Valley of the Muses

Last Sunday I was hiking with the folks from the Krystallis hiking club in the Valley of the Muses (κοιλάδα τον μουσών), near Thebes. That's the valley as seen from above in the picture. We were there for the traditional cutting of the new years cake. We did about 4 hours of hiking, starting way down in the plain...

... going in the direction of Mount Helicon (Ελικώνας). For a large part we were on an almost flat dirt road between fields. We were enjoying the nice weather, cool and windy, but sunny. Well, we were looking at a dark gray mass of clouds over the mountains, but for the moment things were fine.

At some point the dirt road started to wind itself up the mountain side. We'd follow that and then turn left to where the actual path to the top of the mountain would start. Due to the time limit set by the circumstances, we wouldn't be able to make it to the top though. We had to be back for the food and then to get the coach back to Athens in reasonable time. Also we were in a large group, with some children, so there was no chance for a quick run for the top.

So when we reached the crossing of the path, we stopped for a while and headed down on the path, back to the valley. It was good to hike a bit on a real path, brushing the trees, feet on rocks.

On the way back, the dark clouds finally catched up with us. They dropped a bit of rain on us, just enough to make things interesting. We made it back to Askri (the village) in time, had our food in a tavern there, got our piece of cake and were comfortably chauffeured back to town.