Leros at the Tail End of Winter

You may recall that back in late December, I’d had plans to go to Leros but was thwarted by ferry schedules (the only connections would have landed us in the port of Lakki late at night, with nowhere to stay) and went to Symi instead. But in the last week of February, my work schedule eased up a bit, the ferries were favourable and I was feeling the call of travel again. I was looking forward to eating some food I hadn’t cooked myself, and seeing something new.

Packing my stuff and Lisa’s, we boarded a ferry to Kos on a Monday lunchtime under darkly brooding skies, yet it was exciting to be on the move, passing the coastline of Tilos and then Nisyros. In Kos we wandered the beach and then town, gorging on delicious bakery treats in the afternoon and mezes in the evening: oven-baked aubergine loaded with tomato and feta, sweet potato chips, juicy meatballs and good retsina. The next day, the weather had cleared, and we continued our journey in brilliant sunshine, past little Pserimos (thinking I must go back) and up the wonderfully rugged and untouched east coast of Kalymnos, the sky a deep blue, light glittering silver on the sea.

Leros, just a stone’s throw from the north of Kalymnos, is a similar size to Tilos but has a comparatively big population, with several villages. I’ve often heard from Greeks that it’s their favourite island. Back in the early Noughties, I’d hopped off the ferry there in September with a bicycle, found the roads around Ayia Marina too busy for cycling, and left a few days later after getting not much further than the impressive Archaeological Museum. Arriving with my dog and a backpack on a bright, warm late February day, I looked forward to discovering more.

From Ayia Marina port at lunchtime we manoeuvred through a busy section of street, then made our way in a leisurely manner for a few kilometres along a broader, quieter road heading northeast to Alinda, stopping on and off for Lisa to jump in the clear blue sea. For a while, I sat on a little stretch of beach, laughing at how beautiful it all was. I was on holiday, it felt as though winter might be over and it felt great. When you're in luck and have perfect days at the tail end of winter with nobody around, it's the best time to be on an island. 

The dog-friendly accommodation I’d found online, four rooms above a taverna, was right at the end of the road, around a few curves of headland with lovely little beaches below, at the foot of a limestone ridge. We passed a carpenter’s workshop before arriving at Vareladiko: named for the barrels the carpenter built for the wine the owner’s father used to make. The owner, Spiros, later told me that he’d first set up a makeshift place here when it was only accessible by boat. Then the road was extended, and in summer it got very busy, but for now I was the only guest, and Spiros and his wife were busy doing maintenance every day on the rooms to get ready for opening. All around, the grass was filled with bright yellow Bermuda buttercups.

The room was beautiful, with a huge terrace overlooking the bay, and Spiros found a foam mattress for Lisa to sleep on. As dusk began to fall, I realised the lights weren’t working, and went downstairs to ask if there was something I was doing wrong. Spiros and his wife sat watching TV in the closed taverna and, surprised, said they’d look into it. Meanwhile I walked back along the bay for twenty minutes as far as the grill-house and ordered a mixed grill to take away for my and Lisa’s dinner, and wine to drink while I waited, chatting for a while with some local guys, bantering about whether Leros was better than Tilos.

When I got back to the room, the electrician and his wife were just finishing up rewiring the light fixtures inside and out, and mosquitoes were having a party in my room. In future, I’d be sure to keep the terrace doors closed at dusk. My double bed creaked and the mattress springs were prominent, and for hours the bedsprings squeaked as I got up to find and squash another buzzing intruder. Ah well, I'd get used to it... Meanwhile, I must have sort of poisoned Lisa. In Kos, I’d managed to get to the vet to buy an anti-tick pill for her, since spring was coming. But the pill was for dogs from 25 to 40 kilos, and I put the whole thing in her food, probably a bad idea. What’s more, her dinner was some of the mixed grill takeaway, was supposed to be a treat but I hadn’t realised that some of it was spiced with chilli. My poor dog.

In the morning, however, it felt peaceful. A few people walked or jogged to the end of the road for their morning exercise. I worked for a while at the table on the terrace, listening to the electricians fixing the wiring in the next rooms. I hadn’t expected such a perfect beach right below, with sand and pebbles and rocks to snorkel around – and not expecting swimming weather, I hadn’t brought my mask. I swam, got ready to go out for a walk, then we got as far as the next beach and stopped again, sitting for a while as three ducks started quacking, marched out to the water and bobbed over a little way to see us, then returned complaining to the safety of their tree.

Eventually we continued to New Palatino for lunch, where a local woman called Vayia made me a delicious Greek salad with good vegetables and cheese and herbs. She fussed over Lisa, bringing her water and talking to me about her own dog, getting quite emotional as she said the only sad thing is they don’t live long. Afterwards, we continued along the road and veered uphill on the road leading north to an area called Kamara with a cluster of shops. I peered in the window of an old-fashioned looking bakery, and the woman inside started telling me all about how dogs are good and people aren’t, then gave Lisa a biscuit. I also saw a bedding shop, and wondered if I could surreptitiously sneak a new mattress into my room.

We followed the road a little further then turned onto a lovely rocky track through green hills, and sweet-smelling yellow broom flowers, and bushes full of white cistus flowers, and more buttercups… There were wind turbines on the other side of the valley but it was all gorgeously lush, with the sound of goat bells as we got down to Ayios Nikolaos beach. A family arrived by car and the little girl asked if she could pat Lisa.  

We continued along a rough track around a stunning piece of coastline, the hills looking rugged to the north, while to the south there were hills covered in tractor-tilled fields. I stopped mesmerised for a while to watch and listen to a shepherd whistling to round up his goats, his dog running back and forth, the only sound the whistling and goat bells and the sea crashing in below.

In the distance, I saw a man on a motorbike leading two horses. Further on, a middle-aged man in a checked shirt waited patiently for his cows to graze on a lush patch of grass. We passed through a little settlement with fields and trees and barking dogs, then back to the road. When I stopped at a little supermarket, the pretty young girl in charge introduced herself as Stamatia and told me a long story about how her dog went calling on another dog overnight, then insisted on feeding a handful of dog biscuits to Lisa. I asked about local wine and learned instead they had Raven, a locally brewed pale ale. Wow. I might be staying on Leros a while…

‘Are you from Leros?’ I asked, intrigued by her.

She was, she said, ‘but from Partheni, far away…’

Partheni was right in the north of the island, and I decided to go there the next day.

Symi in late December: Wine, Fridges and Frescoes

 

There are two souvlaki houses in Symi harbour, but both turned out to be closed until the New Year. A lot of islanders went away for the holidays, and you can’t blame them after two Covid years and then a financial recovery year which was exceptionally busy. A bar had burgers and club sandwiches, but they said one restaurant was open around the harbour. I wanted a big dinner as fuel for walking the next day.

The restaurant was open, empty (it was early), didn’t have any of the oven-baked food I’d hoped for, and was quite expensive. The salad was mostly rock-hard tomatoes. But it had a nice view over the water, friendly people; gradually other customers arrived, a group of English people who had a house here, and two frozen-looking Germans who’d arrived on a boat and ordered tea and fava.

The owner came to talk to me when he wasn’t busy, and I was pleased to chat in Greek – I don’t get enough practice at home. Asked if I was staying for New Year’s Eve, I explained I’d like to but would have to find a cheaper place to stay. By the end of the evening, I was being offered a room, an extra slice of cheesecake and dinner on the house… and a waitressing job.

So I did wake next morning with a certain anxiety. How do these things happen? No matter, it could all be resolved later.

It was 28 December, and outside my windows that looked straight out onto the water, cars and scooters were zipping about. The sun briefly hit the other side of the harbour around 9 a.m., then went behind a small cloud, and everything was still damp and cool, though forecast to get warm. I made myself a Greek coffee and sat on the lovely balcony, listening to cockerels crowing somewhere back around the Kali Strata, the steps that lead up to the Horio flanked by mansions from the late 1800s.

Despite visiting Symi several times – often for its great hardware shops, I must admit, though with good walks also – I’d never been up high in the centre of the island on foot to see the old wine presses. These sunny, bright winter days were perfect for it, though I’d have to set out by mid-morning given it was getting dark soon after five.

We set out inland from the back of the harbour to reach the cemetery at Elikoni, didn’t see any markings for the path from there that was on the map, but found a way up the dry riverbed a bit and through gates, passing sheep that approached rather than ran away, until suddenly there was a beautiful old stone-paved donkey path or kalderimi that twisted back and forth up the hillside, making the going easy all the way to a church or two and small group of houses. It was a wonderful start. By then we were already in very warm sunshine – I wished I’d been able to dip Lisa in the sea before we set off – and lovely countryside.

Turning left, we followed the gradually ascending road past the Xisos turn-off and eventually to meet the main road that crosses over the top of the island and heads down again on the other side to the big monastery of Panormitis. Thankfully at this time of year there was no traffic, just the sound of sheep bells (and a jackhammer far below, of course, this also being perfect weather for construction work).

There was a nice little detour on a kalderimi again, beside a field where someone was burning olive branches, to the chapels of Ayia Katerina and Panayia tis Stylou (tempting to think of the name as a corruption of tis Tylou, ‘of Tilos’, since there was a view of our island!). After a couple of hours of ascending, it felt as though we were in the uplands, the road unexpectedly winding around cultivated valleys scattered with monasteries, and eagles and crows circling around Vigla peak just above (617m, the highest on the island), with what looked like a broken wind turbine.

I had decided to aim for the ‘Pano Krasokelia’, Upper Wine Presses, following the directions in Kritikos Sarantis’ booklet Discover Symi on Foot – copyright 2007 but bought here just a couple of years ago so hopefully it wouldn’t be too out of date – along with an also locally produced walking map. Blue and red paint dots also marked paths here and there.

Passing the padlocked monastery of Ayios Konstantinos , I continued to Ayios Nikolas as directed, but there was no sign of the path if I was reading the instructions right. There was a truck outside and washing hanging to dry, but nobody to ask. After a few attempts to find the way across rough ground with gates very tightly wired shut, I had to give up. Perhaps on my own I’d have tried harder, but it wasn’t worth making Lisa walk through fields of thistles.

Back to the road, instead I took the turn a few minutes later to Kokkimidis, following a narrow, pleasant concrete track that ran below those elusive wine presses into beautiful hilly uplands, with enclosures where again the sheep and goats seemed to approach rather than run, and there was a stone-build pond filled with water. I realised I hadn’t seen anything like the death toll of goats we have on Tilos this winter. Although the fences and gates here might be limiting, the animals were looked after, fed and watered.

The track led to a cluster of historic buildings through gorgeous countryside, and at some point, someone in authority must have thought: what a perfect place to throw the old fridges down the mountain! For there, lo and behold, was that scourge of the Greek islands, the edge of the old dump, spilling down the hillside towards the forest.

But at Ais Yiannis Tsagrias, the gate wasn’t padlocked, and the door wasn’t locked, and inside were some of the oldest frescoes on the island. They were dark, hard to make out, but showed up clearly on my phone camera and were thrilling to see. Stepping outside again, I felt blessed to have been able to come to this place and find them, surrounded by spectacular hills covered in rocks and forests, with a stellar view of our modern-day contribution, a cascade of rusted appliances.

Just beyond were the remains of an ancient hilltop fort (above: Lisa shocked that you could see the rubbish dump from here too?), perhaps repurposed once as a farm. There was a big stone water cistern, and a little further along a primitive ancient wine press, just a block of stone with a circular carving, in a padlocked enclosure for animals. 

Beyond there, past some old stone terraces at the end of the road near large old trees was Kambiotissa, a monastery built like a fortress with tall walls and still seemingly guarded thus with padlocks and fences all around. I tried following the fence around to the back and glimpsed what perhaps was a more recent wine-pressing building, but it was hard to tell.

We were tired, and Lisa was keen to head back, but I decided to take one last detour uphill to the monastery of Kokkimidis, joking aloud to Lisa that this one would make our day, even as I fully expected it to be padlocked and fenced. But hallelujah! A car I’d seen earlier, perhaps the only car in hours, speeding up the road, was parked at the top of the winding track, and the gate open. 

I heard voices inside, but seeing nobody, I left Lisa tied to the fence and tried the door to the church, above which was an old plaque alluding to a restoration in 1697 – and opened it to an astonishing little church, every inch of walls and ceiling painted with fascinating, beautiful scenes.

The floor was a pebble mosaic, with an interesting bit of graffiti in it: 8.11.1970, Tilos, and some initials, carved into the stone - that must have taken some dedication! Perhaps M.S.S. was the person who made the floor?

It had been a stroke of luck to find the place open; and I'd have missed that if we'd got to the wine presses. And so, we walked back down, in beautiful light, everything still and glowing, the sea glassy, Lisa determined that we should go back exactly the way we came, while I felt we should take the road as dusk was falling. We compromised by trying a bulldozed track which led to a wonderful old kalderimi, which led all the way to the Horio.

From there Lisa guided us down to the Kali Strata, down to the harbour for dinner - and a bottle of wine on special from the old supermarket. 'Kalo Pascha!' the owner with the dry sense of humour wished me, happy Easter, and I looked puzzled. 'I'm getting ahead of myself,' he said, 'can't wait for winter to be over.'

A Winter Trip

In the quiet days of winter, I love to travel to other islands. Although it’s beautiful here at home on Tilos, for a couple of months now I’ve been looking forward to going somewhere new and seeing something different. Since family and friends all left in early December, Lisa’s been bored, wondering where everyone is. So once I’d finished some pressing work, I was all set to go to Leros and do some exploring.

But Leros had other ideas. Suddenly in the post-Christmas week all the boat connections were difficult, and meant arriving late at night in a place with no affordable dog-friendly accommodation to be found online. I may have a reputation for being intrepid but even I didn’t fancy that. At last I found a lovely place – but the owner said he’d made a mistake and it wasn’t available at all. Fed up of checking Airbnb and Booking.com, I decided not to go to Leros.

Still, I fancied going somewhere. Symi was much easier, just a two-hour (or less) ferry ride away. Accommodation is usually expensive but I found something that looked decent and booked it, and suddenly was very excited about going back to Symi on my own in winter, when the weather forecast looked promising – yet it wouldn’t be too hot for walking up into the hills. I’d passed Symi often on the ferry to Rhodes over the previous months, and looked longingly at those empty hillsides.

The sun felt pretty hot as we boarded the SAOS Stavros on Tuesday lunchtime. As usual with that ferry, it felt like a private taxi with hardly anyone on the boat, and was idyllic with the view of blue sky, blue sea, blue islands, sunlight gleaming on the water, until the crew started washing the deck and we had to move around trying to find a warm dry place to sit or stand.

The SAOS takes a bit longer than the Blue Star, but it docks at the old place by the clock tower, not the ugly modern one on the other side of the harbour. It should have been a short stroll to the room – except of course, Lisa had to sniff every bit of street furniture very carefully for information about other dogs. It seemed a lot of dogs had been peeing on the artificial Christmas trees.

The room, right overlooking the harbour, was both beautiful and hilariously odd; the bathroom was reached up steep wooden steps and to get to the sink you had to duck under a wall that reached down from the ceiling to about shoulder height; I had no doubt that I’d be walking straight into it one night half-asleep.

Starving because I hadn’t had lunch, I nipped into a nearby supermarket and found all sorts of foreign delicacies: you know you’re in Symi when you can buy smoked salmon and real Roquefort… Then with a very fast turnaround we set off wandering, to make the most of the couple of hours of daylight left.

With the Kali Strata to our backs, we crossed the ‘Gefiraki’, the little stone bridge next to the old customs house, towards some of the grand public buildings, then Lisa decided we should head straight up some near-vertical steps, which twisted around houses and then emerged at a plateau with paths running between smallholdings. I found our way back to the cemetery, from where I knew the way across to Nimborio Bay, passing the big old stones of Drakounta and an ancient wine press, and following the stone track down to the water.

After Lisa had a swim, we walked around the bay to the beach at the end; I'd been this far a couple of times, and once in the heat of summer with a friend had taken the path up the hillside via the old churches and underground caverns, then over the hill and down to Toli.

I hadn’t really expected to get anywhere new on this first afternoon, but thought I’d at least look for the start of a path, following directions given on the local map by Kritikos Sarantis. The path turned out to be well marked by blue paint, leading up the side of the hill, the hillsides beyond lit up bronze. It was getting late, but I knew we could walk back along the road in the dark. Lisa didn't know that and was panicking a bit.

One thing that would be confirmed on this trip, as we found on our trip to Nisyros, is that often the paths marked on the ground aren't shown on every map. As I check the Skai/Terrain map now, which I bought on the last day when the other map was falling apart, this path isn't on it. In a way, that's part of the adventure - you never know what you'll find.

The stone path led tantalisingly up and up until at last we reached Agios Nikolaos tou Stenou on the ridge just as the light started to turn paler. Over the other side, old terraces led down to a bay. 

We just got back down to Nimborio for dusk, the water still, the air warm, people fishing from boats and throwing lines from the shore, all so silent except for the call of a bird.

We took the road back, turned inland towards Harani and the dry dock, and suddenly there was a harrowing, persistent noise, which spooked Lisa. It got louder, so much so that I laughed when I saw the Karnagio café open – you’d have had to be deaf to enjoy it. It turned out to be just a couple of guys hammering and power-sanding the rusty old hull of a boat.

Beyond the clock tower in the main harbour, things were more peaceful, and all the lovely churches lit up. I stopped in at a shiny new supermarket to buy dog food, but it was eye-wateringly expensive, perhaps not surprisingly given that it’s opposite where the shiny yachts moor. I continued around to the end of the harbour and to the old supermarket hidden down a narrow alley, where the price of dog food was more reasonable and the friendly owner, whose sense of humour I’d appreciate over the coming days, wished me ‘Bon appetit!’

Having fed Lisa and unpacked a little, I decided to celebrate an excellent arrival, and although there were several cafes open, I pushed my luck by seeing if I could sit at the old men’s café without causing a stir. It was beautiful, old-school, no plastic walls or heating, no cushions or cocktails, just wooden chairs and iron-and-marble tables and a simple counter inside. Although I got a strange look from the patrons when I approached, the owner was happy to serve me a glass of wine in a sort of schooner, and I wrote up notes in peace, overhearing someone inside giving a long ouzo-fuelled diatribe punctuated by assenting murmurs from the other table.

It was a nice start to what was going to be a magical little trip.