Meteora on the way to Metsovo

This is blog post V.2.  V.1. was dictated, translated, typed, edited and ready to go in all respects except the photos needed to be reordered. Then the battery ran out. That was the tablet, the laptop had already done emergency close-down before the typing part even started.  When F started the laptop up again it immediately saved it's 'pre-post' over the already prepared completed one - and everything was gone.  GONE!

Stupid Woman.

I am going to sit by the fire and wait for her to reconstruct what she can and then I will edit it.

Meteora is famous around the world for religious establishments perched atop improbable rock formations.  We have been there and posted about it last year, so on this trip we  did not stop for sightseeing and F just took some photos on the way through to remind herself why she wants to go there for about a week of walking around the area.  The fantastical rock formations are nature's art and interest her even more than the uses to which humans have put them.  It is a relatively small area of remarkable geology, and doesn't even have matching formations on the other side of the same valley.

We had 'motorwaid' north as far as Trikala, where the motorway suddenly ended in a building site and dumped us on a 'cross-country' route.  You can only get to Meteora by a cross-country route, and it is likely that the monks (and nuns) of times past who built their communities in such inaccessible places, were pleased for the valley to be off the regularly beaten track - or any track in the normal sense of going from one place to another.

After Kalampaki, the road climbs up into mountains, and winds and winds and winds.  Even, I the Tigger, was getting fed up with the cornering by the time we broke out onto the Egnatia Odos (the main east/west motorway across northern Greece) just a few miles short of Metsovo.  The views from the cross-country road were however the sort of thing that brings people like F to this part of the world.  We saw sheep, and sheep-herding, villages clinging to steep mountainsides and a little blue and white church balanced on a spike of rock, spectacular autumn colours (which F spectacularly failed to capture in photo) and lots of mountains in shades of distant grey.

Metsovo has also been visited by us last year, and we have come back to the same hotel, where the hosts remember me.  I have a nice room with a fireplace, some treats on the mantlepiece, a balcony with views, ..

We only chucked this in to see if you can spot the stripey cat

and a bed soooo big that I can't push both humans out at the same time.

However, my favourite place in the whole hotel is the fireplace in the reception and bar, but my exclusive enjoyment has been disturbed by hotel guests and half grown cats. Last year we had the place to ourselves, and the kittens of the season where chased outside by the landlord.  This year we are overrun with other guests and the kittens of this season have habituated themselves to humans to such an extent they shoot in when the doors are opened (by said guests), and head straight for the kitchen door which they have apparently identified as a source of foodstuffs.  My humans have been sneaking cuddles with kittens.  A small Tiggerish one has an unusual white tip on his tail.  We saw another white-tipped-tailed kitten when we went on a wander about town ..... their Daddy has been 'on the prowl'..

F warned me against baking myself.... but why? Or more to the point....why not?

Here and here you can see our last visit.  So no  repeat photos.  However, since last October there have been more weavings and the landlady bade us photograph one which was under glass on a table (under a light which produced challenging reflections)

Balcony inspection - tick.