Olympic bicycle ride 2008

After the night ferry from Athens to Lesvos we decided to continue right away to Turkey as ferry connections are irregular during the touristical off-season. So we entered Turkey one ahead of our time schedule and without being able to properly say good-bye to Greece, which certainly means so many different things to our European culture and heritage. Probably there is even some Greek thinking behind our Olympic Bicycle Ride, even though we don't consider ourselves as olympic fighters, let alone competitors on our road to Beijing. That is not to say that the daily mileage doesn't pose a daily physical challenge to everyone. Today, after landing in the port of Dikili at 11 am and the (for me) pleasant surprise that neither German nor Finnish citizens need to buy a Turkısh visa (everybody else had to), we covered ca. 75 km on the main road towards Edremit.
Welcome ın Dikili by the local press and police who escorted us out of the town.

GPS and more photos of the day: http://www.everytrail.com/view_trip.php?trip_id=13601

Wonderful cycling across the plain of Argos , sweet oranges to be picked from the roadside everywhere. And they are much better than the bitter oranges from Spain sold in Finnish supermarkets. We visited the Theatre at Epidauros, the other archaeological sites (Asclepeion temple) were in repair, i.e scaffolded.
Nightstay in an olive orchard, where putting up a tent on the rocky ground isn't all that easy. Actually many olive orchards are irrigated nowadays.

Spring in full bloom on the Epidauros archeological site.

From Epidauros a very scenic road along the sea to Methana, from where we took the ferry to Athens. It's now time to take out sun glasses and sun lotion, because UV radiation is strong in springtime
As we've been cycling through mostly mountaineous terrain over the past five days, one could study rocky outcrops along the roadsides in abundance, reaching from thrusted lime stone sediments to more horizontal and obviously much less resistant conglomerates.

From the steeper cliffs there may be also stones dangerous stones on the road and it's good to wear a helmet because of those. Otherwise the streets and roads in this part of mainland Greece are very quiet and there are almost no tourists around.
The other thing that one can study in both abundance and detail (especially during the slow climbings) is the plastic trash along the roads. Very distinctive feature of mediterranean countries!

GPS: http://www.everytrail.com/view_trip.php?trip_id=13482

For entire track recording over the Peloponnesos: http://www.everytrail.com/fullscreen.php?trip_id=26857

59 km to ancient Mycenae. Today ultimately losing the height gained during the last two days but with a spectacular view into the plain of Argolis and ancient Mycenae as the final destination. A camping site and the first (if only cold) shower after three days of biking! Tourist infrastructure very developed, but at this time of the year most places seem to be closed. Luckily not the internet cafe in nerby Fehti, where I'm sitting right now....

GPS (incomplete) http://www.everytrail.com/view_trip.php?trip_id=13241

By the way, this is how my Sony SK1 tracker works. It record position and time every fifteen seconds (as long as there is power, battery supply requires some planning and follow-up, even though the device should be running for 14 hours on one AA 1.2V battery). If you watch a close-up of the track you will notice that it doesn't fit the roads of the database (Google Maps or whatever you choose) terribly precisely, but that's not because of off-road cycling but rather because of reflection effects (GPS picking up signal not straight from the sky but from a reflecting surface nearby). I'll try to monitor the quality of the track in different environments over the next few weeks.

View from the fortress hill of Mycenae

Yesterdays climbing continued until max 1150 m. Beautiful Arcadian town of Langadhia along the way up. After the pass subalpine vegatation with spruces, very much in contrast to the forest fire damaged woodlands near Olympia. What was climbing for us, is the place of the gods' wild frenzies according to Euripides' Bacchae!

Reached campsite during daylight. Temperature surprisingly stable over several hundreds of metres of altitude.
My altimeter is an invaluable tool, unlike the map material given out by the organizers because it's really hard to identifiy the ascents and descents from a b/w copy.

This photo shows our Silk Road van that carries the excess luggage (including even two complete spare bikes) and is driven by Marcin and Adam from Poland who do lots of other things during the day for the benefit of the group like providing water, organizing and signposting nightstays etc.

GPS and more photos http://www.everytrail.com/view_trip.php?trip_id=13239