Featured Remembered Rides

Now heading for lockdown again, I am having to rerun great trips again in my head to stay sane.

I have posted elsewhere about a magnificent ride from Santa Cruz, through Yosemite, down through Death Valley, and across Arizona to Grand Canyon.

A different one came to mind when I heard the news about the earthquake in the Mediterranean last week.

My journey took me from Orlando, across Florida, through Tampa and across Tampa Bay to Clearwater, where I stayed overnight. This was an unremarkable trip - lots of flat land and malls. Things looked up at Clearwater, with the magnificent white beach stretching away for miles in all directions.

Fortified by a humungous Crabby Bills breakfast, off I went up the Gulf Coast. Through Dunedin - as an Edinburgh native, I liked that - Palm Harbour, and on to Tarpon Springs.

Tarpon Springs. Why all the Greek Flags, and Tavernas? Was I lost?

I entered a Taverna, and stared at the maps and old black and white photographs on the wall. Kalymnos, Leros - I know these places, they are part of a small group of Islands called the Dodecanese. They are tiny: Leros has 8,000 inhabitants, Kalymnos 15,000. Even today, you can still only arrive by boat from Athens and Kos (I have done both, and recommend either).

The owner saw me looking, and I said I had visited these places , that I had walked that harbour wall at Pothia (Kalymnos). He had never had anyone walk in before and know anything about them, so I was well received.

It turns out that in the late 1800s, Tarpon Springs became known for it's sponges. The Dodecanese Islands, far away in the Mediterranean, were known for their sponge divers - people who dived deep, without oxygen, to pick sponges off the sea floor. When the local sponges were afflicted by disease in the early 1900s, many emigrated to become sponge divers in the Gulf of Mexico. All this time later, it still looks Greek - there is an Orthodox Church, Dodecanese Avenue, and established relationships with the Dodecanese Islands.

I have found i learn most from getting out and about, talking to people, and just wandering. Tarpon Springs was memorable.

Beerman

 

I can recommend Wolverhampton, too...

Beerman