Tim Salmon - Trekking in Greece: The Peloponnese and Pindos Way

About the Authors

Tim Salmon first visited Greece in 1958. He has lived and worked in the country, visited countless times, written and translated books and articles, and made a film about shepherd life for Greek TV.

Michael Cullen was brought up in Greece and, after university, set up a trekking business there. He spent the 1990s leading hikes throughout the country, before moving to the UK, where he now runs a travel website.

TREKKING IN GREECE

THE PELOPONNESE AND PNDOS WAY

by Tim Salmon and Michael Cullen

JUNIPER HOUSE, MURLEY MOSS,
OXENHOLME ROAD, KENDAL, CUMBRIA LA9 7RL
www.cicerone.co.uk

Tim Salmon and Michael Cullen 2018

Third edition 2018

ISBN 978 1 85284 968 9

Second edition 2006 The Mountains of Greece

First edition 1986

Printed by KHL Printing, Singapore

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

All photographs are by the authors unless otherwise stated.

Route mapping by Lovell Johns www.lovelljohns.com

Contains OpenStreetMap.org data OpenStreetMap contributors, CC-BY-SA. NASA relief data courtesy of ESRI

Acknowledgements

I would particularly like to thank Penelope Matsoka and Ivy Adamakpoulos for all their help with maps and GPS problems, Florica Kyriakpoulos for helping to sponsor the book, Nicolas and Marie Chochoy for their stalwart work with saw and clippers, Bob Simpson for driving me around and doing his share of sawing, Ian Payne for teaching me how to use a GPS in the first place, Jane and Alan Laurie for lots of useful information gleaned from their epic walk across Greece, Vaslis Nasikos for checking the Zagri routes, Kstas and Yita Gantzodis for their kindness and advice in the grafa, and countless other people who, for more than 40 years now, have directed me around these mountains, offered me hospitality, let me into their lives, dried my clothes and told me fascinating stories about exile in Tashkent, hand-to-hand fighting in the Korean war, encounters with bears and all sorts of other adventures that do not often come a Londoners way. And, far from least, I would like to thank my co-author Michael for joining this great project to promote the wonderful mountains of Greece and promising to go on with it when I am finally put out to pasture in the Elysian Fields!

Tim Salmon

Thanks to Rolf Roost and Yirgos Kanelpoulos for nobly maintaining the Peloponnese stretch of the E4 trail, and the accompanying website; to my brother Matthew for accompanying me, with unstinting patience and good humour, every step of the way from Dhiakoft to Pantaz beach (not to mention all the variants, the backtracking and the dead ends); and to my family for taking up the slack while I was away, or beavering over maps and keyboards until the small hours.

Michael Cullen

Warning

Mountain walking can be a dangerous activity carrying a risk of personal injury or death. It should be undertaken only by those with a full understanding of the risks and with the training and experience to evaluate them. While every care and effort has been taken in the preparation of this guide, the user should be aware that conditions can be highly variable and can change quickly, materially affecting the seriousness of a mountain walk. Therefore, except for any liability that cannot be excluded by law, neither Cicerone nor the author accept liability for damage of any nature (including damage to property, personal injury or death) arising directly or indirectly from the information in this book.

Updates to this Guide

While every effort is made by our authors to ensure the accuracy of guidebooks as they go to print, changes can occur during the lifetime of an edition. Any updates that we know of for this guide will be on the Cicerone website (www.cicerone.co.uk/968/updates), so please check before planning your trip. We also advise that you check information about such things as transport, accommodation and shops locally. Even rights of way can be altered over time.

The route maps in this guide are derived from publicly available data, databases and crowd-sourced data. As such they have not been through the detailed checking procedures that would generally be applied to a published map from an official mapping agency, although naturally we have reviewed them closely in the light of local knowledge as part of the preparation of this guide.

We are always grateful for information about any discrepancies between a guidebook and the facts on the ground, sent by email to updates@cicerone.co.uk or by post to Cicerone, Juniper House, Murley Moss, Oxenholme Road, Kendal, LA9 7RL.

Register your book: To sign up to receive free updates, special offers and GPX files where available, register your book at www.cicerone.co.uk.

Front cover: Asprrema gorge (Pndos Way, Stage 12)

Going up towards Skolio (Mount Olympus, Stage 2)

FOREWORD TO 2018 EDITION

In the 1970s I was teaching in Athens and came across the account by Lord Hunt, of Everest fame, of his 1963 traverse of the Pndos mountains with a mixed party of Greek and English youngsters. I decided that I would try to retrace his itinerary and my route became the backbone of the first edition of this guide in 1986. Since then I have added descriptions of most of the interesting mainland massifs so that the book became a general guide to mountain trekking in Greece.

At the time of the last revision I acquired a colleague, Michael Cullen, who was born and grew up in Greece and founded its first ever trekking company. This time we decided to change the format of the guide quite radically, ditching almost everything in favour of a single route that runs pretty much the length of the country from the northern frontier with Albania to the southernmost reaches of the Peloponnese. We have accordingly also changed the title to The Peloponnese and Pndos Way , in the hope that this will give the book a clearer focus and identity and help to attract walkers to come and sample the real charms and beauties of Greeces mountains.

If you are in any doubt, there is no better taster than the blog of Jane and Alan Laurie (http://greekhiking.com) describing their epic 2014 walk from the Prspa Lakes on the AlbanianGreek border to their home in the southern Peloponnese, most of it following a route identical with or very close to ours. And keep an eye on our websites, www.thepindosway.com and www.thepeloponneseway.com, for additional photographs and various extra snippets and bits of information which we will add as time goes by.

Tim Salmon