Crete Walks

We bought Geoff Needle's book "Crete Walks in the Apokoronas" at Mediterraneo Books in Chania and today Grier took walk number 21, through the countryside around Stylos. It took awhile to get used to distances given in meters, and also to decipher statements like "Continue 190m to a junction with a track ahead bearing right, a tarmac lane going right uphill bearing right, water standpipe 318 in the far left corner, and a tarmac lane going left downhill which you take." Huh? What was that again?

Stylos is famous for it's fresh water springs and is where Samaria water is bottled. When you order water in a tavern, it'll be Samaria. The walk started at the bottling plant, continued through the town into to countryside, to the mouth of the nearby Diktamos gorge, up and down and up some hills to a small unnamed village where there was a blessed carob tree to rest under out of the midday sun. The walk then wound back down to Stylos and to dakos, wild greens, and a Coke at the Tavern of the Mustached Man under the one of the big plane trees that line the road through town.

Here are some pics, including a water standpipe, in this case standpipe 317, and the shady carob tree (see if you can spot the basketball hoop).