Chroscheria Castle

A local landmark is Chrysocheria Castle which stands halfway up the valley and looks down on the town. It's quite a steep walk up.


The castle which was built by Crusaders in the Middle Ages. Chrysocheria means 'golden hands' and is something to do wit ha Vrigin Mary icon which had golden hands... we don't kno the full story.


The last people to live here moved out about 300 years ago and it's pretty much a mess now. But you get a nice view down the valley and over the town.

What a Load of Rubbish

The sales brochure for Greece's Aegean islands rightly focus on the pristine beaches and the idyllic mountain/sea scenery.

Of course: there's more to life, and here on Kalymnos we have a whole neighbourhood, just outside the East End of the town, which is hopelessly devoted to trash.

There is a special section of sea cliff for washing machines (above) and a separate beach for crushed cars (below).

My favourite is the boneyard of battered lorries and fucked up fridges. It's beautiful.

Hey, if you're from Kalymnos Council and you're rading this, don't freak out - I'm not trying to put tourists off our Aegean paradise, I'm trying to attract artists. They love this stuff.

Day 55 - High Hopes

The spectacle at the top of the mountain where the tip has literally been shaved off, leaving a short-strip of flat land bound by death-defying drops, is called Kalymnos Airport.

The airport took longer to build than planned. The delay was caused by a realisation during construction that the runway was going to be too short. Negotiations between the contractors and the airlines ensued and, finally, a solution was found. Rather than squeeze a Boeing 747 onto the runway, as initially planned, why not try a 20-seater plane which could probably screech to a halt before the runway disappears over the edge of a 90 degree vertical cliff into the sea. And the construction was completed. Excellent solution; and it only took 15 years to reach.

We have made many attempts since arriving on the island to climb up high to a point where we will be eye-level with the plane and watch it as it swoops in to land. However, a combination of sleeping in, getting lost, and sporadic landing times have so far resulted in no successful attempts to do so. Today we give it another shot.

We are out of the house by midday – great, just over an hour until landing – and start climbing up to the church of St. Savvas, nearly at the top of the South West mountain. The sun is in full swing and we’re pretty convinced that we should have a clear view of the runway in the sky, a few mountain tops to the North.

Fifty minutes later and we are at out destination. Bugger. We have miscalculated and cannot see the runway. We wander to the back of the church and cast a calculating eye over the rocky mountainside leading up to the summit where the island’s T.V and telephone masts stand guard. Can we do it? Yes, we think we can. And so we start weaving our way up, racing against the clock as we jump from rock to rock.

Paul bounds up the cliff face without a care in the world but Nicole lags behind caught up in a whirl of paranoia that a snake is lurking behind every rock. She insists on hitting everything in sight with a stick just to make sure the python in her head doesn’t materialise. A small domestic breaks out but eventually logic and reason is restored and we get to the top.



It’s an electrical minefield up here. Scattered cables, wires, and rusty aerials outnumber the rocks and shrubs, but we manage to negotiate a path to an outlying piece of rock with an excellent view of the landing side of the runway, and set up the video camera. From where we are, the footage is going to be spectacular. We could probably read the date on a newspaper through the plane windows from here.

Once set up, it dawns on us that if the plane crashed, we would capture the entire tragedy on camera. How terrible! Yes. Horrific! Yes. What would the footage be worth? And we spend the next 5 minutes debating our minimum selling price.

We hear something. Yes, the sound of plane engines in the distance. The tension builds. Any minute now we are going to be touching the wings. And then Nicole spots a plane taxiing to a stop at the end of the runway. Unbelievable, it has landed from the North side of the island and we have missed it again. Of course, it has landed into the wind and if we had bothered to look at the sea, we would have seen that it was blowing from the South.

The take off is unremarkable and we head back down the mountain with no footage in the camera that we could either pimp to the highest bidder or turn into another You Tube masterpiece.

However, we find that a Greek pilot has left his co-pilot to deal with the technicalities of landing whilst he captures the great descent on film. Check it out on You Tube.

Day 31 - Manspace

We spend the afternoon at Therma; a dramatic, gravely, cliff-framed beach. But Paul doesn’t care for scenery. The two things he’s always wanted in life have been a shed and a cave, and now he’s spotted a bloke who has both.

Halfway down the steep staircase which leads from the houses to the beach, the cliff face is interrupted by an unlikely-looking front door, right in the middle of the rock. It’s not a rusty number either, but a nicely varnished proper posh wooden front door; the type you might see on a maisonette in Milngavie. There are no windows – just the door.

Soon enough, the owner appears: a lean and tanned middle-aged guy with a tidy moustache and a hat. He unlocks the door and disappears inside. His movements are too swift and practised to let us see what he’s got in there.

Nicole stares out to sea, oblivious, but Paul obsesses. What’s he got in there? A train-set? Some home-brew? A radio and a stash of weed? Twenty minutes later, the man emerges, grinning a big Greek grin and greets us with a hearty “Yia-sas”!

On the walk home, Paul opines on the awesome nature of this waterfront shed which is also a cave! “What shed?” says Nicole. The gender divide kicks in again.

Day 11 - West End Reggae Beach Party

More painting avoidance. We try the other beach just past the west end of the harbour. It’s better. There are no dogs trying to kill each other and there is a snack bar run by a guy in a motorised wheelchair who plays reggae on his sound system.

It’s very relaxed and there is a small crowd of fat people swimming. If it weren’t for the really good cakes, they’d be in the national team.

Day 6 - Stinking Dead Goat

On our morning walk we see a man riding a motorbike (slowly) while simultaneously leading a small horse on a rope. Coming the other way are two ancient nuns in a pick up truck. The one driving is talking on her cell phone. On the back of the truck is a stinking dead goat. We also see a fat girl smoking and texting at the same time as riding her moped. It’s just another day on Kalymnian roads.

Meanwhile, we try to sort out the flat. Years ago, Nicole’s sister Kelly lived in this flat after spending a lonely winter in a house in Skalia at the North end of the island. The isolation had obviously driven her mad, as she has painted the living room pink, the kitchen blue and the bedroom yellow. In the kitchen, all the cupboards and even the fridge have peen painted in dark blue gloss. The most heinous crime scene is in the bathroom where she somehow thought it was a good idea to fit a padded vinyl toilet seat.

It’s horrible and every time we’ve visited here we’ve put up with it because it’s only been for a few weeks. This time we’re finally doing something about it. We outlay 55 Euros on paint, brushes, turps, normal toilet seat, etc.

Our language skills are improving. We can now say “Good afternoon – I would like some very cheap water-based white paint, please”