Thursday, September 3, 2009

Of neglected treasures and grazed knees

This is a big brand of mineral water, of which my family consumes an average of 5l a day.
And this is the place it comes from.
Once a popular and well reputed mountain resort, famous for its multitude of healing springs, it is now a ruined ghost-town. On the one hand, it's so sad to see such resources go to waste, but on the other hand, it seems to be even more beautiful in its neglected beauty. It leaves room for my eerily-inclined imagination; it's not hard to imagine elegant ghost-ladies roaming the decrepit rooms of their once opulent villas. Or stray sprites taking over the towers and attics. The fact that a place close by is called "The faeries' meadow" only fed my fantasy :>


To add to the beauty of the place is white marble. Whole mountains of white marble, several quarries of white marble, the roads leading to them white from all the chips of marble.

But mineral water or ghosts (mineral ghosts?) were not what we were there for. It was rock-climbing, of course.
Being that my climbing skills are still rather humble, I spent more time on the ground than on the wall, together with the non-climbers, watching the pro's...
...and exploring. And look what we found!
A narrow, looong and very damp cave. Lucky some people are always prepared for anything and had their flashlights with them.
This outing with friends did me a lot of good, I was beginning to feel like I hadn't seen a mountain in 10 years (my sore muscles were actually from laughing so much, not from climbing!).
Great weekend. Nice bruise on my knee :>

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

hey, stumbled across your blog and i must say, these pictures look like something out of a movie. i'd love to explore freely throughout this area, very cool.

Anonymous said...

well first i'd have to make my way across the sea :P but definitely a great place to explore... see any ghosts?

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