September 12: Milies–Tsagarada
13.21 km; 606 m (-429) ascent.
Yesterday we had the luxury of returning to the same hotel, so no need to pack up. Today would be harder.
Milies to Tsagarada is a little over 11 km, or about 7 miles. The thing to know about hiking in Greece is that it takes longer than you’d expect to cover a given distance. An 11 km hike in the Alps would be considered an easy stage, almost a rest day. Seven miles in the U.S. would be a morning’s walk, even on something rugged like the Art Loeb Trail.
But in Greece? An 11 km hike can take you from breakfast til 3 pm, and leave you footsore and ready to collapse. The occasional 14.5 km hike can feel like the Bataan Death March. An 18 km day, standard issue Alps stuff, is basically unthinkable here. At least to me and Chris.
This is mainly a function of terrain. Greek trails are uniformly rocky and rugged. They’re occasionally overgrown or washed out, and they’re often hemmed in with prickly plants. You can’t take your eyes off the ground for a moment, lest you trip on a rock or allow the spiny burnet to have its way with your lower legs. Losing the trail and backtracking is common, as is the occasional bushwhacking or unexpected scramble.
So, Milies to Tsagarada! We took our leave of dear Anastasia and moved our car to the public parking lot next to our taverna, where it would await our return several days later.
Then we were off.
This walk featured lots of climbing. The trail is forested the whole way, white oaks and beech and the ubiquitous cultivated chestnuts.
A massive storm passed through Pelion a year ago, downing trees everywhere. We had to climb over or under the trunks, which slowed our progress.
The open areas are now full of bracken fern and wild hellebores—it turns out hellebores are native to Greece!
The cyclamen were blooming; they were blooming everywhere in Greece throughout the fall.
Cresting the ridge, we discovered the Aegean on the other side of the Pelion peninsula.
We arrived in Tsgarada (2021 population 428) exhausted and ready to shower. Tsagarada’s main claim to fame is a plane tree (Platanus orientalis) said to be 1,000 years old.
The Lost Unicorn looks like it stepped out of the 19th century with its library full of actual books (!) and salon full of antiques. (The interior reminded me a lot of the charming but almost certainly haunted Hotel Weisshorn in Switzerland. We stayed there doing the Walker’s Haute Route several years ago.)
Lucky us, a couple of tavernas were actually open for dinner—not something you can take for granted in small Greek towns in the shoulder seasons.
We ended our meal by sampling the local spoon sweets, which are basically jams served in spoons. Very sweet! The proprietress topped that off with free ice cream bars—one feature of taverna dining is that you WILL be given a free dessert whether you ask for it or not. (In Crete, they add raki!) It took some time before we concluded that eating the unasked-for dessert was entirely up to us, and that we didn’t have to finish them just to be polite. But those ice cream bars were actually delicious, and tiny, so no harm done!