Milies – Neochori

The trail Milies-Neochori starts from the central square of Milies. We descend for a while the asphalt road of the village in the direction of the provincial road Volos – Argalasti. We enter a well-maintained cobbled path that runs through the village. In the end, this cobbled path becomes a paved pathway and meets the provincial road mentioned above. Right across the road starts a clean path, mostly cobbledstone paved.

We pass a ravine that during the wet season of the year has small yet beautiful waterfalls. We continue to a ridge where we find a dirt road and a farmhouse. In front of the farmhouse, the routes to Neochori and to Afetes diverge to the left.

The path surrounds a small valley and leads to a dirt road, just above the site of the now deserted monastery of Agios Nikolaos. It is worth descending a little to the plateau, where the preserved katholikon of the monastery stands in excellent condition. No other building survives. A little lower there is a spring.

We continue on a good path that crosses the bush and go out on a dirt road, which we follow, intersect the main dirt road of the basin and continue on a small alley, which serves a farmhouse. In front of the farmhouse, we turn left following the signage, cross a ravine and go out on a dirt road again. We follow this road for 3.1 km to a plateau near estates, where the small monastery of Panagia Tourkogianni was founded. In the location we can visit the well-preserved katholikon of the monastery.

From Panagia Tourkogianni we descend an alley that ends at a pumping station. Here begins the path, which starts on the left and ascends gently into a rich and dense Mediterranean shrub, where we could distinguish the typical variety of Mt Pelion. The path is clean and follows an obvious strip in the bush. We reach a dirt road and enter immediately the country road from Horeftra Pass to Argalasti. In the first maneuver we leave it to enter Neochori and end up in the main square.

The route is waymarked with red signs and several circular signs of the Friends of the Kalderimi of South Pelion, with the characteristic yellow color and the black direction arrows.

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