you add a slightly different ending you get, ‘there is a great to-do’, and also, ‘things are not so serious.’ All of which sound a bit like today’s blog, and possibly none of which have anything to do with the place we are going to so let’s get walking before we reach the end of the post.

So, we started from home, a very good place to start, and wandered through the village and up to Ag Marina cemetery where we turned a sharp right, just through the gates and past the noisy dog. Upwards is the way to go when climbing up a hill and we certainly went upwards, in fact we climbed to the ridge which, on my map, is at 400 metres, 1,312 feet. This is rough terrain, mainly with a narrow path made by walkers and goats, but occasionally with man-made steps. Not the kind of steps we see in the village or on the Kali Strata, but a few ‘here and there’ steps, suddenly appearing in the middle of nowhere; it makes you wonder what they are doing there – the answer becomes apparent later.

There are great views from up here as you might see in some of the photos. There was also a great skyscape with all manner of clouds, some threatening rain (which we didn’t get until after dark, by which time we were home) and there was a rainbow over the sea between us and Turkey. We stopped every now and then to take photos and swig from our water bottles, and then carried on. You can follow the red and blue dots or the not-always-obvious path and find your own way up here when next on Symi, but make sure you wear the right shoes.

At the top, at 400 meters, you meet a threshing circle and a large area of once agricultural land. There are a few houses up here and a couple of chapels, one of which is called ‘Panagia Chamon’ (Χαμών), and that form of the word is the possessive plural, so, with ‘Panagia’ being the Virgin Mary, the church is ‘The Virgin Mary of the lost’ (perhaps), or ‘of the losers’ (maybe), or ‘of those who have lost their looks’ (more likely in my case), if it means any of those things at all, and I am sure someone who knows will put me right at some point. But the amount of habitation, stones walls, and evidence of once-well-farmed land now makes sense of those steps heading down to the village. If you were talking your goods to sell or put on ships, you’d come down the way we just came up, you wouldn’t go around the Vigla.

Okay, that’s got us started on the walk, tomorrow we will carry on but I wanted to leave you today with another ‘Sounds of Symi’ video. This is the sound of the village church bells ringing on a Sunday, for a name day or festival, or perhaps because we are in Advent, as heard from the side of the hill at roughly 300 meters up. (Sorry about the crunches from the camera.) You may need to turn your volume up.

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In which we see our valiant walkers find respite on a veranda, capture a stone-chat on camera, and deal with a large plate of meat.

Down that hill (see yesterday’s post if you haven’t already) and we find ourselves at the Catacombs. Not sure if it’s been done on purpose or by the weather but there are now four openings; the old one (well, they are all old dummy! How old and for what reason built are other questions), where you drop down into the hole in the ground, which is actually a roof-collapse I think; an apse collapse per’aps? Then there are two areas where the rocks have slid away leaving gaps acting like windows into one of the side chambers, though these could have been doors at one point; and then one other entrance that looks again like a collapse, but where you can get down and inside, to stand on the bone and goat poo covered floor. Worth a careful look around if you are visiting.

Next door is the church, or rather the three chapels, and the mosaic where we stopped to make out the man with the camel, a deer, the partridge, a boat under sail and a something-else in the old, Roman floor. And then, after a short walk down, we were at sea level and on the way back – via a stop off to see Jeanette and Todge and be offered a welcome glass of wine on the veranda.

The route back that we took was around the coast road where we saw a raven, a stone chat and a goldfinch or two. Neil got some shots of some of the birds which I will share if he shares them with me. We also passed Habib and Velocity of their way for a swim – it was a warm day though cloudy at times, and wandered back into Yialos about four hours after we’d started from Horio.

We passed a new gathering of refuges at the police station, having noted that a couple of the impounded boats are now being kept over at the old fish farm, a couple are still in Yialos, and noted that the Christmas lights are up, but were not yet turned on.

Lunch was a bit of a meat feast at Olivia where a litre of wine is only €7.00, which is a bit of a bargain as at most other places it’s at least €5.00 for only half a litre.

We considered the bus, which was due to set off having long returned from Roukouniotis, as it was now getting towards dusk, but instead headed up the ‘lazy steps’, which, according to some book I read, are not the lazy steps at all; they are further along the coast road near the Port Police station. Up into Horio and, as Yiannis Rainbow is in Athens having his operation and that bar is closed, stopped at Lefteris’ for one on the way home. And then, as it was still too early to get home, stopped at Petros and Zoi’s Village Café for one more on the way to being on the way home, and then, just because it was such a cosy place to be, had one more one more before finally heading home (having been to the supermarket and caused havoc with the picture of the sacrificial altar).

And then to an evening of watching the new Spiderman film to about a third of the way in before falling asleep at around nine in the evening. Now that’s how you spend a Sunday on Symi in the winter.

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Coming down the hillside, to where we will join that riverbed, we came across a strange stone. One huge slab of white rock that has been dressed, you can see chisel marks in it, very worn so probably very old. Thing is, this rock must weigh a couple of tonnes and it is not the same rock as thereabouts; it had been brought here at some point, and for some reason. There is evidence around that the area may have been occupied; some straight edges to some of the ground rocks (or could that be coincidence?) and certainly some large ruined buildings including another windmill – lower down the ridge fromt the Roukouniotis windmill. So, the question is, what was this stone used for?

Our guesses ranged from a sacrificial altar, through a grave marker, to a chart table, which is what we used it as we laid out the map to see if it was marked as an historic monument. It wasn’t. [Later that evening, I asked Sotiris at the supermarket if he had any ideas, as I know he has land and farms out that way. He told me it was a sacrificial altar, and laughed. He had no idea either. So, if you know, please put answers on a postcard and email them to me. Ta.]

Back to the walk. From Aslan’s Table (my name for it) we headed across the hillside and over a wall, getting in a nice but mild bit of rock climbing, and then skirted along the edge of the riverbed, high up, traversing a dodgy part at one point with only a flimsy metal fence to cling to if we should slip – more rock climbing, brought back fond memories of my days in harness and ropes (but that’s another story) and almost gave me the bug back, and the vertigo was not an issue. And onwards…

Now, if you are following this on a map, we are opposite the ancient landmark of 12 ΣΠΗΛΙΑ, or 12 Caves, of which there was not sight or sound. But talking of sound, here’s a little video where you can hear what the walk was like after we’d met the ponies and just after Aslan’s Table.

They are goat bells you hear; a whole herd was coming down that hillside you can see in the middle distance. I’d provide you with the smell of wild oregano and sage (took some home) if I could, but that’s not yet possible on a WordPress blog. So, onwards past the invisible Spilia, and now we round a corner where we can see the sea and Nimborio.

And that’s for tomorrow when we find catacombs, mosaics and a glass of wine.

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Today we start a walk, our second long walk of the winter walking season, and this takes us (well, me) through some places I have not been before.

It starts off in Horio and the church of Stavros from where we collect our walking companions and head off towards the old track from the village towards the hinterland. There’s a new-new sign just past the gate now directing you to Panormitis one way and Ksisos the other. We followed the path towards Ksisos and then turned off it having visited Agia Pareskevi where I had a quick word about eyesight (she’s the saint of eyes).

According to my map, this sub-path (which is not marked on it) leads us past ‘Teixos’ which means ‘Wall’ and that is listed as an ancient monument, but I think the map reefers to me. Having said that, there are many walls out there, so much terracing and it’s so hard to put a date on them. I can vaguely recognise Byzantine masonry, and more modern building works, but dry stone walls that could have been put up last year or 1,000 years ago are hard to date. We did see some terracing though, weeded out and ready for planting fodder for livestock, apparently.

And so, on across the side of the valley behind Yialos, below the main road, and through a line of trees, and over some very rough ground. Grateful for my new walking boots which stood up well to the day and didn’t provide blisters.

We came out in the area around Agios Fanouris where the pre-fab church lives now, and there, coming up to the main road, saw the Symi bus drive past. I’ve never seen it up there before and can only assume it was coming back from Roukouniotis or the army camp. It was St Andrew’s day on the day we were walking so perhaps there had been something going on. Anyway, Neil was happy to be on a flat surface again, as you can see, though Justine looks like she’l making a safe way around him as if to avoid.

Carrying on down the main road for a while we then stopped to have our photo taken at the ‘no photos’ sign and then took a right, following the red dots towards the area marked on the map as… (takes a look), well, actually there isn’t anything marked on the map, and the red dots ran out too. To our left and down is the area known as Kato Meria (Kate O’Mara as it was called by one of our party), and the church Panagia Katholiki. Further across and up was the famous landmark of ‘Michaelis’ barbeque’ and beyond that the church of Ag. Dimitrios (one of them). Between us and all that is a huge field of boulders and rocks, wild herbs, and a dry riverbed which then leads all the way down to the back of Nimborio.

That’s for tomorrow, as is the tale of the sacrificial altar, or Aslan’s Table…

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