Ice biking through the villages of Arcadia

Arcadia, Experience, Greece, Mountain, Village

Wait! Don’t start yet! Put some –appropriate- music on first!

Biking to the villages of Arcadia? “I’m going!” My adventurous nature cried immediately, before I could consider that it will be in January and probably I will stay there crystallized until spring comes or rather until…the Second Coming! I realized it a few seconds later, but really… this experience to cycle on fresh snow between the mountains of Vitina, Dimitsana and the surrounding Greek small villages, my (Sagittarius) heart could not loose it! You will understand me, if you belong to this phylum of people that are bored of the usual and always looking for something different.

That weekend in Arcadia, indeed it was snowing. The mountain bikes from bike me up, were waiting for us outside the hotel with our two drivers and the “speedometer” wrote a mapped route of 40 km. We wore everything we had of clothes and the waterproof with which drivers supplied us and started (hoping for a little help of God!). The beginning was quite difficult because of the snow that was intense, so that if you hadn’t the foresight to wear a ski mask (somebody thought that is was an exaggeration and she didn’t take it with her) you could not see, when the frozen snow burst in the face. Those minutes that I was pedaling along my front and I could not see from the snow in my eyes while my skin was in terrible pain, I swore myself with every bad adjective I knew that I did not get the mask and I came to ride a bike at 4 degrees Celsius with snow. What in the hell I was thinking??? And I wouldn’t have stopped nagging at myself if the snow hadn’t stopped (for our luck) shortly 10 minutes after.

From that moment on, I just could not believe what my eyes were seeing! These images have become so deeply engraved in my memory, they deserved all cold and my frozen limbs that sometimes I literally thought that they will be cut. It was that unique feeling of absolute freedom when I descended a slope so as the wind was blowing in the face, that I thought I was flying. It was that landscape with dense vegetation covered with pure white snow that reminded of a fairytale scenic. It was that lively curiosity that awakened to me this place to discover what’s following in my path. It was that magic to be so close to nature, so close to paradise (though it was its frozen version!).

I finished the route successfully (having used only almost half the battery!). For those who wonder how we did 40 kilometers, the mountain bikes were models of 2015, e-bikes type, yamaha motor to assist the twists and special posts. But whoever wants to be exercised simultaneously to parade the beach catwalk with the perfect silhouette, uses as less as possible help.

If someone asked me whether I could do again this madness I would say “I’m going” without question. So far I had a nice bike ride in my adventurous book, in the Forest of Fontainebleau and Barbizon village, just outside Paris. Now I have a bike ride in the villages of Arcadia and I am sure that soon there will be a third one.