Our stay last night in Agrinio provided a wonderful glimpse into life in a small, unspectacular but charming Greek town, where the small shops, sidewalks and main plaza all buzz with life, young and old. 

After a good night of sleep, today we experienced a place of spectacular natural beauty in an unusual but deeply satisfying way: we rode through the mighty Kleisoura Gorge hours before sunrise, with a sky full of stars and the sheer canyon walls and groves of olive trees below bathed in pale white moonlight. It was a serendipitous and singular experience, the sort of thing one does to avoid the ferocious midday heat on a bike tour, but that results in a progression of feelings beginning with awe and ending with gratitude. How can one not feel fortunate to enjoy the shimmer of olive leaves in the moonlight? The trouble, of course, with such an experience is that photos of a pitch black gorge don’t quite capture the essence of the moment, so, to see it in the daylight, we pulled a few photos from Flickr.    

By the time the sun rose, we had made terrific progress (including a break for baklava) and were winding our way along the Gulf of Corinth, whose deep blue waters separate mainland Greece from the Peloponnesian Peninsula. The serpentine road clings to the steep ocean cliffs, offering big views out to the waters below, and to the Rio–Antirrio bridge. 

A magnificent marvel of engineering undoubtedly, but one wonders if it was warranted as there was virtually no traffic on a weekday morning. At least it made for great bike tour photos!

 The rest of the ride took us along the old highway that runs the length of the Peloponnesian side of the Gulf of Corinth. 

The scenery alternated between beautiful vistas of the water, small Greek Orthodox churches little villages with stucco homes with red tiled roofs and grape arbors, orange and olive groves, pine and eucalyptus forests as well as some particularly utilitarian big box architecture, massive road infrastructure and unfortunate urban planning, which made us realize, not for the first time, that the economic exigencies of our modern world often ignore the unfortunately priceless human need for beauty and natural scale.

Arriving in pretty little Diakopto, we found human scale once again, with a friendly slow paced motorscooter escort to our hotel and a pretty evening at the small local beach, where our only company was an old contemplative woman and a rowboat.