A hike and a birthday!

To celebrate my birthday, we decided to drive to the north of Crete to the town of Chania, but first a birthday hike was on my wish list. The Samaria gorge would have been the perfect hike, but sadly it is closed every winter already from mid-October and doesn’t open before mid of May. But we found another gorge called Imbros, which was perfect for a short hike during not so perfect weather.

Harbour of Chania

Also, the Imbros gorge seams to be quite the tourist attraction, but now in December we had the gorge to ourselves. We started from the coast and hiked up and down. Normally you would start in the mountains and hike the whole gorge down in about 2 hours.

Here we go!

Straight into the dry river bed

Canyon full of monk’s pepper and mountain cypress

What an impressive arch

In some parts the path was paved as this was once the only route over the mountains as a connection to the north. This gorge is very green and full of trees, which distinguishes it from the other gorges we had already hiked through on Crete.

How long ago might this part of the cliff have tumbled down?

Shelter on the way

Funny what people left here

Getting to the narrow part of the canyon

The only hikers in this valley…

… beside of goats and sheep

We were happy we had made it back without getting wet, as the weather was not so good at the moment. Parking at the bottom of the gorge: 35.207964, 24.173045

From here we took the road which nowadays leads over the mountains with many hairpins up the steep hills until we reached Chania, where we wanted to go for a birthday dinner but also do our washing at a self-service laundry the next day.