An even earlier start!! Mainly because “the man” said he might be around to make us some coffee after about seven (official breakfast was at 8:30, which is completely useless to hard core walkers). Anyway he wasn’t around so we left in the twilight (is that the right term for morning light?), and headed up some pretty huge hills to get back to the Corfu Trail markers just before the hill town of Pelekas. The views over the island towards the mainland were awesome, bands of low lying mist with the higher judges poking through and the tall Italian cypress trees creating randomly dispersed exclamation marks all through the view.

The town was quiet, with just a couple of kids being taken to school and older people taking a morning constitutional. There was one guy walking circuits around a tennis court, I don’t know why, when two minutes down the massive hill and back up would keep him fit forever. The towns best feature was the quaint bakers in the town square. Breakfast of coffee (a rather good americano), a croissant (a proper one) and a boiled egg (cold, and in its shell) provided the perfect breakfast.

We headed out of town on pretty easy paths, and dropped back down to sea level at Myrtiotissa Beach and a Monastery overlooking it. The guide book suggests this is an “unofficial” nudist beach. I don’t know whether that implies all nudists we had seen were official,  I suspect not, and I’m absolutely sure it’s only a coincidence that there is a Monastery overlooking it!

I felt this section had a coastal path feel to it. Although that feeling didn’t last, when walking up a really long slog to some antennae high on the hill top. This was followed by the most treacherous path yet as we descended the other side of the hills. It turned out this loop seemed to be included by the walk designers to tire us out, as it would have been a 100 metre walk along a path to ignore it! It was a nice path though!

The route led us to Vatos and the promise of second breakfast at the Scandals Cafe and Market. The shop and cafe were deserted, so after a decent time, we helped our selves to some cold drinks from the shop fridge, and drank them in the bar. When the woman turned up she seemed a bit aggrieved that we had served ourselves. I don’t think she realised that the alternative was that she would miss out on a good sale, and we would suffer from extreme dehydration. Our approach was definitely right. It wasn’t helped by the only languages spoken being Greek and German.

We dropped down from the hill village of Vatos, and for the first time for about three days found ourselves walking on flat roads. It was good knowing that walking three kilometres would take a maximum of 45 minutes, not 4.5 hours! We soon cleared the ground to the foot hills below Giannades. Once again it was a big slog upto the town, but we were rewarded with a magnificent view over the flat lands below, and a nice cold corfu ginger beer. There were plenty of other choices here, but we pushed on.

The trail became busier with a few groups of other walkers, if they were Corfu Trail walkers then the baggage transfer services had done well. Although, I seem to have become accustomed to my pack, and while heavy is relatively painless. This does exclude an incident earlier today, when I was trying to remove a holly leave between my backpack and my back, whilst walking. In reaching around, I somehow temporarily pulled a muscle in my bicep – it was agony for 10 minutes.

Walking out of Giannades, the number of different flowering plants was remarkable, and I started photographing some of them. There was a fruiting pomegranate tree, I didn’t get a picture as one of the other walker had stopped, we really wanted to get some distance rather than passing and-repassing.

There was one final climb, up through mote olive groves. The amount of olive trees does make you wonder how many olives, or how much olive oil is produced from each tree.

It was a downhill run into Liapades, and despite a bit of faff finding the accommodation, we were sorted by 3pm. Today had been our longest walk and second most ascent so we had done well. Plenty of time to reward myself with a beer, that I had carried all day (note to self, don’t over shop although today it was perfect!), and a Blackcurrant Lemsip (or a BlackcurrantSip as it should be called) to help recover from the day, and a bit of a sniffle.