A mountain bike tour with Giannis
Taking a break on a guided MTB tour with Giannis
My friend Giannis has a bike shop in Naxos town. Apart from being the trusted wrench for my own bikes, he also rents out road and mountain bikes... and he takes his customers on MTB bike tours.
Unfortunately on Naxos, the MTB routes are not labelled. That means that a lot of times you see people renting mountain bikes, try out a few dirt roads, and then ending up on the road when they want to reach places further out. When I go on a tour with Giannis, it's a totally different experience...
Now I have to admit, I'm not much of a mountain biker. I like the easy and steady life on the road just fine. But from time to time I joined friends on their MTB rides and I can see the beauty of it. When my nephew visited this summer, I went with him on one of Giannis tours.
"How the heck did we get here?"
Giannis knows the dirt on this island, that's obvious. He's gone and searched out all the nice bike routes, all the easy and tough dirt roads, routes and trails. Which means when we left Hora (Naxos town) with him, just a moment later we entered a maze of little gravel paths. We turned a couple of times, we go up some climbs. By now I started to feel more at ease riding on loose ground. We got to some tougher climb segments, both steeper and more technical: If your rear wheel loses traction between the dusty sand and loose stones on the road, you need to push the bike.
I just managed to avoid the rider in front of me, who had to stop. Lucky me he was a bit to the right of the path and I could wind around him on the left side without losing momentum... or traction. We regrouped higher up, as we exited the maze at a spot near a village I know well. That was where I had that moment I always have when riding on trails with Giannis, I was saying to myself:
"How the heck did we get here?"
Basically you enter the maze at point A, follow Giannis through all those nice spots and dirt roads, and then come out at point B... and that's where you have that moment. I probably should take the GPS track of the ride, and follow it on my own until I learned the route myself. Instead I prefer to have Giannis guide me whenever I feel like hitting the trails.
At some point a bit higher up the views get spectacular. Here comes my main gripe with mountain biking then: You get to the most beautiful places, but you can't really appreciate the view. If you do, you stop looking out for what the trail throws at you, and then you are down there checking out the trail by feel. Obviously the real diehard MTB rider will just laugh about me here. You either enjoy the ride, or then you stop a bit to enjoy the view.
On this ride after passing through Agios Arsenios, we entered another "maze" and in the end came out in Sangri. We passed by the ancient temple of Dimitra - not stopping to see it this time, as it was the end of July and with the peak of the tourist season on, it was just too crowded. Instead we did a loop around Sangri, with a few more technical sections. Then we descended back to town on more dirt roads with glorious views of the plains around Hora and the island of Paros on the opposite side.
We came back to Giannis shop and handed over our dusty mountain bikes. Clearly the advantage of a loaner bike is that you don't have to clean it! The nephew had enjoyed himself on this MTB ride and he appreciated the beauty of the more hidden parts of the island. But he'll prefer to stay on the road, I guess being a roadie runs in the family!
"Couleur local" with MTB in Kato Sangri