Pátmos (Part 2)

We walked up to the monastery which, because of the Easter celebrations, was considerably busier than when we last visited. Both the outside and the inside of the church within the monastery are ornately decorated with paintings depicting key events from the Bible. Inside is particularly ornate with gold decoration and icons. There are even the bones of a saint displayed in a silver box in the corner.

We’d visited the museum during our last visit and so bypassed that and made our way out to take closer look at the windmills.

All 3 windmills have been carefully restored winning EU cultural heritage awards in the process. The doors to the windmills were open and so we went in and were able to look at the wooden cogs, the grinding mechanism and the millstones. One of the windmill still grinds flour and you can buy bread from the bakery in Skála Pátmos made with the flour from the windmill.

We ate our picnic lunch beside the windmills enjoying the view back up towards the monastery. At this point the windmills were locked up and we discovered that we had been very lucky. They are apparently only open in the morning but by coincidence we had arrived when the owners were checking on the progress of some decoration inside the windmills. We thanked them for letting us look around and then finished our lunch whilst plotting what to do with the rest of the afternoon.

The tourist information office had highlighted that there are some interesting treks on the island. We were close to one, an old route which would take us down to the resort bay of Gríkou. The map we had was very basic but eventually we found the start of the path and made our way south down the hillside taking a more direct route than the road which zigzagged its way across our path.

Gríkou seems to be a nice location with a good beach and, at the southern end of the bay, another very sandy looking beach. Buoys have been laid for yachts and there are a few restaurants, hotels and holiday apartments. Enough to keep you busy for a few days in very pretty surroundings. Gríkou is definitely a bay we shall remember when we next route via Pátmos.

Gríkou

The route back to Skála Pátmos   

But, having walked down the hill the next task was to climb back up to the windmill ridgeline. Here we picked up another track which leads down towards Skála Pátmos. This also seemed to be an ancient paved route between the harbour and Chora albeit a little overgrown these days.

Back in Skála Pátmos the restaurants and cafés were buzzing with Greeks relaxing and enjoying the late afternoon. That seemed to be a good idea and so we made our way back to BV to rest our feet and to enjoy a cool beer in the cockpit.

Pátmos, Greece