Kali Limenes & Tripiti

The South coast of Crete is very different from the North. Much of the North coast is heavily developed for tourism, but very there is very little development in the South. This is particularly true around us, partly because the Minoan archeological sites prevent it and partly because of the mountains. Although the coast here is only 60km from Heraklion, it is protected by "i Astarousia Ori" - The Mountains of the Stars, which is a lovely name for a beautiful area. Crete has 3 mountain ranges which reach 2500 metres, so these Southern mountains which only make 1100 metres (about Snowdon) are not well known.
Here's a day trip around part of the area.
leaving the village on small tracks, after an hour of exploring tracks I came out here.

Kali Limenes

There are loads of tracks like this, which are actually farm roads, but you hardly ever see anyone on them. The oil tanks seem to be a sort of filling station for ships, which come and go. The water is Crystal clear though.

This is the beach, which is hardly overcrowded. There are plenty of beaches like this, which are often completely empty. At Greek holiday times, they fill up with the locals who come and camp.
From here the road follows the coast East for 25 miles. There are occasional tarmac stretches, but mostly unpaved.

This is a typical South coast view. As you can see, the road doesn't exactly hug sea level and there is a total of 850 metres of climbing each way in these 25 miles.

Some of it is unfeasibly steep - pictures never look steep, but I reckon this was over 30%

Just to prove that I'm not just a sad cyclist, I sometimes stop to look at things on the way. I noticed some steps off the track, which led to this ancient cave church overlooking a gorge.
The road then heads up 350 metres just for a laugh before coming back down to another lovely beach.

This is the start of the trip back over the mountains inland.

The road then continues up this valley to about 500 metres before descending to the plain further inland and about 30 miles home on tarmac.
I was out for about 10 hours - about 8 hours riding time. No computor, so difficult to be accurate, but I reckon about 65 miles with 2500 climbing. Please don't work out the average speed!

Here's a few pictures of the trip over here. The weather was awful through Europe so I hardly stopped until I got to Greece.
1200 metres above the Gulf of Korinth
The accomodation is a bit cramped, but you can't fault the location.
Had a campfire and slept under the stars here.

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