Páros Pároikía (Part 1)

Anchored off Pároikía   

After a relaxing 24 hrs in Órmos Áy Ioannou we decided that we needed to move 10 miles southwest back to Pároikía. As the main port on Páros, this is where Charlotte would catch the ferry to Míkonos for her flight home on 3^rd August. We dropped our anchor in the sheltered bay at 1400 on 2^nd August having motored all of the way from Órmos Áy Ioannou.

Pároikía   

For the rest of the afternoon we had 2 priorities. The first was to buy Charlotte’s ferry ticket so that she could relax and enjoy her last day of holiday knowing that her route home was booked. The second was to start investigating how we could get a new anchor windlass motor sent out to us. Our windlass is a Simpson-Lawrence model but, unfortunately, Simpson-Lawrence ceased trading several years ago. Fortunately for us the very efficient  John McMaster, one of the former company employees, bought all of the stock of spares and set up SL Spares in Glasgow.

A quick run ashore allowed us to explore the pretty town of Pároikía, buy Charlotte’s ticket and negotiate with a local yacht agency to use their address for delivery of the spares. A phone call and e-mail to John McMaster got things rolling in Glasgow and the yacht agency advised us that it normally took a week to get spares sent out to Páros.

That brought us to Charlotte’s last night with us. We had a nice meal and then explored Pároikía by night.

The Frankish Castle   

Almost hidden amongst the back streets of Pároikía is a Frankish Castle built from the famous Parian marble called Lychnites meaning ‘by lamplight’. The now abandoned mines were the source of marble for Napoleon’s tomb in 1844.

The Frankish castle was built in 1290 AD by the ruling Venetian Duke using pieces of the ancient buildings which had been nearby. We’ve seen this reuse of existing masonry from temples at several sites in the Aegean. Here it was particularly obvious and in the tower walls we could see marble columns from at least 3 ancient temples: the temple of Athena, the temple of Kore and an Ionic temple from the 5^th century BC. Just visible at the top of the tower is a circular marble structure and canopy also dating from the 5^th century BC, which was relocated from its original site to the top of the tower when the castle was built.

Charlotte’s afternoon ferry on 3^rd August arrived about an hour late but she had built a few hours flex into her travel timetable so that caused her no issues. We, however, had invited Michael and Kerstin from ‘Tosca’ for drinks so having waved farewell to Charlotte we high tailed it back to BV to finish drying the laundry, clean and put everything back to how we have it when there are just the two of us on board.

All of that activity meant that the afternoon disappeared in no time at all but it was followed by a very pleasant evening hosting Michael and Kerstin. They live on Léros and have sailed in the Aegean for years and so there was lots to talk about.

Pároikía, Greece