Greece - Olympus

Today we wake up in Nafpaktos, walk, bleary-eyed, on to the balcony, and head off to Olympus - home of the original Games. But first we have to cross the bay...

Nafpaktos obviously has a bit of history about it - there's a castle on the hill above the town. Probably there to guard the port.

There's the Rio-Antirio Bridge again. This is something of an engineering masterpiece. It has to handle tsunamis, earthquakes and the fact that the ends are moving apart at about 30mm a year (plate tectonics and all that). This is partly solved by having the pylons sitting on gravel - yes, gravel - that allows them to move about a bit!
Of course, we didn't know it was on gravel when we drove across it.
Olumpus. This site was pretty much dedicated to sport, like today held every 4 years. Unlike today, only men competed. Ah, for the days before water ballet.
Here's me standing in front of some more of them columns. This was a temple of some sort. I don't think you could buy steroids here.

The plaque that tells you that this is the place where the Olympic flame is light before setting off to wherever the games are being held. They use a mirror affair so that the Sun lights the flame. Bugger if it's cloudy that day.
And it's on these self-same rocks where the lighting watsit takes place.
This hole goes down to some really ancient stuff. The site was in use way before the games were held here.
And there's the stadium. The atheletes competed naked and women weren't allowed in to watch. Bet the beard stall was popular.
This - along with Delphi - was dedicated to Apollo. This is what happenned to his temple in an earthquake.

This is part of a practice area that the Romans turned into a swimming pool.
This is where visiting athletes were stabled.
There is also a sculpture's workshop. Along with a lot of other stuff, this is where Apollo's statue was made. To get an idea of the scale of this, Apollo's temple was about 10m high - 3 stories - and his statue would have just fitted inside.

Some more outbuildings - these one's are in pretty good nick.
I couldn't figure out what this was but here's a guess. Stuff like wood and cloth disintegrates over time but, if dust or earth surrounds it before it disappears, you can get a copy of the shape by pouring plaster into to what remains (there are wood-type textures here). This, then, could have been a wooden table of some sort.