Samaria Gorge

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26 September 2014

A long but memorable day!

One of the things I particularly wanted to do in Crete was hike the Samaria Gorge, at 16 kilometres it is one of the longest in Europe. Wendy agreed to accompany me. The Samaria is one of several gorges which run down to the south coast through the White Mountains, a range in the west of the island which rises to over 2,700 metres. It’s very popular and about 1,000 people a day attempt it. The walk starts from the Omalas Plateau at an elevation of 1,250 metres and finishes at the coastal village of Agia Roumeli. Access is difficult but we were able to book with the camp site a place on a coach tour with a guide. The only problem being we were to be picked up at 5.10am!

We rose at 4.15am, the mini bus was there as expected and we then realised why it was such an early start because we spent the next hour picking people up from various locations before we headed into the mountains. We eventually started walking at 8.00am and dropped 600 metres down a stepped zig zag path. The next 7 kilometres was through a wide but deep valley along side the river which is dry at this time of the year passing old fir and cypress trees. The path was mainly very rocky and our progress slow as we needed to let other walkers go by us. The gorge eventually narrowed with huge vertical sides and the last 5 kilometres was absolutely spectacular. We arrived at Agia Roumeli after 7 ½ hours and enjoyed a well earned beer at one of the tavernas.

Agia Roumeli has no road access so the next stage of the trip was to take a 45 minute ferry ride along the wild cliffs of the south coast to Sougia from where the coach driver drove us fast but skilfully back north along the twisting mountain roads. We arrived at Mithimna Camping at 9.00pm, had a meal at the restaurant and fell into bed.

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