E4 in Greece: General Comments

The E4 in Greece, marked intermittently with yellow and black diamonds or stripes, crosses some diverse landscapes. In the north things are greener, with more trees on the mountains, pines higher up and beech and other deciduous species lower down. In the south things get dryer and dustier, with more prickly Holm oak (after visiting the Natural History museum in Heraklion I now realise I should have distinguished Holm Oak from Kermes Oak both having spiky, holly like leaves and both common in the region). Crete seemed particularly dry and rocky. There also seemed to be more stiff thorny vegetation in the drier, southerly areas, but fewer brambles. In most of mainland Greece it was common to encounter shepherds or goatherds walking with their flocks as they grazed, accompanied by some aggressively barking dogs that required some caution when approaching. In Crete this was not common, as a lot of the land now seems to have been fenced (the Psiloritis mountains being an exception).
Many more people walk the Crete and Peloponnese sections of the E4 than do the more northern sections where I met no other E4 hikers. A shame as I enjoyed my walk through Macedonia, Thessaly and the Pindus mountains every bit as much. Mount Olympus is an exception with large numbers of people following the E4 route from Litochoro to the summit, none seem to continue down the other side.
A noticeable feature of walking the E4 in Greece is the number of small churches you pass, which seem to increase in number the further south you go. These appear in high places, mountain passes and the like. Some are rather beautiful inside with their wall paintings, icons and golden lamps. Some are old going back to the 14th century, some are very recent, although you would probably not realise unless you saw a year from the 1980s or similar displayed in the stonework. There are also small shrines by the roadside, some clearly mass produced but individually cared for. Monasteries are also encountered throughout Greece.
Little cafes, which in mainland Greece were usually found in the square by the church under a plane tree, were excellent places to take a break with a Greek coffee, a Coke or Lemonade. I had a number of coffees or similar generously bought for me in Greece by friendly locals, especially in places less visited by walkers. Maybe I was a bit of a novelty or maybe they were proud that someone from England had visited their little village. There was also suspicion in the north though, with people asking what I was doing, and not just out of curiosity.
The Greek bakeries were a pleasurable place to pick up a snack and there was a lot more variety to Greek food than just mousaka. It helped to take whatever it was they had on the go, although where they spoke no English "Souvlaki", "salata" and "eliniko cafe" generally worked. It also helped to say "fagito?" pronounced "fayito?", which means "food?", as it was sometimes difficult to tell if food was available. I was surprised that I was often offered vegetarian food, something that was rare when I first visited Greece many years ago.
To navigate the E4 through Greece I used a GPS  preloaded with tracks downloaded from the internet or created by myself, and a map on the SD card. The main sources of downloaded tracks were waymarkedtrails.org and traildino.com, I also used e4-peloponnes.info in the Peloponnese and in Crete tracks supplied by the people behind the Cretan Way guidebook. Where I could not find a GPS track for a section I created it from maps published by Anavasi, the main producer of maps suitable for hikers in Greece, or else I constructed one from tracks published on wikiloc.com and using Google Earth. (Update: I have recently discovered Geopsis also produce hiking maps of Greece, check out their site as well as Anavasi's). To help others, in those areas where GPS tracks for the E4 are not available or are incomplete I have loaded my own tracks, based on where I actually walked, onto wikiloc.com and viewranger.com (on MyViewRanger search routes for "johnpon"). I used GPS maps from Navitracks.de, their Balkans map and later their Greek map, which seemed quite similar. By no means complete, and with contouring that was not very detailed they were the best available. I had some digital maps from Anavasi but found these more useful in my preplanning for creating my GPS tracks, than when actually walking the route, as they were not "vectorised" maps and slow to load.
You could get away with using a decent smart phone instead of a dedicated GPS but charging it could be an issue in remote areas. I did find the default Viewranger maps useful on occasion when I needed to divert from my planned route as my phone gave a larger screen than my GPS, and was quicker to zoom and pan. Diversions from the official E4 or my planned routes where needed on a number of occasions whether due to paths being too overgrown or excessive snow.
Although Greece is reasonably well blessed with small hotels, guesthouses and rooms on the E4, there were still days in the mountains when I needed to wild camp. This was not generally a problem except in Crete where its rocky landscape and thorny vegetation did not make good pitches (although you can hide on flatter ground in someone's olive grove).
Including travel from the UK and rest days I spent a total of 90 days crossing Greece on the E4, around 3 months in two separate visits. It may be difficult to do it in one go as either you will encounter excessive heat in the summer or excessive snow on the mountains in winter. Having allocated the time it is not a difficult thing to do and you will be rewarded by many things expected and unexpected....

Links to different parts of my trip:

Start of walk on E4 through Greece
General comments on Macedonian section of E4
General comments on E4 between Florina and Litochoro
General comments on E4 between Mt Olympus and Kalambaka
General comments on E4 in Pindus mountains
General comments on E4 in Peloponnese
General comments on E4 in Crete

The walk through Greece is part of a longer project to walk the E4 from its start in Tarifa in Spain to its end in Cyprus. I have written blogs on various sections. Links are below:

Blog on E4 walk in Hungary from Budapest (prior to Budapest John Hayes provides an inspirational account)
Blog of walking across Serbia on the E4
Blog of crossing Bulgaria on the E4
Blog of crossing Cyprus on the E4

Although not officially part of the E4 you can start the walk from the tip of Portugal, the section from Cape Vincent to Tarifa is blogged here.

Update: Based on my travels on the E4 I have written a book "Six Pairs of Boots: Spain to Cyprus on the E4 Trail" by John Pucknell available from Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com, the Bookdepository.com, lehmanns.de, bookspot.nl, and other good online bookstores.

E4 in Crete: General Comments

The E4 in Crete has at least three different styles of walk: popular coastal walks in the western Chania area passed isolated beaches; walks through gorges, some like the Samaria gorge with lots of people, others you have to yourself, and walks up and down mountains. Crete is a very mountainous island with peaks rising to over 2400 metres. Apart from the coastal sections there are few days when you do not ascend and/or descend over a thousand metres. 

Unlike many other parts of Greece crossed by the E4, Crete is very popular with tourists with lots of infrastructure in place. It also has some of the most popular sections of the E4, with many people walking them, sometimes up to 20 times! This means at least in the popular sections hotels, rooms and guesthouses are available. I was glad as I did not find the wild camping options very attractive. Outside olive groves, vineyards and wheat fields, the slopes were steep, and the ground too full of rocks and thistles to make for good campsites. That said, accommodation on the E4 in the eastern section of Crete was in distinctly short supply.
One of the frustrations in Crete is the number of routes claiming to be the E4, making it difficult to know which the official ones are, which ones should you walk? On the plus side it gives lots of scope for creating your own route. I tried to combine some of the "must walk" parts Crete, such as the Samaria gorge and the coast sections in Chania province, while also avoiding too many needlessly circuitous options. Sometimes the effort made to avoid a bit of tarmac by pushing through undergrowth and over fences is just not justified by the reward.
Fences are the other frustration. Unlike in the rest of Greece there seemed to be an awful lot of fences, invariably made out of "rebar", actually intended to be used in reinforced concrete, and often blocking the path.
Caution is needed where the route follows a "path". In places there are very good paths, especially in the popular stages in the Chania region. In other cases you have to make your own path, pushing through thistles and thorny scrub. Even where a path more or less exists, the rocky nature may result in slow progress, this and time taken to work out where the path goes means that you should not assume you can cover the same number of kilometres in a day that you might if walking in say, Austria. 

The Cretan Way is an invaluable guidebook for the E4 in Crete. Foolishly I left my copy at home to save weight, having made relevant notes. Probably a mistake as some additional guidance would have been helpful, although it describes the route from east to west and I was walking in the opposite direction. In places the route described in the Cretan Way is waymarked by two red stripes, but not always. For GPS tracks I downloaded the ones on waymarkedtrails.org, which needed some parsing and tidying up, and a set supplied by the Cretan Way website. I used a Navitracks map of Greece on my GPS, although I could have done with more detail and precise contouring, in addition I took some paper maps which were helpful, Anavasi's Lasithi map and Harms IC Verlag's West Crete map. Rothers walking guide to Crete was another reference that influenced my choice of route. Blogs on Interkriti.org and section descriptions on Cretanbeaches.com were also useful.

Water can be a concern. A dry climate for much of the year, the limestone rocks and the capturing of springs into black plastic pipes for irrigation can mean there are few opportunities to top up on water, so take plenty. I walked in late May and early June and it was hot. Any later in the summer and it would be really hot. Yet I still had to contend with large patches of snow in the Psiloritis mountains. Maybe autumn is the ideal time to walk the route when last winter's snow has melted but this year's has yet to begin, but you would loose the spring flowers that I enjoyed so much.

Start of my E4 blog on Crete.

Zakros to Home: Day 88 to 90

A return home, stopping for a day at Heraklion to see the sights.
Zakros is not the easiest place to get out of on a Saturday morning, there are no buses so I hired a taxi at 50 euros to take me to Sitia. Cafe Xyloporta's friendly owner kindly booked it for me with his friend. Driving along in an air conditioned, gleaming white Mercedes, the olive groves looked beautiful this morning through the window, if somewhat artificial as until now I had mostly seen them at a slower pace while wiping the sweat away from my eyes. Rather than climbing up to the fortress at Sitia, I had breakfast by the waterfront at one of the many cafes and restaurants.
For the next 3 1/2 hours I was on a bus as it navigated bendy coastal roads to Heraklion. Over 30 years ago I spent a holiday near Agios Nikolaos. Passing through the area again in the bus I was disappointed at the coastal sprawl that now swamped the area: lots of souvenir shops, concrete blocks, tavernas, apartments, hotels and half built buildings, rebar sticking out of their roofs like unruly tufts of hair. It had an air of over-development, yet during my walk on the E4 across Crete, the accomodation and restaurants were localised, picturesque and on a smaller scale, as well as not being exactly full. The tourist sprawl looked like being on a narrow strip of the North coast where I would not wish to spend another holiday, knowing the beauty of the south coast of the Chania region or the grandeur of the mountains.
In Heraklion I stayed at the Atrion hotel, although it could easily have been one of the many others. I did the rounds of the sights, starting with the archeological museum. When I was around 12 I did an essay on the Minoan civilisation and had been impressed by the amazing wall paintings in the books. Men and women leaping over bulls and dolphins frolicking looked so much more interesting than the pictures of Egyptian pharaohs and slaves that my schoolmates chose to write about. I was therefore disappointed to discover they were actually based on just a few original fragments with most of the frescos extrapolated from these.
I also visited: the Natural History museum,  checking the seismograph to see if I had missed an earth tremor overnight; the Venetian fortress that guards the harbour; the History museum, and I walked the length of the Venetian walls around the city. Finally, I bought a few gifts in the one of the many shops that line the mainly pedestrianised streets of the old town.
On Monday it was a bus to the airport, although I was tempted to spend an hour walking there as it is quite near the centre. The airport was overcrowded but all went well and some hours later I was catching the train home from Gatwick.
Now only Cyprus to cross to complete the E4....

Zakros to Kato Zakros on the E4: Day 87

A walk down the "Canyon of the Dead" to Kato Zakros, the sea and the end of the E4 in Crete and Greece.
There was no hurry to get up this morning as just a 7.5 kilometre walk to the sea was needed to complete my walk on the E4 in Greece. The E4 sign pointed down the road, which I followed for a while, but I really wanted to get to Zakros gorge, also called Deads gorge because of ancient Minoan burials somewhere in it. So I turned off the road and followed a track to the entrance to the gorge where the E4 signs promptly reappeared. I later realised that the first E4 sign I saw marked "Kato Zakros" was misleading, the E4 actually starts in the middle of the village.
The walk down the gorge was more adventurous than I expected with a number of stream crossings on stepping stones and some walking over rocks and on a concrete aqueduct among pink flowering shrubs.  Cliffs rose each side of this fairly narrow gorge, with various caves in their walls, some of these were I assumed the burial sites. The walk was popular with people, some of whom stopped to enjoy sitting by the stream. At the bottom there are the remains of a Minoan palace, which had a number of helpful signs about the low walls you are looking at. Without them the site is just a collection of low stone walls.
Having walked down to the sea and so completed my walk on the E4 across Greece I settled down to lunch, watching the people, of various nationalities, ages and sizes enjoying the beach, the sun and in some cases, multiple bottles of beer. I returned up the old Zakros road which has excellent views of the gorge below.
I am now on a rare second beer at the Xyloporta cafe to celebrate finishing the E4 in Greece.

To Kato Zakros and back was a walk of 14 kilometres with a total ascent of 360 metres.

The beach at Kato Zakros, and the end of the E4 in Crete and in Greece

Zakros or Deads gorge

Chrisopigi to Zakros on the E4: Day 86

A mammoth day of walking through a part of Crete rarely seen by tourists.
My night among the olive trees was not disturbed other than by the periodic squeaking of some creature, a bird maybe? Today was windy, although the Cretan Way guidebook warns of wind this is the first day it impacted me. While I was rolling up the tent, the tent's bag disappeared, I assume blown away in a gust of wind. Normally I would weigh it down with something, but today, my last day of camping on this trip, I must have been getting slack. Anyway the bag was starting to show holes, this lightweight gear does not last long.
After a climb I reached the little, half abandoned village of Dafni, with its little alleys characteristic of old Cretan village layouts. Then it was a gradual descent down a valley with bright green vineyards lower down, then olive trees a little higher, often on terraces, then the mountainside with its yellow gorse. After losing much height, the dirt track I was following crossed the river and headed up the other side of the valley. This meant the route did a large dogleg, turning back on itself. During the dogleg the E4 signs were absent. Study of E4 signs I encountered suggested there was a shorter alternative, although I suspected it might involve forcing a way through undergrowth with uncertain navigation (later confirmed by blogs on interkriti.org). In the event the route I took along dirt tracks, based on GPS tracks I had downloaded, was easy to follow and took me past an old church, with faded wall paintings that looked like the ghosts of saints evaluating me.
Climbing up I missed a turning or two so stuck to the tarmac road that led me passed Etia. A desirable outcome as it had: a taverna, where I drank a Coke; a double nave church, each nave with an iconostasis (why bother having two naves I wondered, instead of one large nave); some ruins of abandoned houses (but still with good street lights), and what I took to be the Venetian villa marked on my map. A little later there were remains of old Cretan windmills in the fields, looking sad in their half collapsed state. Some time after I reached Chandras. The Lemon tree taverna which has glowing reports in various blogs and guides was closed and looked unlikely to ever open again, so I continued down the road to Zeros for a pita souvlaka.
After Zeros it was a climb up to the plateau. The path which crosses the plateau for several kilometres was not as bad as I feared. Although rough and stony, it was not overgrown and relatively easy to follow with a variety of waymarks: signs on metal posts; white, yellow and black stripes; yellow stripes and spots, and red spots. Although the map shows it as a straight line it actually wiggles around rock outcrops as it makes it's way through the landscape. It takes you to a church, at the abandoned settlement of Skala, where the Turks massacred a group of Greeks, before it begins its descent.
With sore feet after walking almost 40 kilometres, the interminable descent to Zakros was not pleasant especially with gusts of wind trying to throw me off balance. It was with much relief I picked up the key for my Dimitra apartment. While I waited the owner's mother smiled and gave me a banana. A shower was definitely needed to wash off the congealed sweat. Some wine and food at the nearby Xyloporta cafe also helped improve things, and the Metaxa brandy certainly helped to put me to sleep!

39 kilometres walked today with a 1140 metre total ascent.

Early morning is a beautiful time to walk

An alluvial fan

Derelict windmill

Path over plateau to Zakros

Stavros mountain to Chrisopigi on the E4: Day 85

A long day with lots of ups and downs, but good views in the morning.
I woke to birdsong and the smell of thyme. The sky on the horizon was red, pregnant with the unrisen sun. In Crete the sky often seems to blend into the sea, without a clear horizon being visible, pastel shades predominate at sunrise and sunset.
From my campsite beside Mount Stavros it was downhill on a track twisting right and left on the slope to loose height at a gentle pace. Small vineyards were scattered across the rough mountainside, each with a small building with a black plastic water tank or similar on its roof. Lower down there were olive trees in regular patterns as I approached the broad valley separating two groups of mountains. At the bottom of my track was Vasiliki. The upper part of this village has been abandoned, the buildings falling into disrepair, but nearer the road pots of geraniums show life still exists here, indeed I passed a few older ladies, all dressed in black bent over sticks going about their morning business. There was a cafe, sadly closed.
After crossing the valley with its olive groves, I climbed to the village of Monastiraki with its cute little houses built on top of each other and narrow alleyways. There was a taverna asking for Facebook "likes" and a cafe with a "heart" drawn on its blackboard but both were closed so no "likes" from me.
The next section was a path, and given that E4 "paths" in Crete are often just an invitation to push through the undergrowth, I was a bit concerned. However, it proved a serviceable route, easily followed except for one section of loose stone. As I climbed higher, a view over the valley below opened up, with the village of Pachia Amos in the near distance, and west along the coast to the more distant tourist town of Agios Nikolaos. A large outcrop of rock loomed straight ahead.
Before reaching it the path turned inland above the "Gorge of Ha", which, based on the informative sign, looks a spectacular, narrow gorge with multiple waterfalls that you need to rappel (i.e. abseil) down. Climbers attempting the gorge start at the little St Anna chapel, which was a useful stopping point for me as it had a tap at which I could fill up my water containers. With the heat of the day I was getting through a lot of water, the sweat falling in drops from my face. The chapel has 15th century wall paintings, very much faded. I was struck by how similar they were to modern paintings in Orthodox churches, rather solemn, stern faces with gold halos.
Thripti village was a little further on where I was delighted to find a taverna open for lunch despite the small size of the village. The staff and customers were all shouting at each other. I have noticed this before in Crete and the Peloponnese. Are people really cross with each other, or is Greek in these parts a language you shout, or is it just the culture in which shouty speech is the norm?
After Thripti the track wound around; up, down and up again between the mountains. Eventually the route led me to a "path", one of those non-existent, find a way through the thorny bushes path. At the start there were some steel posts with E4 signs to aim for. Unfortunately these stopped and I was following the route on my GPS, which then took me across a scree slope balancing on goat tracks.
Finally I approached a track but waited while the farmer whistled for his sheep, which surprisingly obeyed, coming to him, if a little slowly grabbing bits of vegetation on the way. I then proceeded, trying not to disturb his carefully corralled flock, although not entirely successfully.
On reaching the village of Chrisopigi I could see no sign of a cafe, shop or taverna which I had been hoping for, not even a closed one. For a top up of water, an old lady in black pointed to the tap used to water the geraniums in the village square. She and (I assume) her husband were just sitting there watching the world go by (which consisted mainly of me going by).
A few kilometres further on and I am hiding in an olive grove as these are areas of flat land suitable for pitching a tent on. I have picked a spot where all the weeds have been chemically killed off so there are no thistles to attack me. With my green tent blending in with the olive trees I am hoping the owner of the trees does not see me and tell me to move on.

35.8 kilometres covered today with a 1300 metre total ascent.

Cretan sea

Olive trees on terraces by E4 track

View across to Agios Nikolaos

15th century wall painting in church of St Anna at Thripti

Gorge of Ha

Males to Stavros mountain on the E4: Day 84

A good day's walk during which my feet much appreciated walking on dirt tracks and roads rather than rough, stony paths, it also meant I could enjoy the scenery rather than looking where I put each foot.
The breakfast served at Villa Mala was sufficiently large and enjoyable (cheese pie, omelette, bread and jam) that I did not feel hungry for the rest of the day. Suitably fortified I climbed the 500 metres out of Males, over 5 kilometres, to join the direct path from Selakano in 1 hour and 15 minutes; pretty good I thought! The track was so steep in places that the rear wheels of a pick up were spinning as they tried to get a grip. After the stony paths of recent days, searching for the route, the dirt tracks and tarmac roads of today felt like a real pleasure. My feet and ankles certainly enjoyed something flatter, with stones less likely to trip me up, roll over or slide as I trod on them, so I was able to look around me.
After climbing passed olives I was walking among pine trees too widely spaced to be called a forest. They gave a clean, fresh smell and pleasant aspect. Unfortunately one area of pines had been burnt. I hope the fire was accidental and not some farmer trying to improve the grazing. A red pick up passed me earlier with a red light, straining up the hill. I assume the local fire service. Looked like they only supplied a pump and you had to find a source of water...
In one area a farmer was using his dogs as gates, attached to chains they guarded the track each side of his fenced enclosure. The chain was just short enough that I could inch past between the barking dog, leaping against his chain, and the fence post.
This morning I could look down from the mountainside on the Libyan sea to the south of Crete, later I could see the Cretan sea to the North of Crete. During the day I walked through pines and olive groves, across the side of the mountains with its low scrubby and thorny vegetation (and in place covered with bright yellow gorse), passed hillside vineyards and rocky outcrops, by a few isolated churches and through two villages, Prina and Meseleri. I stopped for a coffee (and to fill up my water bottle) at a place in Prini, after searching among the alleyways for it. The only customer, the owner was playing games on his phone. Later it was a Coke in Meseleri, while the family chatted to each other.
After the climb out of Males, it was more or less downhill to Prina out of the Dikti mountain range, then uphill to Meseleri and beyond into the next group of mountains and to the Panagia monastery (locked). I am camped on some flat ground near some aerials on the top of Mount Stavros. For some reason it is not only flat but clear of thistles and larger stones, so an unusually good camping spot, except for the flies, which are being a nuisance. It is too hot to hide in my tent from them, I just drip with sweat, so I am eagerly waiting for the sun to drop lower in the sky and the day to cool down, but being June this is taking some time. Around me the goats are snuffling and making discordant tunes with the bells around their necks, some have small high pitched bells and some carry big, oversized, bells sounding bass notes. Standing up I can see the pastel greys of the hills and headlands of the north coast of Crete. I head to bed and sleep long before any stars appear..

31.9 kilometres walked today with a total ascent of 1050 metres.