Skíros (Part 1)

Skíros town or hóra

Before we had found out about George’s scooters for hire, we took advantage of the morning bus service from the Linariá to Skíros town on the eastern side of the island. The bus took a non-direct route and so we saw a little more of the island than we had expected on the way. It also gave us a good orientation for when we did the scooter DIY transport later on.

The bus dropped us at the bottom of the chóra leaving us to walk up through the delightful narrow lanes. We had arrived much too late to see it but these streets are crammed with people in the 4 weekends before Lent during the Skíros Carnival. In what is effectively a pre-Christian pagan festival the highlight is the “goat dance” in which the géri parade through the hóra wearing goat pelt and kid-skin mask outfits hung with 10kg of sheep bells. These jangle noisily whilst the géri are accompanied by their ‘brides’, the koréles, who are actually men dressed in drag. The third type of characters are frángos; buffoons dressed in ridiculous clothes blowing on conch shells apparently representing foreigners. It all sounds very lively.

Climbing up to the castle and the view from the monastery    

But not at this time of year, so we had to satisfy our curiosity with just the normal highlights of the town. Sadly one of our guidebooks said that the castle at the top of the hill was closed because the stonework was unstable. We climbed up all the same and were delighted to find that our book was out of date and the castle was open again. We walked through a gate into the monastery and then through a tunnel into the old castle.  The view down over the cuboid white houses of Skíros town highlighted partly why the monestary had been built here.

Restoration work on the hilltop

As we approached the summit we found that not only the castle walls had been restored but also that work was ongoing restoring a church there. With such a narrow and steep route up to this building site all of the materials had been carried up by donkey.

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Of course, the main purpose of climbing all the way up to the top of the hill was for the view and it did not disapoint. Looking down on Skíros town again was great but the the view over the sandy beach and clear water beside the peninsula to its east was just amazing. Right below us we also saw a small chapel that we had missed on the way up.

Climbing back down the hill Nicky got into a bit of a traffic jam with the ‘freight donkey’ on its way up through the tunnel. Definitely a novelty.

We found the small chapel we’d seen from the summit...

... and a nice café where we could check e-mails whilst enjoying a delightfully cool beer after our exertions climbing the hill. The bus timetable gave us the option of leaving at lunchtime or staying another 6 hours. It would have been nice to stop for a little longer and have lunch in the chóra but 6 hours was too long so instead we headed back to Linariá to arrange to hire a scooter.

Skíros, Greece