By Tuesday we had seen quite a bit of the city and were eager to see “something else”. There were quite a few day trip tours advertised in our hostel’s reception area, but we didn’t want to go on a group event. I had scoped out the landscape around Thessaloniki and decided that Mount Chortiatis would be interesting: It was the highest point around, and could “easily” be reached by bus to the village of Chortiatis, and then a hike to the top. We casually mentioned this to the guy behind the desk and he disagreed. He declared that it was not a nice hike, and that we’d be much happier hiking to Seih Sou. Hmmm – it didn’t look like much of a hike on GoogleMaps, but this guy is local, so he must know what he’s talking about.
On Tuesday we did not get up early – this walk to Seih Sou would not take long, and we had all day to make it happen. There weren’t many people on the trail. In fact, there weren’t any other people on the trail. It was a Tuesday morning in November – not exactly high time for hiking. But the weather was great – I couldn’t imagine making this trek under a hot summer Greek sun.
We walked east across the city, passed many sights that we had already seen, and then into the outer fringe of the city. Dan had a vague idea of where we should go and eventually we left the last neighborhood behind and were in the forest.
The trail was not well marked at all, to the point where I never saw any markers for the first hour or so. It was an open, dry, forest that we walked through. I heard birds, but there wasn’t much else in the forest.
At this point I started to wonder if we had taken the correct trail. We had come out on a ridge that overlooked a six-lane motorway, with heavy construction vehicles working below us. Interesting – but how do we get to the other side?
After a bit of meandering through the brush we found an underpass and scuttled underneath it, cutting off on a fire road before meeting up with more construction equipment.
The other side of the motorway didn’t offer much else, except maybe a better view back towards Thessaloniki and its blue waters of the Mediterranean. There was no longer a trail to follow, but instead a wide fire road. Still, it was quite and the day wasn’t hot. Plus, it was something other than the city streets.
Abandoned house along the way
Eventually the fire road we were on intersected with… a trail? Do you mean that we could have been on an honest-to-goodness hiking trail this entire time? Harumph. When we reached the place where the trail crossed the road, we took the trail.
Watch your step!
This was a proper hiking trail. There were still no trail makers, but we could often see our goal and knew in general which direction we should take. The forest was still open, but the flora changed with any change in moisture that could be sucked up from the ground.
The surface of the trail, showing the geology of the land
We were getting closer to our goal when we saw this: a branch of road lined by bee hives. We walked over to inspect them more closely, but there were few bees buzzing around. I guess it wasn’t prime bee season, but it did make me wonder about the hot / cold season cycle of honey bees in an always warm climate.
The view back towards Thessoloniki
Success!
I admit that I was disappointed that this was one of the better hikes in the area. Even if we had been on a proper trail the entire time, the while the view was nice, it wasn’t quite a nice as I had hoped for. Still, we had had a nice morning in nature and it felt good to stretch my legs on dirt.
But now that we were at Seih Sou, how did we want to return? Retracing our steps was not an option, but upon checking GoogleMaps, we saw that we could go down the backside of the hill (mountain?) to a small village there, and then take a bus back into Thessoloniki.
This stretch of trail showed evidence of use
A black squirrel!
No underbrush here
Our goal: the village of Pefka (?)
The map made it look like could just walk down the (very) steep hill and end up in the village. But as we descended, it looked less and less like the trail (road, really) would connect. We could hear the sound of forestry work ahead, and great evidence that they had already been working where we were. There was a nice pine scent where guys were trimming the undergrowth.
Ah, a chipper at work!
Dan was hoping that we could cut through the forest, down into a ravine, and the climb up the other side. This didn’t seem so cut and dry to me and I stopped to ask one of the workers if we could get through. I got a firm “No!” from him, and he indicated that we should follow the road until it eventually joined with the village streets. This was going to add an hour to our walk, but it looked like the only way at this point.
We saw our first and only other trail user then – a trail runner, making her way up the road we were coming down. It was 17° C and still mostly overcast – it had been a good day for a walk.
The road eventually joined a main road, and we edged our way along the road to where the bus stop was marked on our phones. Thank goodness that someone else was standing at the stop, because there were no signs whatsoever that it was a bus stop, let alone which route it serviced. It was a fortunately brief wait for the bus, and then a rough ride back to the city. It was like no other bus I had been on: abrupt starts and stops, the driver often started off before the doors were closed, and it was self-service to buy and validate your ticket on the bus itself.
We survived the trip back to our hostel, happy to have spent the day outside, but also happy to be back to our room.