Crete - Richtis Gorge

 Crete is famous for the deep gorges that run down through the mountains to the sea. The closest one to Sitia is Richtis Gorge and Rick and I felt that, after a week here, we were ready to give our legs a workout.

We were the only car in the parking lot

and headed down the road. I had read that you could drive this bit but that felt like cheating (later I wished we had cheated). There was an older couple pruning olive trees a little way down.

Some really old olive trees.

Plane trees. I always think that the bark looks like a giraffe.

The cement road ended at the Venetian Bridge although there were a few small farm holdings further down the trail. There was an unoccupied, German, camper van parked there. The Venetians built distinctive arched stone bridges when they established their networks of routes.

We were following these marks on rocks and trees though the trail was pretty obvious as it was well used.

There was evidence of buildings, maybe mills, built into the steep sides of the gorge.

Th path was sometimes muddy and we were fording the stream, hopping across on strategically placed rocks and roots.

There were also little wooden bridges.

This area was dry but it looked as if it flooded at times.

Even some metal stairs. We wondered about having to carry them in.

This is a picture, off the internet, of the pool and waterfall that is supposed to be the best part of the hike.

We never reached that point but saw lots of smaller trickles. We walked down for about 1.45hr and decided to turn round as we knew it would take us much longer to hike back. The hike back up the last bit of the road was the worst and I wished that we had driven down to the bridge.