Stone Bridges and my Stunt Double

Wednesday has been spent collecting visits to stone bridges. Zagori Stone Bridges  

This link doesn't show all the bridges you could vist if you made a hobby out of it.  In a 25 minute drive from our hotel we could collect about 10, most of them visible from the road or within a 5 minute walk of a parking spot. F threw in at least one that required us to walk from the top of the canyon to the bottom  (and what goes down, must, in this case, go back up again)! 

And it was dead calm and sunny - and HOT.

We visited 7 packhorse sized bridges and 1 Tigger sized bridge (mine was the very last one).

Agia Myna

This one, our first, had the clearest imaginable water running under it, and led to this church:

Captain Bear Bridge

Kokkorou Bridge

The cliffs around this bridge are sedimentary rock like the rest of this area, and here you can see concretions that have formed in the sediment. (Some other spectacular concretions are New Zealand's Moeraki Boulders.) These ones were also nearly spherical and some that were worn open showed off their layers

The first one F saw was so shapped that she thought someone had been carving protection against Evil Eye on a boulder at the cave entrance. Accident of nature. F & Mr B did lots of clattering about over and under the bridge and along the old packhorse trail carved into the side of the cliff 

One more picture of this one as it is a popular stop

Less than a kilometre up the road (and it was UP - Mr B was getting a bad feeling about where we were in relation to the bridge) is where we set off on our descent/ascent challenge (Koukouli Steps) to see this:

Misiou Bridge

You wouldn't do this one in the summertime, but even in this more temperate of seasons we were the only ones on the path, had the bridge to ourselves, and pootled along taking in the wealth of lizards scuttling off the path, grasshoppers pinging all over the place, pretty yellow butterflies, and a shiney black bumblebee-sized bee with bright blue wings.

Having reached the bridge in the bottom of the canyon F and I were contemplating the cobbles when I turned and was shocked to see Mr B climbing onto the bridge parapet. The prospect of climbing back out was daunting, but not so bad you'd throw yourself off a bridge. I had to RUN at him and convince him to back down carefully. F thought it was funny. There would have been nothing funny about scraping him off the riverbed below. 

Reasons for wanting a stunt double:

1. Climbing out of canyons (enough to make Mr B want to throw himself off a bridge)

At the next stop Mr B and I could see the bridge from the carpark and enjoyed our view while F ran down into the riverbed and back up....

Kalogeriko Bridge

Onward:

Lazaridi-Kontodimou Bridge (that little red & white mark is for the Epirus Trail)

(This is really where F saw the rock climbers.)

Last visit of the day:

Milos Bridge (and watermill)

We had a late picnic lunch here and I posed on the last stone bridge of our day

Millrace Bridge

What i really wanted to do was explore the mill buildings.

Policing the parapets at Misiou

PS In straight lines on a map none of our 8 bridges was more than 3 or 4 kilometres from our hotel;  22km by road.

I've decided to employ a stunt double for the more difficult stuff on future. He lives in AnoVitsa and is looking forward to a hollywood career.