Pilgrimage to Panormitis – September 2015 (part 1)
From Julia
Symi was a lot hotter than I had anticipated when I planned my walk, back in the UK – I’d travelled overland from England and it had been really roasting hot since Milan. I actually chose to visit Symi because it had the monastery, and the fact that it was on the other side of the island from the town was guaranteed to make me want to walk there. (James, when I emailed him, very kindly told me that it wouldn’t be that difficult)
I had the idea of staying a night – everyone I asked said it would be easy to get a room once I arrived – and I’d talked with Yiannis, captain of the Poseidon, before I left, and he said I could join them on their Tuesday visit and come back by sea rather than re-walk the 12 miles back. So I set off on Monday morning feeling cheerful.
Getting out of Chorio was the hard part. If you don’t know the warren of little paths and alleys, it’s easy to lose one’s sense of direction. I must have climbed up and down twice as many steps as I needed to, and was getting pretty desperate, when I said a prayer and an angel on a motorbike popped up and said “Hop on, I’ll take you to the main road.” I hopped on, and in two minutes I was being told “All road from here. All, all, all road”.
I’d left before dawn, and had forgotten my hat, my sunglasses, and my earrings. (The earrings were not necessary, but I missed the other two once the sun got up) But how hard is it just to follow the road? And I like to walk. The views were spectacular on the first stretch, the road wasn’t busy at all and the walking was good.
It was still cool because I’d started so early, and while the sun was low there was still a lot of shade. Here and there I saw little groups of goats, saw some kind of buzzard at one point, heard a few birds but not a lot of wildlife.
I took one detour that cut off a loop of the road and came out at a little church (St Catherine’s, I think. It seemed to be frequented only by goats) but it was so rough and rocky that I was glad of my sturdy walking shoes and thought to myself that it would have been just as quick to walk the loop of road as struggle over the rocks of the shortcut.
The last few miles are always the hardest. The sun was up, and there are seven switchbacks that take you down the last big slope of the mountain, all in the open in blazing sunshine. I had got through most of my one and a half litres of water by this time, but once I’d come out on a curve of the road, still high-up, and seen the monastery nestling in her cool almost-landlocked bay below, nothing was going to stop me. I admit that I did feel a certain smugness going up to the gate past people getting out of cars that had taken just minutes to drive from Symi town, knowing that I’d been walking pretty much non-stop for four hours.
I found the place to ask about a room, and it was no trouble at all, one night – €16. I dumped my little rucksack and went to explore the Monastery and the church (such a shame there are no photographs allowed inside the church – the iconostasis is the most amazing piece of carving. You could stare and stare at it for hours. I saw the great silver icon of St Michael (and said a few quiet prayers for absent friends) and lit a couple of candles. I went into both the museums, and saw all the famous boats that have arrived miraculously in the bay with appeals from seamen all over the world for help from St Michael. I even found Captain Yiannis having a drink in the cafe and told him I would definitely be coming home on his boat the next day. He was delighted to see that I’d made it: “Four hours! No stops!”
It was worth all the sweat and sore feet.
