As from 22nd June the first phase has been under way of a study for the restoration of Gramvousa Fortress, the ruined Venetian monument which stands on Gramvousa Island opposite one of Crete’s most famous attractions, the Balos lagoon. The aim of the study, as described in its title, is the analysis and documentation of the whole and “the incorporation of the monument into the natural, historical and cultural landscape of western Crete”.
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Management plans for Balos, Falassarna and Elafonisi
Contracts will shortly be signed for the management schemes for the region’s three emblematic beaches – Balos, Falassarna and Elafonisi – following Ministerial Decisions issued over a year ago. Signing will take place on 27th February in Kissamos, with those involved including representatives of the Environment ministry, the Region of Crete, the Natural Environment and Climate Change Agency (NECCA), the Hellenic Centre for Marine Research (HCMR), the municipalities of Kissamos and Kandanos-Selino and others. With the signature of the management plan by all the participants, the sum of €1.5 million will be made available for works to protect the three areas.
Continue readingA solution to car parking at Balos
The popularity of Balos as a destination for tourists has for many years been a source of problems. The sheer volume of visitors, apart from degrading the attractions of the beach itself, has resulted in severe congestion around the inadequate parking space at the end of the Gramvousa peninsula, from which once can make the descent to the beach by foot. A recent satellite shot from Google Maps, obviously taken on a summer’s evening, shows a line of cars parked at the roadside reaching 1.3 km back from the parking area.
The solution of closing the dirt road up the peninsula to cars and providing a minibus service to make the journey was mooted quite a few years ago, but little had been heard of it recently. However, it is encouraging to know that the matter has not dropped entirely off the local authority’s radar: the municipality of Kissamos is shortly to issue a tender for the creation of a car park at Kaliviani at the bottom of the peninsula, where there is already a ticket station charging 1 euro for admission to the road up the peninsula.
The online competitive tender, for a total of 321,767 euros ex VAT, has a deadline of the end of February and will be funded from the EU Maritime and Fisheries Fund programme for 2014-2020. The municipality is aiming to have the parking area ready during the spring so as to be available for the new tourist season, although the mayor of Kissamos, Giorgos Mylonakis, is as yet unwilling to commit himself to a schedule. “We have done proper studies and worked together with the right people, and so the project is to be tendered in the near future. I believe that after the tender we will be able to draw up contracts and proceed with the work. I don’t know if it will be ready this year. I don’t want to give a schedule, but we will try to have it in place this year,” he told Haniotika Nea.
Once the parking area is in operation, cars will not be allowed to go to the end of the route, but will stop in Kaliviani and passengers will be transferred by bus to where the current car park is. The project as planned will comprise:
– surfacing the parking area
– creation of a drystone perimeter wall
– installation of precast concrete channels for rainwater drainage
– creation of entrance and exit routes with flowerbeds containing plants and shrubs.
The parking, once in operation, will not only reduce the tremendous volume of vehicles which daily crowd onto the Gramvousa peninsula in the summer months, causing a nuisance to visitors and downgrading the environment. It will also result in better control of the flow of visitors and safety will be improved, since accidents have occurred in the past through drivers not knowing the route. (www.haniotika-nea.gr)