"Each step forward has a sacred meaning of its own"   Sri Chinmoy

Profitis Ilias Trail Run - Haraki - Rhodes, Greece - September 2025

The first time I stayed in Haraki, a beautiful bay on the south side of Rhodes, I wasn't in shape for running. I remember hiking up to Feraklos Castle and Moni Tsambika, in the intense September heat. This time, in October 2025, I had just resumed running after recovering from the AWW 45-miler, so I was keen to get out in the hills of the interior and explore. Although Haraki is right on the coast, the mountains are close by, and I planned a route around Profitis Ilias, to the edge of the town of Archangelos, then back through the pass to Haraki. I was out at first light, well ahead of the sunrise, jogging up the slopes towards the old crusader castle that overlooks the bay. In that pre-dawn light Haraki was silent and idyllic.

I had to slow to a walk to pick my way round the castle ruins, on a single-track trail over loose stones on the hillside, but soon I was down off the hill and heading towards Agios beach. Someone was unloading kayaks on the sand. I paused to look in the cave-church at the end of the beach, little more than a tiny shrine. The door was unlocked so anyone and everyone could pause there for a moment of silence or prayer. I closed it carefully, making sure it was securely on the latch, before heading up a steep slope into the untouched, open country back from the coast.

I was running north-east, the sun rising ahead of me, the bare mountain of Profitis Ilias to my left. Beneath my feet there was a dirt road sometimes, then a gravel trail, sometimes a metalled road leading through olive groves.

This road through the olives reminded me of the "One perfect road" aphorism that appears on so many tee shirts! It brought me to a tricky trail where I had to divert over some wild country to get around the compound of an isolated house and on to the road, but once on tarmac again it was easy enough to find my way through the outskirst of Archangelos - hillside lanes where people were just beginning to get up and head out for work. Still the roads were quiet enough and the silence unbroken enough to make this a pretty magical trail run. The lanes took me high up into the barren hill country on the flanks of Profitis Ilias and then the road became a gravel track then finally a trail. The landscape at the high point, the pass between Profitis Ilias and a small, neighbouring hilltop, was arid and filled with strange dried-out thistle-like plants that had faded from green to a kind of russet gold. They looked like they would be pretty prickly and hard to get through in high summer, but in the early Autumn they presented no difficulty.

Next came an upland eden of patchy grass and olive trees, with goats appearing now and again from behind the rocks or pausing on a pinnacle to look down and check out who I was as I came shuffling through.

By now I cut a pretty strange figure with the sunshade out on a pretty hi-viz running cap! Hardly blending in with the surroundings. 

Next came the biggest challenge of the day as I had to follow a very technical descent in the gully between the two hills - I opted for a slow, painstaking walk down rather than a run as it would have been jarring on the body and risky if I twisted an ankle out here in such an isolated spot. After a long stint of stepping downwards through the gully I was on an easy slope in open country, then back on to roads and soft trails for the return to Haraki. Feraklos Castle was invaluable - even without GPS this bit would have been easy to navigate just by keeping an eye on the crag and castle walls and taking them as a signpost back to the village.

All in all this was 2 hours 15 mins of trails and lanes in some deeply absorbing countryside, a step outside my normal world of Bristol roads and Welsh hills.

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