Bike and hike to a monastery

Thursday late morning we set off on a bike ride. It was only 10 kms (6 miles) to the monastery we wanted to visit, but it was a steady incline that gets steeper the higher we go. It was pretty chilly out, but since we were going uphill it didn't take long to warm up. Still, we were glad to have our hat and mitts on. 

We got past the town of Leonidio and the incline got a little steeper.

We managed to do 7 kms on the bikes before things got too steep to continue on them. So we still had a 3 km steep uphill hike to do.

Heading higher on the bikes. 

Can you see that tiny white speck at the upper left?

That's where we're headed!

Here, I'll zoom in for you.

And a little more.

Looking back at the town of Leonidio.

And looking ahead up the valley.

Still on the bikes!

Looking back.

It was around this point that we decided it was too steep to continue on the bikes. We found a fence to lock them up against, and continued on foot. Once we had passed the town, we had only see one other person headed up there, and nobody on their way back down.

Ruth spotted this big goat looking thing up above us!

Glad we didn't attempt to take Max up here!

You could actually drive a car up here. In fact, even Max would have made it but there were a lot of sections where it would have been impossible if another vehicle were coming the opposite way. Besides, if we drove up we wouldn't have got any exercise!

Yikes. Pretty narrow in this section.

Definitely not a good idea to take Max up here!

Ruth and the scenery.

Looking down on our road.

Beautiful views.

Still heading higher!

Almost there!

Holy Monastery of Agios Nikolaos (Saint Nicholas) of Sintza.

We got to the gate, but there was nobody home!

I've read online that there is only one nun who lives here as a caretaker. No idea if that is true or not. 

The monastery dates back to the 13th century. You can see evidence of a trail leading along the canyon below the road, and that was obviously the old way of hiking up before the road was built. There are also a lot of caves in the canyon walls where you can see rock walls built.

There is also a hiking trail heading higher than the monastery, up to the highest point behind it. We did about half of it but decided time was getting on and we still had to go back down. Besides which, it was getting quite a lot colder at the higher altitude.

Pretty little flower growing out of a rock.

Lots of rock up here!

Right in the center of this photo is another cave and wall.

Zoomed in.

And another one.

We were running out of time or I would have liked to hike up there. Very cool stuff!

Of course going back down didn't take nearly as long. Especially once we got on the bikes. Hardly had to peddle at all the whole way back to Max!

Today we are moving on. We had a nice four night holiday here at the campground, but Turkiye is calling and we want to get going. We've got some driving days ahead of us.

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