The sky is blue, the air is clear, and I’m off to the mountains, after a quick breakfast and a coffee. The dogs are barking, the traffic is snarling. Everyone’s busy today. It’s a quick drive in the taxi and before long I’m in Azogirés at the Alfa Kafeneion sipping mountain tea. There’s a classical guitar in the corner and as there are just a couple of patrons I ask to play, and find a beautifully mellow instrument, so sing a few tunes.
The mountains are cragging down at me on the 20 minute walk to the waterfalls. They stroke a granite jaw and wonder how high I will climb. Not today! I’ve come for the shaded oaks, just me and the Naiads. The pools are crystal clear and very cold. Light reflected on the overhanging rocks. A place of joy and contemplation. Here the stones take on a more irregular shape, away from salt and tides and buffeting winds. Quick. In you get! A shock of cold. It takes me back to a Sheffield Swim Meet in about 1968. I’ve never swum a fifty metres faster. Or was it thirty yards? Who knows. But this is delicious.
I can barely tell the lichened rock from ancient wood. Organic, inorganic. Shade and light. Maidenhair velvet dappling. Naiads. I swear I saw them dancing, silvern first, then sparks of blue, flittering in the dimpled pools. It’s lovely to have time. On another walk I see goats and ducks, beehives and a Turkish bridge on the way to a monastery. A lovely day! I wrote a poem about pebbles. Kali nichta! xxx