This year the cooler, breezier conditions made walking a bit easier . Here are a few suggestions based on our experiences.
First – arm yourself with a good local map. The Plakias Walker’s Map is fine but the Damnoni Area Map covers the same area with the same level of detail and is about 1.5 Euro cheaper. Available from a couple of the Supermarkets in Plakias.
1. Plakias to Lefkoyia
Out of Plakias along the road, turn right at the main road, going to Lefkoyia, take the 2nd or 3rd, uphill. Keep going until you reach the irrigation channel. Turn right and follow it as it meanders through the hills. There will be several tracks leading back down to the main road but keep going until you see a church on the left. At the crossroads here you can turn right or continue on and take the next right. Both take you to Lefkoyia. From Lefkoyia you can take a back road/track running parallel to the main road which joins the road to Amoudi. From Amoudi, you can go via Damnoni and the Olive grove route to Plakias.
2. Plakias to Finikas Monastery
Take a route of your choice to Selia, then take the road heading WSW slightly downhill across the valley leading to Souda. Be careful not to take a left turn which will take you down to Souda (although we did just that and managed to get across the river with only a couple of attempts). The road to Finikas Monastery is quite tortuous but a pleasant walk none the less – very peaceful. On the way back, you need to turn right, off the road before where the bulls are kept (Sept. 04) (take the thin black line on the map) The path is not at all clear but if you go through the olive grove and vegetable patch you can pick up a track for a while, then another ‘thin black line’ track (this one is easier to follow) takes you to a track leading to Souda. If you get there at the right time, you can get the train back to Plakias.
3. Kali Sykea to Plakias
We got a taxi to Kali Sykea, then ambled down the road to a junction. Turned left to check out Aghios Ioannis. On the far side of Aghios Ioannis there is a track on the right which goes down into a small valley, then up again to Kanevos. After exploring the back streets there, we followed the road down through the gorge. It would have been possible to have dropped down to the dried out river bed (in the summer) but it’s not easy to tell how ‘lumpy’ that route is from the road so we didn’t try it. Once through the gorge, just after taking the left turn to Myrthios there is a track leading down towards the river bed. If you take this it goes down some way but then climbs again to join a track running along the Selia side of the valley. For another time, note that the track that runs parallel to this one, but a bit lower down gives excellent views of the old mills from above.
Eventually the track meets one of the rough roads going to Selia and you can turn left to get back to Plakias.
