Corinth Canal

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17 October 2014

We drove along the coast for about 20k to a masterpiece of 19^th century engineering, the Corinth Canal. Its construction was planned and directed by two Hungarian engineers and it was opened to traffic on October 28 1893. It opens up the east end of the Gulf of Corinth and enables ships to travelling between the Ionian and Aegean Seas without going around the south of the Peloponnese. It was as breath-taking a sight as we had expected. We started our visit by crossing by the submersible bridge at Isthmia and were lucky enough to see a ship passing through. Then we moved up to the bridge used by the main road and were able to look down the 90m high walls of the 6k long waterway.

We continued along the coastal road for another 70k to the small town of Diakfoto which is the terminal for another major late 19th century engineering enterprise, the rack and pinion railway running up the Vouraikos Gorge to Kalavryta. We bought our tickets for the next day and thought we would have to stay the night on the station car park, but on the off chance we drove down to the town beach and found three other vans parked by the choppy sea with wonderful views over the Gulf to the mountains of Central Greece. There was room left for us to park and we had a lovely evening as the sun set over the stunning scenery.

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