It could be Peru...

Friday 18th December and a week to go until Christmas Day.  With temperatures in the low 20s today it was hard to imagine snow laying round about deep and crisp and even!

My new found enthusiasm for walking means that I am happy to get up and out of bed, get my walking shoes on and 'do it'.  Today's walk was a variation on the one which we girlies do with Rachel but with the addition of one loop the Theletra side of the main road and another the Akoursos side of the road which bumped the distance and the inclines up nearer the range that Liselotte is more familiar with.

It was spectacular and save for one wrong turn our new best friend and App, Komoot , did us proud - and if I had left the woman shouting out instructions (I muted her) we wouldn't have gone wrong.  The hardest part of the walk for me was not the two sharp inclines but the long slow incline at the outset when John and Liselotte set off at such a lick I was almost running to keep up!

We actually calculated that I, with my little short legs, do 20% more steps than John!!  Anyway this is some of the scenery on the Theletra side of the road which could be mistaken for a vista in Peru with the lush green terracing (We shall now refer to this as the Machu Pichu loop!).  Those terraces look to have been there for many years and you have to wonder how they used to manage when all they would have had was elbow grease and oxen.

After we had crossed the road and started up the incline where Big Dog sits silently at the top we passed Rachel and a friend descending down - good on her for keeping up the walking - I hope we can incorporate the Machu Pichu loop so that the others get a chance to see how beautiful it is.

We walked and talked and even though the last sharp incline on a short stretch of the main road coming up from Akoursos was a killer I didn't give up and I didn't whinge like I normally do.

Our walk ended in the cobbled streets of Kathikas where we encountered a rather random telephone just sitting on the wall of someone's garden - it appeared to be cabled up and working although you have to wonder exactly what it was doing there!!!

10.9 kilometers today and completed in record time apparently.  It had been lovely - the weather was perfect and the views so rewarding.  Off now to plan another one locally for the week between Christmas and the New Year!!!