Taking to the road
I took another wander up the hillside the other morning just as the sun was coming up. Varying the route I have been taking of late, I followed the main village ‘road’ across the square, up the lane past the bakery (now closed), and turned left at Zoi’s Taverna, not yet open for the season. Down the slope past the ‘new’ playground and café, and turned right at the bins. From there, I trudged uphill along the main road, which is a good way to warm up. The first slope isn’t too severe, and it almost feels flat at one point. Around ‘chicken corner’ and up a steeper slope to Lavinia, where a middle-aged man presented me with a wheelie on a very noisy off-road motorbike the other day. (Get some therapy.) There, just past the new-ish bin hut and the gang of straggly cats, I stopped to admire the sunrise.
Continuing on, I made the last push to the cemetery. After there, the road flattens as its heads out around the hillside, rising steeply only now and then. Along that way, you pass the enclosure where my friendly goatherd keeps his pens, and that morning, he was among them doing some paperwork. I assume that’s what he was doing as, I noticed, he now has an office desk and a chair in the enclosure, and he was sitting at it. He looked as if he was about to interview a kid for an apprenticeship or give Old Billy his final warning. Perhaps he was about to interview a nanny; who knows? We exchanged waves, and I decided against taking a photo as it would be rude, and carried on. Around a corner, along a gentle rise, past Yianni’s house high on the hill to the next bend, where I paused to sip some water and watch the bay light up in gold.
Continuing on and up, I checked my pedometer to see if I had made my target yet and found I hadn’t, so I pressed onwards and upwards a little further. Once I’d passed my target for the day (I am building back up slowly), I stopped to try a panoramic shot of the valley in which You can see from Datca in Turkey all the way down to where a few boats were anchored in the bay.
A few steps more for good measure, and I turned around and headed back. That’s the best part of the walk, as it’s all downhill from there. Along the way, I got a toot’n’wave from the mayor driving up the hill, said hello to others strolling up to tidy graves at the cemetery or see to heir sheep on the hillside, and followed the main road back into ‘town.’ Back up the slope to Zoi’s Taverna, a hill that always takes me by surprise because it’s steep after coming downhill for so long, back through the village gasping beneath a mask, and across the square where Nikitas sits outside his empty peripteron. The last uphill leg is around the S bend to the house, but by then, I am warmed up, and the incline presents no problem. Home, shower, cup of tea and to the desk, all by seven. And so started another day.
