Farangi Psathopyrgou, Achaea 20140810

Exploring paths in gorge if Psathopyrgos. We did as much as possible with paths and the rest with dirt roads. Only tiny piece of route follows asphalt, from Titan mine down, at the end of run.

0,0k at 75m - Drepano. Start from center of the village with concrete roads, soon becoming dirt after village, towards church of Agios Giorgios of Drepano. In order to pass through some nice hiking path, we did a bit of detour from the road at 700th m, turning right. For some time we followed MTB path from Drepano to Platani (signposted).

2,4k at 210m - Hiking path. The closer to hiking path, the dirt road was becoming smaller and narrower (looking more like hiking path itself :-P). At 2.4k we reached end of road and turned left to find proper hiking path soon and follow it all the way up to the church.

3,4k at 365m - Agios Giorgios Drepanou. It's probably the only church I know of that does not have water spring! Anyway, didnt matter for us as it was early into the day and into the run. We left the church with dirt road towards Drepano village but after maybe 300m took right turn into the forest with forest path (unofficial path name is "the path of the fox", alepou in greek). Really nice section with some ascent and quick descent - not very technical but not easy neither, just perfect). After something like 1k we reached dirt road again (one from Drepano up to Argyra).

4,9k at 145m - Back on dirt road. We followed the road for about 1.5k with a little bit of up and down until crossing. The main road continues to Argyra, but we turned left down to the spring.

6,4k at 110m - River/spring. Even though it's middle of the summer, the spring actually had some water! From here we started longer climb, first still with dirt road, later with path and later just up the hill! Really difficult at some point with hard plants cutting ours shins (in my case high socks, that looked like cotton pads at the end :-P).

7,8k at 390m - Top, end of climb. We were more than glad to finally reach the top of the climb and find sthg that could be called dirt road. Cool views to Sella and Argyra villages with Windmill park above. From this spot we followed dirt roads for about 3k, quite boring section that had to be done to reach the gorge :-D Also sun and heat started to bother us when wide open.

11,8k at 380m - Left turn into the gorge. Just before we reached the gorge, I started to recognize some roads as I did pass them with MTB some years ago (even uploaded somewhere here on wikiloc). Later I couldnt belive I passed so close to the gorge and was never aware of it!
The path inside the spring down the gorge was awesome! Unbelievable how close to the sea! Full shadow, cool temperature, nice path, great views to gorge's walls left and right! Check out photos Yourself. We actually took our time here to enjoy and take some photos rather than running through fast.

13,7k at 270m - Left out of the gorge. The river continues down, but very soon after it's not possible to pass, so we took old dirt road (or what was left of it) up to the left.

14,5k at 240m - Titan mine. Not even 1k from amazing nature landscape of gorge we found landscape shaped by human :-/ How close?? Anyway, we passed through the mine and descented with asphalt road.

16,7k at 125m - Left with dirt road. To cut to Drepano, we took left turn with dirt road to reach church of Agios Anastasios.

17,6k at 70m - Ag Anastasios of Drepano / finish at the spring. Very beautiful small church hidden in the shadows of dense trees. Finito.

Very relaxing tempo, more of enjoying the route, not racing against any tempo. Awesome spots in very surprizing locations :-P I mark it moderate just for overall distance and one difficult climb without path.