30/10/2011 - 03/11/2011: Bayreuth

My third journey abroad this year, and having done the G and S of PIIGS it was probably about time to head to Germany. Neither holiday nor fieldwork this time, but an interview for a postdoc at BGI. The pictures below are from my 'day off' on Tuesday.

Obligatory trip to the Triassic

Ivy and statue near the Altes Schloss

Autumn in the Hofgarten

Vibrant colours on the walk out to the Eremitage

The Eremitage

Wahnfried

16/09/2011 Greece VII: The journey home

One of the most uneventful journeys ever. The car journey to the airport was smooth. The plane was on time, and my luggage was waiting on the carousel by the time I'd cleared customs. The train into London arrived after three minutes on the station and beat the Gatwick Express in to Victoria. The tube to King's Cross was waiting for me, as was the train to Cambridge.

If only all journeys were that painless!

15/09/2011 Greece VII: Stavros, or was it Tom?

We completed our circuit of Olympus today. Myself and Anna wandered up the Enipeas gorge from Litochoro.

Towards Mytikas (Μύτικας, 2.917 μ.)

We then drove round and up to the start of the trekkers path at Prionia. Annie and Anna had coffee, but Adamos had the brilliant idea of having a light lunch of fassolatha (white bean soup; φασολάδα), which was extremely tasty.

View from the cafe at Prionia

Before leaving Prionia, Annie and Anna took a wander (unbeknownst to either me or Adamos) up the first bit of the trekkers path to a small waterfall. We waited for about 30 minutes. I still have little idea what they were doing all that time. I followed in their footsteps when they returned, running up the steps. The waterfall was small, little more than a trickle. I'm sure it is much more impressive in spring, and certainly a much quieter place than the cafe, only two minutes from the car park.

  

 Saddled up, hopefully not for a trek to the summit...

Leaving Prionia and the foothills, we drove further north, before cutting back to the west to find the still active normal fault on the edge of the mountain. We got lost several times on the way, asking locals for directions. In return, we often got their life story. This was especially true on one long stretch of road, where we met an elderly gentleman tending to his vineyard. He must have been glad of the company, because Adamos ended up talking to him for about 5 minutes. After this, the man scurried away for a minute only to return to the car, his hands full with two enormous bunches of white and red grapes. We  thanked him profusely, than continued on our way, savouring the large sweet fruits as we went. 

Several detours and diversions later, we found ourselves travelling south, the Livadi ophiolitic body on our right hand side. Finishing the loop we started yesterday, we found ourselves a couple of kilometers away from one of the key sites of Clive Barton's PhD on Olympos. The contact between the Pelagonian and Olympos rocks was only some 200 meters from the road, so, after looking at a few folds closer to the small quarry where we parked the car, Anna and myself walked up. 

The contact, once apparently well exposed, is now largely overgrown with scrubby bushes and low trees. The schist adjacent to the contact is extremely friable, the sizeable micas weathering out and forming a more hospitable substrate for vegetation than the material on either side.

Oddly for a contact described variously as extensional (Kilias and others) and thrust (Barton), the sense of shear apparent from small-scale folding at this 30-40 degree dipping contact is consistently sinistral, rather than normal or reverse. An opportunity for more research?

Looking toward the Olympos carbonates just past Barton's contact
(schists visible on the lower left hand side of the picture)

After about 30 minutes, we returned to the car and made the return journey to Leptocaria. We ate in again. A smaller affair than the night before; the sons ate elsewhere. The food remained just as tasty though, and still plentiful. Souvlaki and salads made a very agreeable meal to finish my annual pilgrimage.

14/09/2011 Greece VII: The home of the Gods

Dina starts work at the Frontisterion again tomorrow, so we said our goodbyes in Grevena. I then packed my rucksack into the back of the Blazer, and Annie, Adamos and I left for Olympus and the seaside. We picked Anna up and drove around the south side of Olympus, passing close to Livadi on the way.

One of the mountain roads leads to an army base, and passes through the contacts of the Pelagonian Schists with the underlying Olympus Series Carbonates. The contact was pretty difficult to miss.

 

Left: Pelagonian schists. Right: Olympos series carbonates

Beyond the contact, the roadcut exposed mylonitic marbles. Paragliders sailed above our heads as we looked for structures and rare undeformed areas rich in fossils.

Paragliding above the Pelagonian

A couple of roadcuts proved themselves particularly weathered; the greys giving way to rusty browns. Large exposures revealed sharp to isoclinal folds marked by thin beds less resistant than the surrounding layers. On the way back down, we startled a bird of prey from its philosophical trance atop a dead tree, its large wings pushing it up and out westwards over the contact only a few meters from the car.

Startled from its musings

Returning to the main road encircling the mountain, we continued our journey. Rather than heading north towards our destination, a detour led us further east, through a section of less-than-perfect ophiolitic material. Purple-green lavas outcropped along the forested road, their sulphide-rich surfaces occasionally revealing tight and isoclinal folds clearly picked out in white.

Unhappy lavas

Occasionally, the trees parted sufficiently to afford us a view back towards the west.

Westwards towards Olympus

Passing through unimpressive scraps of peridotite long turned to serpentine, we stopped in a sizeable village to rest. A small cafe was open on the far side of a wide stone-paved plateia. We sat on the chairs, and ordered coffee from the aging owner. He told us that the village, once 400-strong, now had fewer than 100 inhabitants. He owns a farm outside the village, which he wants to pass on to his son. His son, perhaps unsurprisingly, has other ideas. I can't blame him; such an isolated place doesn't offer much of a future to anyone young. It struck me as a wonderful place to retire though.

We returned to the Blazer, and backtracked to the road skirting northwards around Olympos. Further contacts appeared, with carbonates this time overlying schists. The Aegean appeared ahead of us, and we followed the hairpins down the mountain side, stopping occasionally to take photos of the 10 m-scale boudins in the carbonates on our way down.

On our arrival in Leptocaria, we were warmly welcomed by the owner, wife and sons of the Hotel Galaxy, our home for the next two nights. Adamos and the owner once again quickly fell into conversation. Anna joined in as a third Siatistan - I assume they were talking about old times, but I admit that I quickly lost interest in attempting to pick up intelligeable scraps from the fast, smooth flowing Greek, and just let it wash over me instead.

The rooms in the hotel were very basic, but perfectly clean. The balcony looked over other hotels to the south. A dazzlingly bright sun dog lit the sky like a second sun to the west, lingering for twenty minutes before dusk descended.

We ate outside with the family in the evening. All of us sat around a long table, with the two men at the head and foot. A sumptuous banquet was presented to us, with salads, potatoes, breads and dips filling every available surface. Eight large fish were placed in the middle, their silvery scales lustrous under the fluorescent bulbs. I once again gained a reputation as a good eater, our hosts wife (also cook) gesturing for me to have more. We sat talking long after the food was finished, watching the moon rise over the large swimming pool to my left.

After dinner, we all went out to one of the local ice-cream and alcohol bars, and watched the younger tourists walk down the sea-front road. There was no need for anyone to wrap up warm, even for the girls walking along the beach.  

13/09/2011 Greece VII: Panning

A fun, if remarkably unsuccessful day today. Having apparently gained a reputation in Grevena as an experienced gold panner, Tolis (of the outdoor pursuits center) asked Annie if we could take him to a couple of sites to show him the ropes. He picked us up in his 4x4, and we left the city by the Pindos road. The vehicle is extremely impressive, with a dash that more closely resembled the cockpit of a Cessna than a car. Tilt-yaw-pitch indicators joined the array of other knobs and dials in the front.

We stopped at two sites, the first on a large plain and the second in one of the many hidden valleys, where two sizeable rivers joined. The first I distinctly remember panning in with Rob during my first year, on one of our days off during our mapping project. As then, we found nothing but a few rounded grains of chromite. The second was a new site, but I knew as we drove into the valley that we would be unsuccessful; the surrounding rounded hills covered with thin soils overlying flysch. The tiny fish in the cool waters nibbled at my feet as I swirled the water into the pan. No luck.

We returned to Grevena empty-handed. Tolis regaled us with excerpts from his mountain rescue adventures. I'm not entirely sure 'rescue' is an appropriate word to use. Given that most of the people they're called to are suffering from more extreme cases of death, 'recovery' may be more appropriate. In one instance, a man who was searching for Nazi gold up in a high mountain cave fell down a sheer face. The rescue team were unable to find the head.

After a couple of hours siesta, Dina came back to Annie's, and we went out souvenir shopping. Since my last visit two years ago, several tourist shops have opened up, specialising in local foods. Dried mushrooms, liquors and pastas line the shelves, interspersed with saffron and other spices. A range of dried fruits, hard-boiled and spoon sweets and preserves join the mix. I bought some dried mushrooms and mushroom pasta, three grams of red saffron in one shop, then crossed the road for some dried figs and rose-flavoured hard boiled sweets (and a mushroom fridge magnet to which Dina had taken a shine). The owner of the second shop had a daughter who had just got married, so gave us each a small bottle of liquor as a wedding gift. Dina donated hers to me. I look forward to trying the cherry and apricot nectars when I get home. We then visited the Zoomserie for ice cream one last time, and we sat on the steps outside the public library watching the kids play on the square. Dina got a call before we were finished; one of her students got his results and wanted her to go celebrate his success with sweets at the school, so we parted and I returned to the flat.

After our trip, Tolis was apparently sufficiently excited to ask me to send a pan over from England. He is considering starting a panning school; an appropriate way to make some money from the gold-obsessed locals. That evening, I ordered another pan for myself, and left mine at Annie's.

12/09/2011 Greece VII: Amphibolite addiction

Another day, another trip to the Pindos. The range seems to contain so many geological treasures, buried away in remote valleys and shrouded in dense forests.

The essential purpose of our trip today was to take photos of a single locality. Although not in the high Pindos, the network of tracks are sometimes hard to navigate, and impossible to drive up without four-wheel drive and no small amount of bravery. So Adamos was hired again, and after a short stop for a panorama at a small church, we passed around the small village of Kakoplevri and up the rust-coloured dirt track lined with peridotites.

Wall paintings inside the local Greek Orthodox church

Limestone trapped between two peridotite imbricates above Kakoplevri

Having completed our task for the day, we continued through peridotites and molasse. The contact was exposed in several places; a coarse poorly mixed conglomerate marking the erosional base of the sedimentary sequence. The track took us through pristine deciduous forests; the cool breeze through the car windows welcome respite from the alternating stifling heat of the exposed hillsides and biting cold of the air conditioned Blazer. A mixed herd of sheep and goats resting on the road blocked our way for five minutes before the goatherd and dogs appeared over the slope. Further along the road, we were stopped again by a felled tree. Luckily, the forester responsible was working a little way behind us, and cleared the way ahead once more.

Our helpful wilderness woodcutter

Our passage back down to paved roads took us through cumulate sequences before providing me with a blast of nostalgia in the form of a several meter thick unit of interleaved amphibolites and sheared ultramafics.

Sheared amphibolite-dunite contact

We returned to civilisation via another small village, and stopped for lunch at a new and well-equipped hotel, complete with faux antler chandeliers and gym. Its wide wooden balconies overlooked a wide river, the shallows glistening invitingly in the afternoon sun. A small dog padded back and forth between us, hoping for scraps. A pleasant end to a relaxing day.

11/09/2011 Greece VII: Sun beams on Vassilitsa

A morning off, and then lunch at the Venetikos Restaurant, where they keep tame deer and chickens. Children seemed more interested infeeding the deer than themselves, though their timidity meant that the bread and grass rarely reached the deer on the first attempt.

Deer outside the Venetikos Restaurant

After lunch, we drove up to the high Pindos around Vassilitsa, first taking the Samarina road and then backtracking, driving up to the ski center on Vassilitsa. For once, the thick haze provided light conducive to interesting photography.

Looking towards Tymfi (Distrato Road, Vassilitsa)

Looking towards Smolikas (Distrato Road, Vassilitsa)