Thasos, Island of Marble and Gold 10th-13th July

Thasos is an ancient island of marble, rich too with gold and ochre mines, famed in antiquity for its wealth and for its fine "black" wine (I think a thick, rich, sweet grape must). We headed north from Liminaria to Thasos town. It had a secure harbour, so we decided to give ourselves a break and stay a couple of nights. There were a polyglot mix of sailors - Turkish, Bulgarian, French & Belgian - with the usual exchange of stories and information.

Here we climbed to the Acropolis with its theatre overlooking the two harbours - it is slowly being excavated and restored (with EU funding) using the same marble quarries as the original over 2,000 years ago. There is a great archaeological museum showing the town and island through from Palaeolithic times through to Iron Age, and relatively more recent - to Hellenic, Roman and later Byzantine. It is next to (and partly built over - you can see columns and mosaics under the glass floor) the ancient Agora, where you can still walk amongst the remains of this large public centre. This is the marketplace, theatre, meeting place and political centre - the hub of the ancient town with its pillars and statues and what would have been colonnaded avenues, big squares and arched "cloisters". Dotted about here are the remains of various sanctuaries, dedicated to Dionysus, Poseidon, Artemis and others.

We are beginning to watch the weather - there is a period of strong winds brewing and we need to get ourselves back down to Lesvos. So we left for the south of the island, to a little inlet called Aliki, to be well placed for the 50nm passage to Limnos the following day. What a lovely surprise - Aliki was a pretty little cove with a beach, a few attractive tavernas and little B&Bs. And on the promontory sheltering the cove, the most wonderful archaeological site. It covered acres of pine forest, through which marble-lines paths had been formed to wind in and out and around the old marble quarries. We ended up of the end of the promontory, looking in towards our boat and the beach on one side and straight down to seaward at great slabs of marble. This is where the quarried blocks were lowered onto waiting ships for export throughout the Med for thousands of years. There were the usual remains dotted around the site, but it was all the marble and the quarries that fascinated.

A remarkable place, we were not expecting it and had ventured out without a camera - typical!

We have booked the marina in Mytilene for August and our flights home for the last weekend in July. So we need to be ahead of the weather and it's time for the 50nm hop down to Limnos tomorrow.