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Our today week-end rout travel is: Cape Fiolent - St. George’s Monastery - Jasper Beach

Sure, the best time for this route is summer: sea-swimming at Fiolent is simply amazing!

To get to the point is quite easy: by autobus #3 from the bus stop at the “Balaklava Roadway, 5^th km” and from square “50^th Anniversary of the USSR” or by autobus #19 from square “50^th Anniversary of the USSR”. Get out at the bus stop “St. George’s Monastery” and follow the signs. Moreover, at summer time every 2 hours there is boat from Balaklava that brings the most lazy travelers right to the beach. But if you are a real traveler in your soul, you’ll pass this entire route on your own. And you will be rewarded with the unforgettable impressions!

Now we are at the bus stop “Monastery”. A dirt road is passing up, twisting among private cottages and finishing at the wide tableland. On the left you can see the St. George’s Monastery. For a long time it was in rather neglected conditions, but at the last years it is again restoring and re-building.

The first view-point is situated right at the top of the tableland more than 200m above the sea level. Perfect view: blue half-circle of the bay framed with emerald green trees. On the right the motley horn of the Cape Fiolent is piercing the sea. This Cape provides its name to the all region around it. Two rocks in the sea near it – The Orestes and The Pylades – are from black stone, but seems whitish because the deposit of salt on it. On the left you can see the golden cupola of the Monastery’s temple. And in the center of the bay, like a folded back of the huge animal, stands on the St. Appearing Rock. The big, 7 meters high, cross stands on the top of it.

Let me tell you some details about this place.

The name Fiolent first appeared at the Russian maps at 1807. Before this date and also in the foreign literature it is known as Partenium or St. George’s Cape. Partenium (Parthenium) – means Virgin, dedicated to the Virgin. This is the very first, historic name for this place. The cult of Parthenos (Virgin) goddess was common at the mountain and coastal lands of ancient Taurica were Tauri tribes lived. They worshipped to the forces of nature. And the Virgin was a symbol of land, water, all the life, goddess-protectress and keeper. Later local tribes had assimilated with the Greek settlers who had created a number of colonies at the shores of the Pont Euxine. The Parthenos entered into the ancient Greek pantheon and became the protectress of the main Greek settlement in Crimea – the Chersoneses. Her image was printed at the local coins; the first words of the famous Civic Oath of Chersonesos sound as: “I swear by Zeus, Gaia, Helios, Parthenos, the Olympian gods and goddesses, and all the heroes who protect the polis…”

   The Parthenos was equivalent to Hellenic goddess Artemis (Apollo’s twin-sister). In Romanian tradition her name was Diana. The great ancient-Greek historian Herodotus (5th cent. BC) maintains that the Virgin has its own sanctuary with the sacrificial altar. It was situated at the high cliff and sacrifices were pushed down to the sea. On the opinion of ancient Romanian historian Strabo (64/63 BC –  24 AD) the Virgin’s sanctuary was situated right here, at the Cape Partenium (Fiolent). One ancient myth is expanding and connecting with another Greek legend – Trojan War and the myth about the Iphigenia, the daughter of the Greek king Agamemnon. Artemis rescued Iphigenia from the human sacrifice her father was about to perform. The goddess swept the young princess off to Taurica where she became a priestess at the Temple of Virgin. The Iphigenia’s younger brother Orestes together with his friend and sworn-brother Pilades helped her to escape from the Temple. This legend has a happy-end: the fugitives had successfully returned back to Greece; nobody was killed or sacrificed, or turned into stone. Thus two rocks in the bay – just a memory about ancient legend. Near the Cape Fiolent there are other place-names connected to this story: Diana’s mainsail, Diana’s grove and Diana’s gully.

Let’s go closer to the sea. Right under the first viewpoint there is a small monument to the famous Russian poet A.S. Pushkin, who had visited these places during his Crimean deportation.

Now we are returning to the Monastery.

St. George’s Monastery is one of the oldest one in the Crimea. Due to the legend, it was founded in 891 by the Greek sailors. They were caught up in a storm, suffered shipwreck, and, seeing their imminent death, began to call for help of holy martyr St. George. Saint heard the call of their heart and guided their ship to a large rock near the shore, and instantly silenced storm. When the saved sailors climbed on a rock, at its peak they found an icon of St. George, and after they made it to shore they built a cave church in rock breakage. Most pious of them settled near it, becoming hermits.

During many years the Monastery was a very revered place, but when the peninsula set under the direction of the Crimean Khanate it was decayed. Life returned to the Monastery after the Crimea was connected to the Russian protection. In the XIX century here was built 2 churches, the chapel and the bell-tower. To the 1000-year anniversary of the Monastery was built the stairway to the sea and a marble cross was erected at the St. Appearing Rock. From the ancient times the church serves were kept at this Rock.

The next decay came to this place at the Soviet period. The USSR authorities made a decree about closing the Monastery at 1929. Many constructions (also the marble cross) were destroyed. After the World War II at the Monastery territory was situated the naval base and all the districts around was closed for visiting. In 1991 at the St. Nicola’s Church in Sevastopol the new metal cross was sanctified. The Black Sea forces of the Russian Federation helped to mount this cross on the St. Appearing Rock. And in 1993 the RF Black Sea Fleet commander transfer part of the monastery’s lands to the Orthodox Church. Since then everybody could visit the Monastery, pray at the church, listen the church service and drink water from the holy spring. It is situated at the yard of the Monastery and decorated with the ancient marble image of the saint lance-bearer.

Now stop for the moment at the church-yard and look down at the view beneath you. The morning sea is smooth like a mirror; it is deep-blue with the ink-violet drops at the places where the underwater rock covered with seaweeds came closer to the surface. The horizon-line is blurred with the morning haze. The sea vanishes in the sky; the sky dissolves in the sea. Rocks’ jags are dividing the shore at the separate half-circles of small bays. To the right you can see the Cross rock, Cape Fiolent and the next one – Lermontov’s Cape. To the left: Kaya-Bashi cliff and the Aja cliff at the very horizon.

 And from the Monastery takes its beginning the real zest of this travel – twisting stairway down to the sea. It is called “Ladder of 800 stairs”. To say the truth there are less than 8 hundred stairs. A little bit less: I have count them several times and count 786(±2)! This “Healthy Path” helps you to loose your weight, provide neat and fit figure, increases the volume of your lungs and grants a healthy blush. The main thing you should remember during ascending – don’t be in a hurry and even breathing. The most part of the ascent lies under the shadows of Crimean oak, hornbeams, pistachios and relict junipers. In summer you will be escorted with the melodic cicadas’ chirrs. Also there are some benches meeting the tired travelers during their hard way up. You can sit for a moment, catch your breath and again admire with the beautiful landscape around.

But now it is too early to speak about the ascending. First of all you should walk down to the Jasper beach. The name “Jasper” was given to this place not without reason. Cape Fiolent – is a volcano, which died out 150 million years ago. And the heritage of this volcano – the motley rocks with the fantastic silhouettes along the sea and placers of multi-colored pebbles on the beach. Yellow, green, pink, red, lilac; chalcedonic, carnelian, agate, quarts... But the most often you can find here the bright jasper, it was born during the underwater volcanic eruption.    

By all means being on the jasper beach you should go to the Cross cliff. It looks mystically, like an extraterrestrial object. Exact orthogonal bars of brown-grey, yellow and sometimes red basalt create a huge ‘woodpile’ 200 meters high. In the center bars lie in radial position and create something similar to giant elliptic antenna, tuned to the sea.

But enough looking at the sightseeing, let’s go swimming! This place is good for snorkeling. The sea-bed is covered with the same colored pebbles and a lot of small fishes and medusas slowly drifting under it. On the big stones in seaweeds crabs and mussels are hiding.

While the weather is calm, let’s heads for the St. Appearing Rock. This Rock was consecrated and it is a holy place now. Local superstition says, if you make a wish, climb to the top of the St. Appearing Rock and touch the cross on it, your wish will come true! And if you want to wash away all your sins, you have to swim around the Rock.

On the opposite side of this Rock (that one looking to the sea) there is a hollow with the flat edge, covered with a bushy brown-green carpet of seaweeds. Climbing up at the warmed with the sun rock, sit on it and you can feel yourself a real Robinson at the desert island! The sea is splashing around your legs, sea all around to the horizon; just bare lifeless cliffs on the left side and under your head.

Turquoise-blue waves spill over the rock and tickle your legs with the silky locks of seaweeds, the seagull like white swift arrow flies by and catches a fish from the water. ‘Donnnng!’ a long-drawn-out bell-ring is floating over the beach. “Donnng!” this is the beginning of morning service in the Monastery church.

Little by little the beach is filling with noisy and motley crowds of tourists; boats and skiffs of different forms and sizes are moving to and fro on the blue bay’s surface like pond-skaters… It is time to leave this place – to the next early morning or to the next summer – as you wish.

PS How many stairs have you count on during your ascending?