Take a walk in Kea

September 26, 2018

Greek islands, Απόψεις, Ταξιδιωτικά μου Ημερολόγια, My Travel Journals, Reflections on love and other arts, Stories not so Short

The Lighthouse, Kea, Tzia, urban travel tales

Let me take you for a walk at the seaside from the church of Ayia Irini to the Lighthouse.

Next to the church, actually adjacent, is the archaeological site holding the excavations of Ayia Irini.
The excavations started in the 1960s following the closure of two important sources of income for the island: Kokka and the trade of acorn.

The EMAILLÉ FACTORY in Korissia had also closed down in 1957.

You can’t miss the funnel still to be seen as the boat enters the port of Korissia. The funnel is slowly collapsing on the ruins of what used to be the factory that used to makee enamelled home apparatuses for the Greek trade, but was also exported.

urban travel tales, Kea/Tzia, Ayia Irini, Caskeys, archeaology, Greece ,Vourkari

Kokka: In place of the once affluent community of Kokka today there are few surviving ruins in the peninsula bordering the gulf of Vourkari, one of the safest natural ports of the Mediterranean sea.

The ruins belong to warehouses and housing facilities of British ownership from the end of the 19th c. that were supplying coal to the passing steamboats on their way to the busiest ports of Syros or Chios.

Remains from the old warehouse to be seen in front of the local distributor of electricity (ΔΕΗ).

urban travel tales, at the Greek island of Kea

The passage of Lambros Katsonis: the narrow string of land is named after captain Katsonis, who in August 1789 was serving as Russian officer to fight the Turks in the Aegean. Here Katsonis was surrounded and trapped at the gulf of Vourkari.

He managed to escape the Turkish fleet pulling the vessels, buttered with pig fat, over wood planks lined on the rocky soil.

The repercussions by the enraged Turks had been catastrophic for the islanders of Kea.
These historic associations are inscribed on a marble plate.