Menalon Trail, September 2024
— Amy Hackney Blackwell
Chris has already posted a blog about the Menalon trail. This is a longer, day-by-day travelogue of the trip. The two posts should (we hope) complement each other.
The Menalon Trail put us square in the heart of the Pelopponesus, the heartland of Greece if Greece can be said to have a heartland.
The Menalon Trail is a 75-km long hiking trail that makes a big loop through Arkadia. It’s the first hiking trail in Greece certified by the European Ramblers Association (ERA). The ERA is the organization that certifies many of the trails throughout Europe, including the E4, which we found ourselves walking much of October. Interestingly, the ERA does NOT appear to have certified the E4 in Greece, and even leaves a warning about a particularly scary section on the south coast of Crete that our Trekking Hellas guides also warned us against attempting! As I’ve said before, Greek trails can be rough and are not always well-maintained. So for the Menalon Trail to be ERA-certified is a big deal.
The trail was developed unter the Elliniki Etairia, the Society for the Environment and Cultural Heritage, as part of their “Greek Paths of Culture.” The conceit of the trail itself is that it passes through a series of towns that each have their own identify within the region of Arcadia - one specializes in metalwork, another in metal milling, another in stonework, and so on. The trail follows old footpaths that people used to use to travel from place to place.
The Menalon Trail is divided into 8 stages, but it’s typically walked in five pretty long days. (Though these people ran it in 3 days!) The stages are marked by arrivals into towns; some towns are closer to one another than others, and some don’t have much in the way of accommodation or restaurants. As always, traveling slightly off the high season can mean that places will be closed and that lunch (or dinner…) will not be available when you want it.
The terrain is rugged and abrupt. The thing with mountain regions is that you might be only a mile or two away from a place as the crow flies, but a day’s journey as the human moves. Just because you can see a place doesn’t mean you’re close!
So that’s the Menalon Trail. But first, we had to get to Arcadia.