Saturday, May 11, 2013

Bike ride through the hills of Crete

As I mentioned in an earlier blog post, if you park a car at the start of the Samaria Gorge you have to figure out a way to retrieve it at some point. The hike is a one-way deal to the sea and you then take a boat back to Paleochora.

We chose to take our own car versus the shuttle because the shuttle was 18 Euros or around $24 pp.  That is nearly $125 for a family of 5.  We figured that if one person took the shuttle the following day, it would be a significant cost savings.

On the drive up to the gorge that day, we traveled through some spectacular countryside.  Very hilly, with neat little Cretan villages clinging to the hillsides, lots of olive groves, and goats around every turn. Hence the inexpensive olive oil and feta cheese...

As we made our way through one valley after another I remarked to Joanie just how fantastic the road bike riding would be through this section; albeit with some fierce climbing to overcome.  That was all it took; the seed was planted in my mind.  I had to ride this to retrieve the car the next day.

The guy at the bike rental shop thought I was daft when I proposed my idea to ride to Omalos for our car.  He was skeptical.  It turned out to be a great day and it definitely "scratched an itch". I came looking for something and I got it in spades.  It was 5850 vertical feet of climbing and around 1650 feet of descending over 52km.  Not a big distance, but very stout all the same.  It reminded me of one of the rides that Joanie and Sean Hart & I did last summer.  Good stuff.

It was more or less equivalent to climbing Red Mountain Pass twice, off the couch, with a beer belly from 6 months of travel, and on a 25lb. Mary Poppins bike.  It left a mark; I was worked at the end.


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