The main road through Symi was only really opened up in the 80s and 90s. When I was first here, in 1996, I followed the tarmacked road from outside Lavinia Studios, where I was staying, and up the hill to see where it went. I followed it to the start of the forest about half way across the island and there it ran out, becoming a trail of rocks and stones, blasted out and ready to be flattened and tarmacked. I may be wrong (usual am) but it wasn’t actually finished until we came to live here in 2002, or it had only just been finished all the way, or something like that. Since then new roads have been laid (lain?) across the island to link distant homes and farms and even beaches to the main road. Still no traffic lights or roundabouts though.
And we’re now walking on this road heading back towards Ag Konstantinos, past the now collapsed army outpost building where once upon a time soldiers used to stand guard, past their old shooting range and the old kalderimi, the original path from Yialos to Panormitis, or at least one of them. As we walk along we can follow the edge of this, though it disappears under the main road, the scree that’s been churched up from the road building, under piles of trash thrown over the hillside by lazy folk, old washing machines and stuff that the council has to come and clear away (woops there goes our council tax) and even under someone’s house on the edge of the main road.
From up here we can see the island of Halki, which looked like it was being rained on, and Tilios and Nissyros and even the bottom end of Kos behind the Turkish peninsular. The clouds are still massing and passing, some grey, others white, a cloud-spotters dreamscape I imagine. And far off by the old fish farm the gullet that was used to illegally transport some refugees, and that was listing to port last week (if you read last week’s walk you will have seen the image), has now capsized and gone under. I guess the council or port police will have to try and do something about that, I am thinking they might like to get a team in to clear away any pollution (whoops there goes the rest of my council tax), but that may be my own kind of dreamscape.
And onwards, the old kalderimi running out as we pass the fork for Ksisos/Panormitis, my feet finally starting to ache as we’ve been marching now for four hours, the tummy rumbling and someone in the party mentioning a glass of something at Mandeio’s on our return. This kind of spurs us on, as does the thought of the thing in the slow cooker that I rustled up this morning, making dinner an easy thing to organise when we get home.
I have to pause at the house by the road to check out the contraption. I am not sure what it is, looks like a clothes line, or a way of getting things from road to house, but it’s an intriguing use of a bicycle pedal.
And we finally make it to Mandeio’s for a glass of red four and a half hours after leaving home, having done a circular route, and passed the museum where the external scaffolding has now come down at last. It looks like there’s still work going on inside and on the roof, but the outside walls and the shutters appear to have been fixed up.
And so to home and dinner where our walking friends made a complete fuss of Jack, the Alarm Cat who, after an hour or so of being allowed to share his fur with anyone on the sofa, was quite overcome and, by the looks of it, took to the bottle. To round off the day (and remember we’re still talking about last Sunday) we went to the switching on of the Spalding illuminations, which was a fun event. Now I just need to head back up the hill to 400 metres and see if I can see the lights from up there and the betting is that I will be able to. But I am not going up there at night to check it out.
Scroll down for the boat I mentioned, before and after.
