Symi walk (1)
Let me bring you up to date on our Sunday walk. The weather was fine, though there were some clouds about, and I wisely thought not to take a jacket. Or: I thought, wisely, not to take a jacket. Or: I thought not to take a jacket, wisely. Or: Wisely, I thought a jacket not to take. Or: Not a jacket, I thought wisely, to take. Good luck if you are just starting out to learn English.
Pondering how one can wisely think not to do something, we set off at eleven to collect the boys, Jenine and Janie who was visiting. We had packed some of the essentials for a three-hour walk on the hills: plasters, headache tablets, water, cameras, a phone, tissues, a roll of loo paper, a tablet, a portable speaker, two DVDs and a bottle of wine. Admittedly, some of those things were staying behind at Jenine’s house, namely the plasters and water. Only joking, we always go walking with water, we even stopped to pick up a couple of bottles for the boys, and the side pouch on my rucksack is an out-and-out medicine chest on a permanent basis. Having collected the rest of the party we set off on what is, for me (and regular readers) a well-known path.
Through the village and up to the donkey track that leads out. Here I pondered a while again, or, here I again pondered a while as, when we arrived at the gate, we found it open. Now then, do you do as the countryside code says and always close the gate? Or do you leave it open? If you close an open gate are you running the risk of annoying a farmer who returns from herding his goats only to find that the gate is now shut and there is a herd of wandering goats between him and it? Or, do you leave it open and risk Mrs Papakaloyiannou coming out from her house with a basket of washing in her arms to discover that between her and her washing line is a herd of wandering goats, and they have started to eat her smalls? I just made sure I wasn’t the last one through the gate and thus was able to lay any arising blame on someone else. And so, dilemma averted, it was onwards across the lower donkey path to Ag. Pareskevi.
Ag Paraskevi, as you will know, is the saint of eyesight. “St. Paraskevi is considered to be a healer of the blind, because of the miracle she performed in restoring the sight of Antonius Pius.” http://www.orthodoxchristian.info/pages/Paraskevi.htm We stopped at her small chapel on the mountainside to wait for the ladies to catch up, had some water and adjusted clothing layers. I had thought not to bring a jacket, but I had also thought not-to-not wear several layers (I think) and so scaled down the three-layer system of shirt wearing to a mere one; a t-shirt in January. That sounds like it should be a John Mortimer novel, but I don’t think it is. Once the ladies had caught up we plodded on and turned off the path about 100 good, old-fashioned yards along on the right. Don’t turn left here as you will end up climbing the boulder field to the road, not pleasant.
This path, as you probably now, skirts around beneath the Roukouniotis road and above the west end of the harbour. There are many terraces along here, the trees were starting to come into bud, there were ravens and kestrels above us and plenty of wrecked rock beneath our feet. The path here is sometimes mossy and soft and, in other places, simply a pile of small rocks which can dig through your soles and aggravate your soul with their persistence, and my poor attempt at poetry.
We’ll pause here and carry on the walk tomorrow where the next instalment includes an appearance by a tree-goat.
