Dadia Forest

Oh yes you must go to Dadia! SO we went. It was nice to sleep in a grove in the forest and spend some kilometers pedalling through the trees, but, and perhaps I'm spoiled because I'm Canadian, but it was no overwhelming experience. I was pretty excited by the beautiful shape of the bark on the pine trees. It is as if the trees are growing velvety puzzle pieces.

Silk Contents

Silk is made of mulberry leaves. It is the only thing that silkworms eat and once upon a time the border town of Soufli was covered in Mulberry orchards to feed their huge silk enterprise. Soufli was a major player on the ancient silk road. Today they still produce high quality silk in slightly lower quantities. I spent the afternoon feeling up the silk in the town's many shops. I may have even bought a scarf or two.

Mega Bird in Micro Dirio

Stork nests are always astonishing to see. I like how the stork and the nest are almost the same size as Basil and his bike. With all the power lines emanating from her nest she looks like the total commander of the village.

Stone Houses of Mega Dirio

Sampling from the roadside buffet of black raspberries we slowly made our way downhill to stony Megalo Dirio. Curious to see just who lived in these beautiful foundation to roof stone houses we made our way into the overwhelmingly Muslim village.

A gaggle of ladies greeted me where I stopped, asking me questions I could only barely understand. Where was I from? Where I was going? and was I married to the fella I came in with? They were as curious about my lycra clothing and kooky rear view mirror as I was about their headscarves, colourful low crotched pants, and cumbersome overcoats. We downed some refreshing pomegranite juice and made our way to overwhelmingly Christian Micro Dirio.

Thraki Mountains

A late departure on the scenic route to much revered Dadia Forest found us sleeping at 900m perhaps a little too close to yet another windfarm...

The tent held fast in spite of the winds. The bottle of wine we bought from M. Hadley helped with a sound night's sleep.

Rain Day

And then it did what it had promised to do for days...it rained, and it rained, and it hailed, and it rained some more, and we ate gyros, and drank labneh, and we waited. Then we made the terribly wise decision to stay in a hotel that night. It rained three times as much while we slept. The sunflowers drooped and the tobacco was happy and we got to eat bougatsa one more time.

Profitis Elias

As we ride along the road we often see beautiful little churches standing defiantly at the top of the highest peaks. These churches always belong to the ancient Prophet Elijah. Likened to Moses, he seems to hold a pretty high status in the hierarchy of Orthodox saints. In Thrace, we found our way to one of his little churches tucked away in a thick grove of trees. We slept well contemplating Elijah's spectacular ascent to heaven from a very distant mountain top.

Mosques, Tobacco, and Sunflowers

Sauntering out of the Rodophi mountains we took a lengthy break in alien Xanthi. After such underpopulated and densely green cycling, it was quite surprising to find such bustling and alien chaos. Turkish, Bulgarian, Pomac, Greek and who knows what other languages whirled around us in Xanthi's late morning downtown shopping frenzy.

Our first hour was spent stealing glances at the scarved muslim ladies in their dowdy overcoats while they stared back at me in my loud lycra cycling gear. Wheeling past the market, the brightly dressed, gold toothed Bulgarian ladies made me crave a jaunt to the north to explore what seems to be an unexpectedly colourful country. In the streets, we noticed many unusually fair people and later learned that these were Pomacs a very distinct group of non-Turkish muslims with an entirely unique culture and history. The real topper to our anthropological review was to hear the call to prayer as we cycled past Xanthi's mosque and into the heart of Xanthi's wealth, the tobacco fields.

And tobacco there is a plenty. Seeing broad-hipped ladies in long, full skirts and head scarves standing shoulder deep in vast fields of tobacco plants was a very bothersome sight. I hated to think of the harsh chemicals used on these plants and I couldn't help but feel a little sick to see these (mostly female and muslim) people hand-picking these toxic leaves. I also couldn't help but wonder how the growing and harvesting of tobacco factors in to the muslim stance on tobacco given that smoking is haram. Thankfully, my tobacco contemplations were interspersed with vast fields of sprightly and cheerful sunflowers.

Greek Hikers

Greek Hikers have some VERY distinguishing features. They are a little more jaunty and a lot more pert than Greek walkers.