Cycling in Greece – Episode 4 Nafplion to Stymphalia

Episode 4 of my bike tour in Greece following the route of Hercules and the 12 Labours in the Peloponnese.

On the 4th day of the Hercules Bike Tour, it was time to leave the coast at Nafplion and head up into the hills. My destination for the day was Lake Stymphalia, with a stop at Nemea along the way.

This day would include two sites connected with the Hercules 12 Labours myth.

I made a bike touring vlog a day when cycling in Greece on the Hercules bike tour.

More about the bike tour here – https://www.davestravelpages.com/hercules-bike-tour-of-the-peloponnese-in-greece/

Interested in bike touring tips? Take a look at my post here, and sign up for my free newsletter! – https://www.davestravelpages.com/bicycle-touring-tips

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good morning everyone it’s day four of the Hercules bike tour around the Peloponnese in Greece and the bike is packed and ready to go the time is about nine o’clock little bit before that’s what the sky looks like a couple of clouds but nothing serious I think there’s a bit of rain overnight which is quite good hopefully is going to bring the temperatures down and that’s the walls of Tiryns in the background there which I showed you in my last video so today’s route I’ve got a couple of options one is an 80 kilometer day and the other it’s a hundred kilometer day they both involve pretty serious steep ascents so I’m just going to see how I feel and as I get on for the first section though I’ve got a backtrack to mckenas and take it from there so I’m going to give you some clips from the road and talk to you in a bit [Music] are there so as you can see from the signpost in front ancient cleon’s orc Leone’s is signposted to the right and ancient Nemea is so imported to the left now I’m just going to walk back to the bike and I’m going to turn around and I’ll explain why I’ve made a note of that so as you’ve just seen our consular junction in the road between ancient Clio knees and ancient Nemea now ancient Clio knees is just mentioned in person in one version of her the hercules in the twelve labors myths that I’ve read and basically Hercules put down his beer there and said I’m going to slay the lion I’ll be back hold that and then he went to the mirror and slayed the lion so I’m not going to go to Clio knees itself but I do want to make a mention of it the reason being that Clio knees was responsible for the sanctuary of Nemea so anemia itself was actually a sanctuary and i believe that games like Olympic Games were held there well we’re going to go and check it out if it’s open and I’ll be able to show you around so basically Clio knees was the like main city or town and it was responsible for the sanctuary of Nemea and if you remember back to one of my theories about what the hercules myths about the 12 labors are all about i mentioned that perhaps he was going around defeating champions in the different city-states so that kind of supports her anyway it’s two kilometers to Lamia so I’m going to cycle there and I’ll show you around I’ve reached the site of ancient Amir and it split into two sections the first section which I’m at now is the ancient stadium of Nemea and this was a stadium used in their games and I’ve been if you can see here but this is the second myth about the origins of the games which says that Hercules instituted the games to offer thanks to Zeus for helping him accomplish the first labor of killing the lion so let’s go and check out the stadium so this is a tunnel leading through to the stadium and somebody just kindly pointed out that there might be some graffiti here there we go perhaps one of my Greek friends can tell me what that says and there might even be more here so I’m going to try and keep my eye out lots of walkthrough so looks like there’s some repair work on on obviously okay a light at the end of the tunnel so this is the stadium area into a few stadiums one at Olympia one at Delfy all over really let’s take you to one end that’s not much of the stadium left you can see here this is like water drainage I suspect and that’s the outline of the trek apparently it was 600 ancient feet long let’s see if these signs say anything over here I read that somewhere they still have an a million games here probably worth a Google online if you interested to check it out and apparently it’s held in the same sort of spirit as the original games would have been not sure if they perform naked because apparently that’s what they did in the ancient times so guess up here would have been some seats that have either been destroyed or whatever okay so there’s not much to show the stadium I’m going to go down to the other temple section now you’re the main part of the site we could say that that is the centerpiece of the site which is the remains of the temple of Zeus I’m not sure how much of that has been reconstructed and put together if you see here all these sections are sections of column that have collapsed over the years that one’s split in half now this is probably a good one to show you can see the hole in the middle so apparently they poured molten metal down here so there would have been holes through all of them like that and then the metal would have kept them together not sure I would have wanted to put the top ones up there I wonder if they had some sort of crane to help them out obviously not a mechanical one but they had some sort of manual crane that was helping them out so what we’ve learned about the site then is that it was a sanctuary or classes a sanctuary so it’s classed as neutral ground it doesn’t seem to be much emphasis on a holy aspect of it it’s more to do with the games that would have been held the first thing I read said held every two years I’m not sure if that changed every four years afterwards there are a few wells for water here again not sure if that would be because water was considered holy or if it was just because it was needed for all the athletes that would be competing so in terms of Hercules and the 12 labors this area is where he was said to have defeated the lion anomie and lion he may have built this temple and the site in honor of Zeus and in recognition of being given the strength to defeat the lion the lion of course is a constellation and we have a sanctuary so we’ll keep all that in mind as I visit the other sites and see if there’s any links between them all and this was another slaying so if we was at Lerner before and obviously he killed the Linnaean Hydra and he’s killed the enemy and a lion here as well okay so it’s about one o’clock I think it’s time for lunch and then I need to decide what I’m doing for the rest of the day if I’m gonna go to Stymphalian lake or go a little bit further I’ll see catch you in a bit check out those heroes beautiful only slight problem is my route takes me up most of those I think so whoever cell that goes Stephen snow on one of those mountains over there then if the camera can pick it up and walk some going downhill now and it’s awesome yeah I’m gonna need to go back up at some point anyway I’m gonna say it again look at them views Oh started to climb up into the hills now probably leaving the vineyards of Nemea behind just coming through olive groves now we’ll see where the road takes me today so come to the top of one summit but it looks like I’ve got plenty to go certainly beautiful not sure want to be doing this in July or August ain’t crazy hot then I think the temperatures are about right now I mean it’s warm but it’s not insane I can also imagine that at night the temperatures are going to drop a little bit I’m not too sure what I’m doing in terms of where to stay yet I’m not sure if I’m wild camping not sure if I’m going to find like a cheaper place to stay in a small village I think that’s fairly unlikely actually but I’ve got about another five hours of daylight left don’t really want to cycle all of that to be fair but we’ll see what happens just come across this little fountain not a hundred percent sir and if the water’s going to be drinkable but you think so it’s a fountain wouldn’t ya six that works awesome okay I can at least fill my bottle looks like I’ve got a nice downhill section to come now but can you see where the road goes up up there because I can’t focus I think I’ve gotta go up there spear facade on it so this is the Stymphalian lake at least what’s left of it if you can see right over there there’s some water and pretty much that’s what’s left of it so basically it was a swampy area and over time it’s just turned into a very fertile area to do some farming and this is the area where Hercules defeated the Stymphalian Birds as one of his labors now there is an archeological archeological site here if I can get my words out and it should be over there somewhere but I’m unsure at the minute as to if I’m gonna have time to get to it today because times getting on it’s about five o’clock I could do something to eat and I’m going to need to find somewhere to camp or to stay as well so I’m going to need to play this by ear if I didn’t if I don’t get a chance to visit the archeological site then I will try and do some research on it and like leave it in the description of this video or something like that and hopefully I can return and see it one day but it could be that I’d see it either today or tomorrow we’ll see that’s what happens when you bike tour and you can’t really have firm plans anyway it’s a very beautiful view I’ve certainly earned the view because there was a little bit of hill work involved so now I’m going to go down into the villages Stymphalian and hopefully there’s gonna be a two-burner in there speaking of it okay look where I ended up for the night I asked her to burner if there was like a little hotel or something in town and there was so I thought I’ll come and check it out and it is way over my budget not that I’ve got one I’ll talk about the budget in a minute but this is a pretty special place and look at that view look at that view it’s a little cafe there as well over the road so this is basically a little apartment or shuddhi all to myself let’s take you in looks very posh inside that it’s got a nice comfortable sofa a TV that we’ll probably never get used nobody love you beds not actually been in the bathroom yet oh yeah very nice bathroom it’s got a little kitchen area your shaiva have not got anything to cook with me actually maybe I’ll try and pop to a shop or something take you outside again so yes for this pointer I’ve not really set myself a budget I mean obviously I don’t want to go crazy and spend like a hundred euros a day but at the same time I don’t want to be the bigger at the banquet so for example mckenas was 12 euros to enter on some tours I might um Dennard about it maybe not gone in and I don’t want to do that so I’m not going to worry about things like that this place is 50 euros a night which is much more than I would normally spend traveling by myself but on the other hand it’s really nice I’m gonna wake up to that view in the morning anyway that’s the end of the day’s ride I think it was about 70 kilometers in total but I’ll put it in the description beneath and tomorrow I’m heading to the coast to a campground at a Creta beach so if you like the video please thumbs up subscribe to the channel and I will catch you in the next one cheers for now