Arriving at Meteora

It took a good couple of hours, a wrong exit from the motorway and an ‘enforced’ stop at a Lidl to stock up on all the ‘necessities’ of life but we got to our hotel at Kalabaka in Meteora before 1730 on the evening of 14 June. I had spent some time on the internet to find a suitable place at an appropriate price and when we arrived we agreed that the search engine had done a great job.

Views from our balcony   

Even better, we were allocated one of the larger rooms with access to a huge balcony and a fantastic view of the rock formations. It would have been churlish not to have had a glass of wine on the balcony whilst enjoying the view of the rocks, one with Agia Trias monastery balanced on top.

Great view from our hotel balcony   

These enormous columns of rock, on which the 6 remaining monasteries of Meteora (and the ruins of about 18 others) sit, rise almost vertically from the ground. They are a mixture of sandstone and conglomerate, the latter formed of deposits of stone, sand and mud from streams flowing into a delta at the edge of a lake over millions of years. About 60 million years ago a series of earthquakes pushed the lakebed upwards, creating a high plateau and causing numerous vertical fault lines in the thick layer of sandstone. The huge rock pillars were then formed by weathering by water, wind and extremes of temperature on the vertical faults. This type of rock formation and weathering process has happened in many other places but apparently what makes Meteora's appearance special is the uniformity of the sedimentary rock constituents (there are few signs of vertical layering) and the localised abrupt vertical weathering.

Rock stack – home to Agia Trias monastery
 – as seen in the 1981 Bond film For Your Eyes Only 

That evening we took a short walk out to try to get some sunset pictures but the ancient monks’ path (recently recobbled) leading up towards Agia Trias didn’t go in a helpful direction. However, it did mean that we had recce’d the route up for the following morning.

Old Town of Kalabaka and floodlit rocks (left). Agios Stefanos Monastery (right)   

After our energetic early evening perambulation, we had a lovely meal at Pannellinion restaurant in Kalabaka’s town square – no lamb’s heads on the menu here, far too many tourists – and enjoyed the stroll back to the hotel, partly guided by the illuminated crosses on the monasteries high up on their eyries. It was clear, however, that the next day would be a strenuous one!

Meteora, Greece