Walking the Samara Gorge

By James Stone

Walking the Samara gorge will take all day, so you have to get up early. Although it was early September, it was dark when we crept out of our hotel room and walked up the road to the bus stop. We passed bars with people outside them still up from the night before, who pointed to our hiking books and backpacks and laughed. Fair enough - it's not your usual behaviour for a beach holiday in Crete.

The first bus up the mountain left the town of Chania and by the time we had arrived at the top of the gorge, the sun had almost risen. The temperature had changed dramatically and snow was visible on the highest peaks. Samara is the longest gorge in Europe at nearly 18 kilometres and we began our decent slowly and steadily, cautious that we did not know how tiring the walk would be, or what kind of terrain we needed to cross.

But we needn't have worried so much because the route is well kitted-out for novice walkers with regular benches, picnic stops and even toilets. We saw one girl walking in her flip flops. The beginning is steep with thick pine forests on the sides of the slopes. As we got lower, the sun rose and colour started to fill the blue hills. More walkers arrived and soon there was a flood of people.

Lower into the gorge it widens with beautiful settings of large boulders, trickling streams and views of the soaring cliffs. It felt like passing through a series of rooms, with each section different from the one before. One was full of hundreds of stacked rocks - mini pagan plinths made by passers-by. We added ours, and kept on walking.

Just before the end of the gorge, it becomes very wide, flat and stony. Up on the rocks live some wild deer who are very timid, but we were lucky enough to see them as they dashed nimbly on the vertical sides. Then the narrowest point - just a few inches across - appears. Here, everyone is taking photos and squeezing through, glad they didn't have one gyros too many before they came.

At the end, we felt like we'd really conquered something and were not half as tired as we'd imagined. We sat by the bay at the end of the gorge and drank some well-earned beers while we waited for the ferry boat which you have to catch to take you back to the town. It was a beautiful day and a good meal and good night's sleep followed.

The next morning, getting out of bed was impossible. Every single muscle on every side of our legs and thighs had seized up. As we tried to crawl down the hotel stairs, taking one step at a time, the manager looked up from his desk in reception and laughed. "Samara!" he yelled, pointing and grinning from ear to ear.