I just printed this ...

The olive trees on Corfu don't get replanted, they just get pruned back to their trunks every 60 or 70 years. The result are these bizarrely twisted trees, locals claim some are thousands of years old ... the groves can be very atmospheric even in the daytime. They make a delightful, rich yet light and fruity oil however.

 
Small world! this is the old one from 7 or 8 years ago ...

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The heavy winter rains have washed away the dry-stone terracing that retained the soil, and the trees too I suppose.

The olive trees can live thousands of years, some in the Beqaa Valley are claimed to be over four thousands years old, these were probably closer to four hundred
 


The Monastery Agia Triada is maybe 7km from the village of Klimatia, it's up on top of a hill, perched on foundations that are in part carved from the living stone. One reaches it along an unmade track through mile after mile of old olive groves that stretched the off road capability of even the Hyundai I10 I rented.

A fiend says that it has always been a church, "even before there was Christianity" he says, and it does look just the spot one would find an ancient acropolis. Unlike almost every other Holy place on the island it's closed to the public, but the gardens are fair game, I'm not one for that spiritual stuff but this spot has that feeling of timeless peace that sneaks up on one sometimes so it seems proper to be respectful ...

The hill from Nimfis ...

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, and part of the track ...

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the signage is pretty poor, which explains why it took me three days to find it

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There is also a pilgrims path from the church in Klimatia for the really brave ... very steep it summer temperatures. It starts here ...

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and ends here ...

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In the 1980s all these places were still in use, but today there are very few still in production. They were shared by a group of growers or even settlements. This one is on the track up to the Holy Trinity Monastery, some of the roof has fallen in and the press has gone off to be a curiosity for the tourists.

The olives are still farmed, you can see some of the netting to the left of the building, but they go off to bigger EU health compliant plants. Anyway, local labour is difficult to find in the summer nowadays, the tourist's euro is to blame I expect. Those old olive groves are still peaceful and magical places if a little less tidy now.
 
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