Tuesday 26th April 2011 South today initially on the motorway that runs north / south connecting Thessaloniki with Athens. This briefly gives way to a single carriageway road through the Tempi Gorge / The Vale of Tempe celebrated by Greek poets as a favorite haunt of Apollo and the Muses, The valley is 10 kilometres long and as narrow as 25 metres in places, with cliffs nearly 500 metres high. In history it was a key strategic route and has been the scene of numerous battles. In 480 BC 10,000 Athenians and Spartans gathered at Tempe to stop Xerxes's invasion, but the Persians bypassed the Greek force by marching through an alternative longer route via Sarantopo bypassing the gathered army. It was only later we discovered that we had been lucky ourselves to pass as it
... read more
