Samaria Gorge - the easy way!

The Samaria gorge is a 16 km cleft, cut deep into the Lefka Ori, the high White Mountains of south-west Crete. It starts life as a typical river-gouged valley, eroding the massive north face of Gingilos (2080 m/6280 ft) and broadening as it falls but narrows dramatically within a few kilometers of the sea.

Jos and I were staying in the tiny coastal village of Loutro, impossibly pretty and with the bonus of having no roads at all so there are no cars or motorbikes. You get there by boat or you walk over rugged cliff paths and that, to us, makes it wonderful. Loutro is the only port of call in the ferry journey from Ayia Roumeli at the mouth of the Samaria gorge and Chora Sfakion, where a road comes down from the north, so almost everyone that walks Samaria has to make the boat trip.


Loutro

We had both walked Samaria before but whereas Jos had completed the whole thing, I had some unfinished business with the place. I'd taken my two sons there in early May of 1988. Dan was nine at the time and Andrew only six. Conditions then were cool, well cold really, with fine drizzle at the start, quite different from the intense sunshine we were expecting but we bravely plunged down the Xiloskalo pathway into the mighty depths of the gorge, intending to maybe reach the village or have a look at the 'Iron Gates' and then climb back to the car.

Looking back now I see that this plan was a little ambitious. The path descends an amazing 1000m/3,300ft in the first two kilometers and the boys and I had walked around four kilometers before the sky blackened and thunder echoed from the slopes of mighty Gingilos. I remember eating our little picnic under a huge boulder before trudging back up the winding path to the plateau. To put it into context, I'd made my boys walk the equivalent of down Snowdon, Wales' highest mountain to sea level and back up again. They slept well that night.






Sunday September 10th 2006 was different though. We had that intense sunshine I'd hoped for in '88 and no car waiting at the top. We'd got here by boat, bus and taxi, setting off at 5.30 am and after a quick, untypically Greek breakfast in the untypically Greek cafeteria at the head of the gorge, we headed over the rim of the Omalos plain and down the 'wooden staircase' of Xiloskalo.




The obligatory pose at Omalos with Gingilos behind. It's all downhill from here (well, almost).

The first few kilometers of the route feel like the Alps. The air is clear and cool and the path descends sharply through fragrant woods of Calabrian pine but the well built kalderimi, the old track between Omalos on the high plain and the eponymous village of Samaria, zigzagging across the mountainside, makes the descent comfortable.



Down the Xyloskalo.

Samaria is one of the world's great walks and many people come to Crete with this walk as their prime goal. Still more discover the walk when they arrive on the island and realise they can do it without special clothing or equipment or even much walking experience. Most get bused to Xyloskalo around dawn from their hotels or holiday lets and pour into the gorge as the sun rises over Omalos.

On an average day in summer, two or three thousand walkers pass through the gorge but if you start walking slightly later (we started at 10.15) you miss the crowds and it seems too, that Sunday is a quiet day, as Jos and I had the place to ouselves for the first couple of hours.

Calabrian pines clothe the steep slopes

Yours truly singing selections from The Sound of Music in Greek

Jos rescues my already broken 1 dioptre specs from a size 10 walking boot crush injury

The sport of spurious cairn building flourishes in Samaria

A fellow walker takes a photobreak amongst the cairns

Walls in the village of Samaria, halfway to the sea

Samaria village makes for a natural break in the hike, about halfway to the sea, with tables for picnics, spring water and squat toilets (filthy) for the brave or desperate. Cute little Agrimi, wild Cretan goats or Kri-kri, hang around the resting visitors hoping for scraps of food and looking anything but wild. The villagers were moved out when the gorge became a national park (nice) and their place taken by park rangers and wardens, who monitor the progress and behaviour of gorge walkers and offer help and first aid to the needy.

Young Agrimi or Cretan mountain goat at Samaria village

Cameras at ten paces!

After Samaria village the gorge levels out but then begins to narrow. Perpendicular cliffs rising over 300 m (1000 ft) squeeze the river into a narrow channel, which is impassable in winter, causing the gorge to be closed from the end of October until May but even during summer there is the possibility of flash floods. In fact several walkers perished when they were washed out to sea in the summer of 1993.

The cliffs close in

Stratified limestone walls worn smooth by the winter torrents



Heading towards the narrow Sideroportes or 'Iron Gates' ------------------- An 8 m tree clings to the sheer, mineral painted rock face

The Sideroportes or 'Iron Gates' form the dramatic narrow entrance to the upper gorge from the sea and are probably so-called from the rust (and cobalt blue) staining of their vertical walls.

Upstream from the Sideroportes

Some writers claim that the walls are little more than 2 m apart at their narrowest and you can almost touch them with your finger tips. Our experiment, involving a time-delay shutter and a very risky dash through a rocky riverbed, shows this to be an exaggeration. (PS this is take two)

We make it about 4 metres

After 16 km of gorge, there is a 2 km walk to the little port of Ayia Roumeli, whose sole reason for being seems to be to cater for the cohorts of Samarians desperate for food, drink and if they miss the last boat, accommodation. There are no good roads from Roumeli back to Hania and the north of Crete so most walkers have to catch the ferry to Chora Sfakion, where buses wait to take them back over the mountains.

Feeling pretty good after a rough 18km walk and pretty pleased with ourselves too, Jos and I settled into a nice taverna with a prime view of the harbour quay and its fascinating parade of Samaria walkers. We ordered a couple of big beers, some kalamari and a Greek salad and spent a mellow hour or so waiting for the ferry to take us along the coast to sleepy little Loutro.

That's the boat on the horizon

This walking gives one an appetite

The day's Samarians waiting to be rescued