September 25: Valtesiniko–Lagadia
13.9km; 500m (-700m) ascent.
There’s nothing like dawn in a mountain town.
Today we walked the last section of the Menalon Trail, the lengthy Section 8: Valtesiniko–Lagadia. This was another longish day, and there was no shortening it! Once we left Valtesiniko, there were no towns, and no taxis.
It was a pleasant enough walk, though, hilly and forested. We were already at the top of town, which was a small blessing.
This was serious sheep country. The flocks were on the move.
The walk did feel long. Chris was nursing an old stress fracture in his foot that started to feel sore that day, but there was nothing to do but carry on. At one point, we did sit down by a stream to have a little party; I’d saved a chocolate bar and some bits of cheese and happened to have a plastic bottle of water. Yay fun! (Don’t knock it! It’s important to tend to morale.)
At one point, we were nearly knocked off the hillside by two giant dogs cavorting. They seemed to belong to a crew of Brits, but they denied ownership and insisted that the dogs had simply joined them on the trail and they couldn’t get them to go away.
One of the dogs galloped off with his new friends to visit parts unknown, but the other joined us for a kilometer or so.
Alas, that dog was driven away by the aggressive sheepdogs tending a large flock of sheep.
We climbed up and over a ridge to see our destination, Lagadia. The air felt very clear and open on the hillside, much like the opening of Sound of Music.
After another hour and more of descending, we finally walked into town. We had finished the Menalon Trail!
We had a very comfortable room in the Maniatis Mountain Resort. We were the only diners at our taverna that evening. Most of the menu wasn’t available, but the grill isn always fired up, and a horiatiki and grilled meat makes a fine dinner.