Monasteries on Akti
Scott-Free’s blog
Steve & Chris
Tue 30 Jun 2009 05:19
Wednesday 30th
June
The Akti Peninsula
on Khalkidiki is the site of some 17 monasteries. Time there is still
reckoned by the Julian calendar and the day ruled by the Byzantine clock with
hours of variable length. Females are not allowed to set foot in the
monasteries, and yachts with women on board are supposed to stay at least a mile
offshore.
The blurb we read
about it said they have no electricity or roads, but we saw solar panels
and a network of roads leading to many of the monasteries, so maybe it was a
little out of date!
We decided to spend
some time sailing along the western coast of the Akti peninsula, as the
monasteries are all perched on cliff or hillsides, and take a look. They
were certainly very interesting to see, and we often wondered how they had been
able to build them in such inaccessible places.
They were all very
austere looking places, except for one which had once housed 1500 Russian
monks, and that one looked like this:
