Text: Judith Degen

Translation to English: Katerina Pantazi

Photos: Antonis Sassalos, Judith Degen, Nikos Paraskevopoulos, Dimosthenis Loukisas

On Monday, September 1, a group of 32 hikers gathered from various parts of the island (Varidi, Kalivari, Gavrio, Chora, Charakas, Kapparia, Menites, Messaria, Aprovato, Amonakliou, Batsi), Athens, and abroad (UK, Israel, Switzerland, Germany, Czech Republic) at the olive press in Varidi. The group came together as part of a collaboration between Andros Routes and the Andros North Culture Festival, and we were ready to embark on a joint mission: on the one hand, to care for and maintain part of the route waymarked as no 14 from Agia Irini Chrysovalantou to the bottom of Frousei and Varidi; on the other hand, to learn about the functioning and rich history of the ~20 water mills, now in ruins, that run along the river. 

Once the buses brought us to our starting point at Agia Irini Chrysovalantou, the heat was nowhere near fading, and we started our roughly 3.5 hour descent back towards the olive press without much ado. As we wandered along the river through the stunning Frousei valley, we enjoyed the insights of Route Angel Yiannis Tridimas, our dynamic, knowledgeable storyteller (he explicitly rejects the label “tour guide”). Yiannis is a longtime volunteer of Andros Routes who was born and raised in Mermigies, had a career in Liverpool as a professor of mechanical engineering, and returned to the island for his retirement years. 

We learned that while water mills take more effort to build, they work more reliably than windmills, hence why they are so widespread on Andros. We learned that the river water was routed into a channel that entered the mill from above so it could drop onto the wheel attached to the grindstone with enough pressure to turn it; that the water was then routed through a similar canal down to the next mill and the next and the next, before finally being released back into the river. We learned that in the Frousei valley, most mills had water cisterns before the drop of the water, while those in Vitali didn’t – this is because the river in Vitali always had more water than the one in Frousei, so there was no danger of water lacking for the mill. 

Yiannis pointed out to us that the route we were walking on was not the path the villagers would have used to bring the crops to be milled, because it runs along the river – it was only a way to connect the mills. Instead, he showed us the overgrown paths that used to constitute the main trails from the villages down to the mills, and to the houses attached to them. We smiled at the images of him as a little boy being sent down to the mill with the donkey loaded with wheat; smiles that faded as we learned that the level of the water in the river was lower than he had ever seen it before. The last of the mills, operated by the Zouras family, closed in the 70s, after a wave of closures that were a direct consequence of the new ready availability of flour in stores, as well as general depopulation of the island. The mills have slowly been falling into ruin. How wonderful it would be to restore at least some of the ruins as a cultural document for posterity. For more information on the engineering and history of the water mills of Andros, see a dedicated article Yiannis has written here. 

While the main focus of the hike was learning about the mills, many hikers also maintained the path by clearing it of large stones, pruning overgrown shrubbery, and collecting trash. As the sun slowly set over the valley, our hearts and minds full and the heat still unrelenting, we made our way back to the olive press. There, we had the opportunity to purchase wonderful local olive oil and honey from the Chelmis brothers. For a list of local producers on the island, see this map. 

We warmly thank all the participants, Yiannis Tridimas for all the precious information and memories he shared, Dimitris and Nikos Chelmis for having us at their olive press and the Andros North Culture Festival for this lovely collaborative and informative hike.

See you at the next maintenance hike on Saturday September 13th in Paleopolis circular route!