Meteora The Stone Forest
December 19, 2016
“If you are a nature lover, Pelion will seduce you. It is filled with breathless views of unspeakable beauties...”
“In order for someone to enjoy a place, the French author Flaubert once wrote, he must live there for a certain period. A nest is not built in a day. At Pelion I don’t think it can be built even in a year. The Aegean on one side of the Pelion peninsula is the vastness and the storm. The Pagasetic on the other is serenity and a picture in a frame. The Aegean is a sea, the Pagasetic is a fjord.
On the eastern side the vastness and light of the Aegean, with its paradisiacal beaches, while on the other side is the dreamy serenity of the Pagasetic. On this intoxicating canvas of blue and green, you gaze ecstatically at how harmoniously the mountain bonds with the sea, the dense forest with the bare rock. The landscape talks to your soul like a fairy tale.”
Pelion: The “Thessalian land” pulls one in with its delights. And, a little further along, within the “Thessalian land” stands magical Pelion, with its verdant routes, the dozens of villages built in the typical Pelion architectural style, the emerald beaches of the Aegean, and the picturesque fishing villages of the Pagasetic Gulf.
The region also combines dense forest vegetation – deciduous tree and riverbank forests – and developed maquis vegetation.
Mount Pelion's flora boasts a rich variety of species, a fact that has been well known since antiquity, especially as far as healing herbs are concerned – according to mythology Pelion was the home of wise healer Centaur Chiron – but it also includes endemic and rare species. Certain local plants and rare endemic herbs – Centaurea cyanus cornflower, which, according to mythology, was a plant beloved by the Centaur Cheiron, and Soldanella Pelia, that grows along the streams of Mt. Pelion – are of great interest.
Specifically regarding the Region of Pelion, it's environmental quality and ecological importance of the region of Pelion is determined by significant ecological, economic, historic, and aesthetic characteristics. Its ecological value lays in the diversity of the excellently structured and preserved habitats that support ecosystems with a rich variety of species.
Pelion, with an extensive network of footpaths, offers routes according to your outlook and your physical condition. Mt Pelion offers as well, the joy of discovering hidden and unexplored routes of exceptional beauty. It is lovely during every season of the year, and has many footpaths, some of which are dirt paths and others stone, the well-known “kalderimia”,
which in the old days provided the only form of communication between the villages of Pelion. Today, the “kalderimia” provide the perfect choice for travelers who are seeking a more natural way of life, walking and hiking through the landscape, in order to revive the spirits, participate in activities in nature and explore the mythical mountain of the Centaurs, by following an organized vacation program.
