Greece’s Olympic Rowing and Canoeing Center in Schinias will open to the public on Sunday.
The Rowing Center, located in Schinias, northeast of Athens, is now part of the Schinias National Park, providing to visitors facilities for mild exercise and recreation coupled with a visit to one of the most important biotopes in the wider Athens area.
Rowing and Canoe/Kayak athletes and trainers will be on hand to give children a first experience of the sports, given the planned creation of relevant children’s sport academies at the facility.
The facility will be open from 7:30 a.m. to 8:00 p.m., throughout the summer and to the end of September.
The Center is an integral part of the Schinias-Marathon National Park, which was established in 2000 with the aim of protecting an outstanding natural terrestrial and marine environment with a wide variety of habitats and plethora of important plant and animal species.
One of the last remaining refuges in Attica prefecture, large numbers of migratory birds flock during the migration season to the Schinias wetland, one of the largest wetlands in southern Greece, including many threatened species such as the Great Egret, the Ferruginous Duck and the Glossy Ibis.
A rare habitat, Schinias bay stands out with its soft, sandy beach with its famous coastal pine forest consisting of Umbrella Pine and Aleppo Pine trees — one of the three forests of this type in Greece. The Sea Daffodil, a symbol of beauty and vigor since antiquity, can be seen in protected corners of the beach while Neptune Grass plants, which thrive only in clean water, can be found in the Park’s sea, providing shelter to numerous small fish species.
The water in the rowing lake teems with life, hosting such life forms as algae, eels, frogs and toads, terrapins, harmless water snakes, and the Marathon Minnow, a small fish found only in eastern mainland Greece.
In mythology, the Makaria spring in the northwest of the Rowing Center, was a gift of the heroine Makaria, the daughter of Hercules. The spring carries waters to the rowing arena and to the Schinias wetland.
(source: ana-mpa)
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