Hi All

The day after the ‘United Nations’ day we hired a motorbike for a second day to explore this beautiful island.  

We decided to spend more time travelling along a road from Ayios Eufimia running north to Fiskardo on the east side of Kefalonia. We have often seen this road from the Ithaka channel, when sailing, but never found the tarmacked road before. The Ithaka channel is between Ithaka and Kefalonia.

We climbed the hairpin bends by motorbike gradually getting higher and higher until we could look across the channel to the Island of Ithaka and beyond to the small island of Atokos and on to the Greek mainland.

The views were just spectacular and whilst the photos are lovely they don’t convey the scale of the mountain ranges and channel below. We also found that the north east coast of Kefalonia is quite wild and rugged, no doubt brushed by centuries of wind rushing down the Ithaka channel.  The mountain slopes have wonderful structured ancient terracing, possibly Mycenaean often broken by time. The geology of the area is such that the land is littered with all sizes of boulders, as if spewed from a volcano….. I’m not a geologist but it certainly has that look about it. So the scattered boulders must have made ready the materials in situ for the terracing.

We continued to Fiskardo passing other small villages. At Karia we saw a beautiful house with a painted flower on its gable wall, fronted by a small neatly kept vineyard. We waived and gestured to the elderly gentleman on a terrace, suggesting that we thought his efforts were beautiful and he waived back.

We later asked at a local café who he was. Apparently, his name is Gerassimus, a good historic Kefalonia name from the monastery of Gerassimus, he is 83 and looks after his painted home and vineyard by himself.

He looked happy.

Photographs of…………….

Looking down into Ayios Eufimia

Looking across the Ithaka channel, down to bays and across to Ithaka and beyond.

Ancient terracing

Gerassimus’s painted house.