It was October but still hot and summery when I walked out of Kos town towards the Asklepion.
On other occasions, in other directions, I'd found too much fast
traffic on the main roads, and ferocious guard dogs on the back roads scared
Lisa. This time, I found that from the Casa Romana there was a pavement along
the road. We followed it as far as the Jewish cemetery, a memorial to
those who were taken away to their deaths in the final months of World War II.
Then we detoured on a track through an olive grove into the Turkish village of
Platania. There was sprayed graffiti on the old fountain. I continued uphill on a
quiet road until there were cypresses growing either side.
I’d had vague thoughts of re-visiting
the Asklepion, the ancient hospital of Hippocrates, but neither the attendant
nor the cats were very welcoming to me and Lisa. So I walked on, catching
glimpses of the site through a fence. Then, a little way beyond, we came to an
intriguing stone tower.
Wandering off the road to
investigate, I found sections of an old aqueduct.
I passed through a fence keeping
goats in and descended into a pebbly riverbed with a stream still just about
flowing although it hadn’t rained for six months. Lisa sat gratefully in a pool
after the heat of the walk.
We continued until we reached a
narrow waterfall over a dam, where the ruins of a watermill stood, a stone
inscribed with ‘1955’. This place could have been used from ancient times until
sixty years ago.
I sat on a rock with streams
flowing slowly on either side, listening to the trickling water, watching blue
and red dragonflies dance about, until little green frogs tentatively surfaced beside
me.
Then we returned to Kos town on a slightly
different route, having discovered another deserted place.
