a short visit to ...
	Athens
	24th to 26th October 2005
	evil olives
	it is a irony that the most revered tree by the Greeks is responsible for the country's worst ecological disaster; the olive tree was the money tree of the early Mediterranean civilisations, and in their eagerness to make the most of this, native forest was cleared on a massive scale to make way for olive cultivation. Much of the land planted with olives was hill country, and without the surface roots systems of the native forest to bind the topsoil, the hills planted with olives were rapidly eroded away leaving behind a harsh barren rocky landscape