Today, we put the
last major piece into our island-exploration puzzle with a drive up
to the northern end. Hillier, wilder and more barren than the south,
this part of the island is quite sparsely populated. The hills are striated with dry-stone-wall-edged terraces, but there's little evidence of anything actually being cultivated.
The road out winds high
along the island's spine before eventually reaching the tiny
settlement of San Michaeli. There, we parked the car on the outskirts
and headed for the old church on the other side of the village; I
hung back to take some photos of sheep taking turns to climb over a
stile in one of the ubiquitous dry stone walls.
By the time we
reached the church, the wind was properly howling, and as I wandered
around trying to take brooding photos of dry stone walls, dramatic
cliffs and hairy sheep, it was starting to get a bit crazy. We
hurried back to the car park and as we got back to the car, Zoe very
nearly got taken out by a huge piece of thistle-like vegetation that
was hurtling through the car park.
On the way home, we
stopped in at Ano Syros, but it was just as closed up as on our last
visit and we were soon back in the car. We then went in search of a
key cutter – this morning, I managed to snap the main house key off
in the lock. Luckily, I was able to prise the broken end out of the
lock and thankfully, Johannes had a spare, but getting a copy made
wasn't so simple. We found a rudimentary hardware shop on the way
back towards the Carrefour, but it was closed, so Kate asked for help
in the adjacent greengrocer's. He suggested we tried the 'market' in
Ermoupolis, so we parked at Carrefour and got the bus in. But of
course the two key cutters we found were both closed for the
afternoon, so we had a coffee, bought some wine and headed for home.
No comments:
Post a Comment