Volos

We left Ahilio on 14 July. There was no wind and it was very hot so motoring north made things much more comfortable with the 7 knot wind we generated. We needed to travel 20 miles north to get to Volos so that we could meet Charlotte and Sophie there after they had spent the previous week exploring Athens and Aigina. We broke up the 20 mile passage with a brief lunch stop at Nisos Pithu to swim and cool off.

Approaching Volos

Bronze model of the Jason and the Argonauts’ Argo

We had read in our pilot book that Volos has always been one of the most important commercial harbours in Greece. Jason and the Argonauts set sail from Volos, or Iolkos as it was known then, on their adventures and to commemorate this there is a bronze model of the Argo on the quayside. The pilot book also told us that the town had been completely flattened in the major earthquakes of 1954 and 1955, with the current buildings being the resut of the rebuild in best Greek concrete. As we entered the harbour we also saw the commercial bits of the harbour dominating the western side and began to worry that Volos would be a bit of a depressing commercial port with not a lot to it.

However, the reality is that we both rather liked the place and felt that we had short-changed it on time spent there. We spent 2 nights in the port with the major part of the time spent giving BV a good spring clean, filling up with fuel and restocking. In between getting these chores done we found that Volos was a lively town with excellent shops and a busy café scene. Whilst tracking down the bus station to meet Charlotte and Sophie we found the ruined walls and archaelogical site of ancient Iolkos but didn’t have time to look at them properly Apparently the city also houses a very good archaeological museum with artefacts from Iolkos and other nearby ancient locations.

The tourist information office also highlighted that the nearby Pelion mountains and adjacent coast to the east is so beautiful that it was said to be the prefered holiday destination of the mythological gods.

We both felt that Volos has much more to offer than we had given it time for and that it deserves a return trip at some stage. However, for now it proved to be a good place to meet Charlotte and Sophie with excellent coach links with Athens. They arrived exactly on time in the late afternoon on 15 July. We stayed in Volos overnight so that they could get settled in and then the following day headed south so that we could get them to the islands of the Northern Sporadese which they specifically wanted to visit.

Volos, Greece