I know, it is just a number. But we have 1.000.000 views. Unbelieveable.

We started our weblog in 2006, first on a Dutch host, and in the beginning I didn’t count the limited number of views we had in the first years. That changed when we had to switch to another host, WordPress. And at that time the popularity of Athos grew rapidly. There were only a handful of other ‘serious’ websites in English about Athos back then, one of them the famous website of the Friends of Mount Athos.

But from 2013 the number of views grew every year, from 67.300 in 2013, to the record of 189.700 views in 2015, to 99.300 views last year (with 30/35.000 visitors a year). Still very impressive numbers for a non-commercial weblog, run by three ordinary guys from Holland. Together with other pilgrim friends, who also happened to fall in love with this fabulous and overwhelmingly beautiful piece of land, where the history of the ancient Byzantium is still alive and where over a thousend years a daily religious task is performed by many monks and Holy Men. Think of it: every day the same routine in all the churches and trapezas, for 1057 years/386.000 days, with singing, praying and working by al these monks. As if time stood still…

Many thanks to all the lovely people who visit our weblog now and then and make our work worth while!

As you know this weblog is not meant to share large quantities of texts and its main purpose is to show photographs, so I wondered what kind of picture to show you in this post? This is what I decided: to show you the first photo ever, that I took during my first pilgrimage to Athos in July 1980, and the very last photo, from our recent pilgrimage in 2019. By coincidence both photos are from piers at the seaside, in 1980 at arsanas Sografou and in October 4th 2019 in Dafni, just before a fierce thunderstorm broke out.

9th of June 2020, Wim Voogd, Herman Voogd and Bas Kamps