Читать книгу The High Mountains of Crete. The White Mountains, Psiloritis and Lassithi Mountains онлайн

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Mobile phones/telephones

Cosmote and Vodafone phone shops, with English-speaking staff, can be found in towns throughout Greece. In Greece a mobile phone is called a ‘kinny-toe’. Your phone will work in many places in the Cretan mountains, but not all; you will certainly be out of contact when in a gorge. Greece has two-pin EU-style socket outlets. Suitable charger leads (weight 5oz) are obtainable from phone shops. Taverna owners are usually pleased to allow you to plug in during your visit.

The National Telephone service (land line) is called ‘OTE’. Phone booths, dwindling in number now, use phone cards, and these can be bought at some newsagents and pavement kiosks. Alternatively, If you expect to make many local calls a Greek SIM card costs about €20.

Compass, altimeter and GPS

In Crete, magnetic declination in 2015 varied between +4.1E in Western Crete and +4.7E in Central Crete. Contour maps, other than the Anavasi series, are small-scale and are usually inaccurate in their coverage of roads and paths. You will need the additional aid of a compass – preferably a sighting compass – for taking bearings off identifiable mountain summits, passes or plains, and to check the direction of valleys, ravines and paths. Note that some of the altitude measurements in the route notes are approximate, as they were taken when it was not possible to reset the device to a particular landmark; a GPS will do better. Maps published by Anavasi (see below) incorporate the metric grid Greek Geodetic Reference System (GGRS 87), which can be added to a GPS as set out in the box. (The WGS84 grid is also marked in the margins.)