A walk on the wild side of Serifos

Thursday 30th June - Friday 1st July Hora and Livadi

The good news is my body is making great strides in repairing itself after the foolishness in the sea. I am now at the stage of flaking like a puff pastry lid. But I am on the mend and hopefully all will be well soon.

So after having dinner at home and listening to several episodes of the The Rest is History podcasts, I walked up to a windy Hora. I decided to have some wine tonight so I tried “Enna Poterie Kokkari Crassie  Parakelo”. I can’t remember this phrase, but thankfully I have a series of cribs on my phone. Of course the young lady serving me then asked me a question, I had no idea what it was, but it soon became clear. Over here you will often get red wine chilled. Or they will lob some ice cubes in it. But in this case, she told me when she brought it, after I asked, that she had said the ice cubes were to make the wine less strong. The next thing is I don’t really like peanuts, but somehow  I got them swapped for crisps. Someone walked into the bar with a guitar and later on I could hear them playing and singing, a bit of an impromptu concert for those inside. Here is a photo of a water cistern at night, where you can get drinking water, although I have never seen anyone use it.

A lady sat down near me and somehow we got talking. She works in the medical centre, and yes she knew Merope. I explained about my visit to the centre, and I found out she worked in some kind of microbiological role. She also debunked the idea that that beach was a naturist beach! Soon she apologised and said it was too cold outside, and she was going inside! It was a bit cold I guess. Over the road at the coffee shop the lady owner was looking after a couple of children, possibly grandchildren. One of them was bawling, not happy. It did not seem so busy tonight, but perhaps it was because I was a here bit later. Not long afterwards, a lady who I saw here before and said a couple of words to, sat near me again, with a friend. Again we shared a few words, not everyone has a very big command of English. When I went inside the bar to pay, it was quite busy and the guy who I think owns the place was there. I asked the young lady what her name was, another one on my crib. At this point several glasses drunk, things got a bit muddled and I think she then decided to give me a Greek lesson as I might have asked her how to pronounce the phrase not very well! I might have got high points for for trying, but a poor score for the results. At least it made her smile!

So I decided not to get a car today, the guy I use for cars is going to be busy at the weekend, so I will get the car on Monday. Meanwhile over breakfast I looked into doing a walk from here to a church and then beyond. The church is called church Panagia Flevariatisa. So to get there I had to go to the so called bus stop square in Upper Hora. On the way I chucked my rubbish in the bin, including a salmon skin, which I am sure the local cats will find and feast on, if they get there by 7.30am tomorrow. This is when they dumpsters get emptied. I went into the bakers and saw the young man who gave me that invite. So I wanted to know more about the bakery. He is not the son of the lady who runs the shop. The bakers opened in 1850, he showed me a poster about it ( all in Greek unfortunately). He also showed me the oven, original, which still uses wood which can be seen outside in baskets. They use Greek flour and yes it has gone up in price, but he hasn’t passed all the price increase onto his customers. Today he recommended a sort of sausage roll, but the sausage is minced chicken meat and there was a sauce in there too. I ate it, while dangling my legs over a wall looking at my path for today. This church was on route.

So because I did not start the walk where I hoped, I had to sort of go thorough steps through peoples back yards. This is a legitimate path, I am not jumping over peoples walls, it’s like a permitted path. At one point the word “welcome” was painted on the path. Not far along, was the little church among pine trees locked of course.  I then went back to the path which then became a legitimate track, but unpaved. I could hear chickens, even see their Heath Robinson designed coops and runs, plus the old dove/pigeon buildings that I described before. I could see the church I was heading for and a graveyard alongside it. When I got to it I could actually see water around it on the surface of the ground. I had not expected that.

I could see from Google maps on my phone that I had  choices on where I could go. One beach was shown, but I was pretty sure I had visited it before. There is another  which I think is for residents only. I could also see I was going to end up at Livadi, and I had to be mindful that there is that gap in the bus between 2.30 and 5. At this point I could see the bay of Livadi and a Sea Jet was rolling in. Behind me were lovely views  of Hora as well. In front of me the reservoir revealed itself, it’s quite big. I was thinking it would be good if they could use wind power to pump the water around the island. 

 Behind me because of the wind, there was a sort of sandstorm blowing up, I could feel it on the back of my legs. Luckily so, if I was doing this walk the other way round I would be blinded by the sand. In the valley, I could see properly organised olive plantations, and they looked very good. I think this beach is called Ammo’s, I am sure I went down to it before, so I did not bother this time.

I decided as much as I could to stay on this side of the upper part of the horseshoe of the bay of Livadi and not drop down to its beach yet. I suppose a bit of Greek humour comes out here, two old chairs sitting out onto a nice view, one had a stone to help hold it down!

I continued along, there were still amazing views of Hora, Livadi and the bay. I tried to use the panorama mode in my phone to capture it all, but it was too windy and I could not stand still to have a chance of getting a decent photo. On the far end of the bay, high up are some very posh places to stay. They look new and have nicely landscaped gardens around the buildings. You can tell they are posh, the usual small hatchback, you see most tourists bumbling around in, are replaced by Audis, Volvo’s and the like. It’s very nice but it’s not really Greek or Greece. They do get a lovely view of  Livadi though and the coastline is just for them, but I did not see any beaches.

So I then dropped down onto the far end of Livadi beach, took my sandals off and paddled towards the bus stop. Very soon there was this guy and his girlfriend, I could not see what he was doing to start with, then realised he was washing a big fish that maybe he had caught? Paddling along the beach is fine, but there are some small stones that are quite sharp, so after a while I put my sandals on and walked along the beach  edge. I treated myself to an ice cream and a cold drink, and bought a couple of supermarket things. A Zante ferry had berthed and the usual crowd of people and traffic was in the port. Later on at the bus stop, I got talking to an English couple, they were staying in upper Hora, had been coming to these islands for years, they first went to Sifnos thirty years ago. They like Serifos, he likes the walking you can do. They said there was some singing in Upper Hora last night, it carried on past midnight!