Day 178 – EU – Greece [Vathi to Skala]

18/08/20

34.5km

  From Vathi (Greece) to Skala (Greece)

Europe

A welcome shorter run around the Lakonikos Bay, past the beautiful town of Gythio and a mysterious shipwreck

I was looking forward to a shorter day of running with an elevation profile closer to a flat line than the uphills of the past few days. I started a bit later than usual, with the sun already projecting pink hued colors on the Taygetus range.

Before I reached the little seaside village of Gythio, by the Lakonikos Bay, memories rushed back as I ran past the Meltemi Camping – where we stayed a few nights as a family on our 1989 trip. Still there, with the same 30 years-old (at least!) signpost. I took a sneaky peek inside and it was exactly as it was back then – a central alley leading right to the beach with the sides split into pitches separated by orange trees!

The village itself was pristine and pretty much unchanged. Fishing boats unloading their fish boxes early in the morning, taverna owners walking the port to choose their catch of the day.

I kept running along the coast, past several sandy beaches – including the one where the Dimitrios Shipwreck is resting. An eerie sight! The story behind it is quite rocambolesque, the ship being used to smuggle cigarettes between Turkey and Greece – then there are several versions of the story of how it became abandoned, left to drift and eventually remaining unrecovered since 1981…

From this point on I ran inland towards the little village of Skala. My run got very distracted by then, as the bank called me to tell me they had to block my card because of fraudulent activity on it. It took many phone calls to find out that my card had been used overnight, by a US based address, to carry out various fraudulent transactions. All blocked thanks goodness, but alas my card is lost. A simple problem like this can be quite a headache when one is traveling solo unsupported on the roads of the world!

Check my daily run GPS data on or

Here is the map of today’s run: