Our idyllic, free, camping spot by the beach has proved to be so irresistible that we have decided to stay put for another night. But that doesn’t mean we’ve been sitting on our behinds all day – no siree bob.
We had to endure more early morning capers from Mabel, who is either sickening for something or going senile. She was yet again on the dashboard at about 5am and after being let out to relieve herself, later managed to get herself up on the cooker! After that she was fastened on her lead and we got a bit of peace and quiet. When I took her onto the beach this morning she did manage to do her “business” four times. So much I almost ran out of poo bags. Sarah gave them both worming medication yesterday and maybe her climbing on the furniture, and everything else, shenanigans was as a result of an urgent call of nature – time will tell.
The decision was made to explore the castle at nearby Kastro. This part of the Peloponnese is unusually very flat and full of market gardening. But there is one rocky outcrop on top of which sits a huge castle and its surrounding village. How it got there turned out to be an interesting piece of history, which was new to me.
In the early 13thCentury the fourth crusade set out from Europe with the goal of recapturing Jerusalem from its Islamic rulers. In one of the many inglorious episodes of crusader history, instead of conquering Jerusalem they sacked the Christian city of Constantinople! This much I knew. However, Constantinople had been the capital of a Christian Byzantine Empire and this was then split up between various Crusaders and the Greek Peloponnese was taken by a couple of chancers (sorry Dukes) from Northern France!
The castle at Kastro was built by them to control this part of the Peloponnese in 1220. What is relatively unique about the castle is that its subsequent occupiers: Neapolitan, Venetian, Byzantine and Ottoman, to name but a few, made virtually no changes to the original structure.
As usual dogs were not allowed, and for once there were no strays inside, so I went in and Sarah opted to walk around the outside with the dogs. I have to say I don’t have much to add about the innards of the castle except it was very “castley”! The inner section with the rooms of the rulers, including a second story, had all remained reasonably intact. The many buildings within the outer walls but outside the inner keep, including a gothic church, had all collapsed although some of the more interesting recovered items were displayed in a small museum.
While I was exploring the castle Sarah was having rather more fun on the outside. She came across a tortoise, which initially withdrew into its shell and which dogs did not notice.. Sarah sat down to observe the tortoise and it relaxed and started to move. Melek is usually a most laid back dog who in our past experience only barks manically at one thing and that is hedgehogs. To this we must now add tortoises. When he saw it moving Sarah said it was if he had gained the strength of three Shih-tzus. He barked and pulled at his lead in a wild fashion, while, unusually, Mabel showed no interest whatsoever.
Sarah eventually decided to give the the castle a miss and we headed back to Basil who we had parked in the one village street wide enough to accommodate him. We noticed on our way back, that the practice of whitewashing the edges of pavements was in full swing. There seems to be an unwritten rule, which we have observed as we have driven through other villages, that each householder is responsible for whitewashing the section of pavement outside their house, irrespective of how old or decrepit the householder is. It sometimes seems a little incongruous to see brightly painted white borders in an otherwise scruffy and down at heel village.
Rather than immediately heading back to the beach we saw a sign to “Thermal Springs”. It was only five miles away so we thought we would have a look. As we got to the correct area we saw a sign to Roman Baths! We pulled over and there were the remains of some Roman Baths with water smelling of rotten eggs flowing through the site. As we started exploring suddenly a man in nothing but swimming trunks seemed to appear from nowhere. First he immersed himself in the water, which in actual fact was not very warm, but was very smelly. Later, as we made our way back to Basil we saw him in another overgrown area caking himself in mud. I’m not sure whether he was the ghost of a solitary Roman soldier or he had walked to the site from somewhere wearing nothing by bathing trunks.
We did eventually find the formal Thermal Springs, but not surprisingly they were all part of a very formal looking modern baths, and were not visible to the casual visitor. The Roman Baths were much more interesting anyway.
