Arcadian ambulations I

On the twenty-seventh of September Robin boarded the eight o'clock Athens bound bus at Koroni. Selina and Colin boarded the bus at the next stop, Linda, Bruno and I at the stop after that and, finally, at Argios Andreas, Karin joined us. We were an odd bunch; four men, three women, four Brits, a German, a Hong Kong Chinese and an Italian; our ages ranged from forty-nine to sixty-six and all we had in common was being currently resident not too far from each other in Messinia, the South West corner of mainland Greece, and that we all enjoyed a good walk. On Saturdays from October until May, we have occasionally strolled, with others, for between four and six hours around the scenic tracks and paths that abound in this area. On that Monday morning though, we were embarking on something far more ambitious; a stroll west from Ancient Epidauros, on the east coast of the Peloponnese, through mythical Argos and Arcadia and on through Elis and Messinia to the west coast.

We had neither a set route, trusting that one would evolve as we walked, nor any plans concerning how far we would walk each day or for how many days we might be walking. We had reckoned, guessed and estimated however that the total distance could be around three-hundred kilometres and that if we strolled west at an average speed of fifteen kilometres a day, we would need to be walking for about three weeks.

Starting point: the beach in front of the hotel at Ancient Epidauros

We left the Athens bound bus at Corinth and took another to Naplion, once and briefly the capital of Greece, now a rather pleasant, up-market tourist town from where we took a third bus for the short journey to Ancient Epidauros.

The two kilometre or so stroll, on level ground, from the bus stop to our hotel at Ancient Epidauros was my first experience of walking with a heavy pack on my back. By the time we had reached the hotel I was wondering why on earth I had become involved with this madcap venture and if any of my fellow walkers, most of whom I only casually knew, were having similar second thoughts.

Away for a while

I left Velanidia om Monday 27th September and do not expect to be back there for at least three weeks by when I hope I shall have a lot of material to post.

Sunday lunch

I enjoy long and leisurely Sunday Lunches; they have always been rather special to me.  For all the years during which I lived at home with my parents Sunday was the only day of the week on which we ate the main meal of the day together and at lunchtime.  It was always a feast, invariably of roast meat and vegetables preceded by soup and  followed by a 'pudding' which may have been anything from apple pie with cream to treacle pudding with custard but which always was good.  Later, when I had a young family of my own I enjoyed, when possible, Sunday lunches amongst friends and their families at one of the excellent county hostelries that nestled in that pleasantly bucolic triangle of Kent, marked by Canterbury, Sandwich and Hythe, in which I lived at that time.  These days, on summer Sundays I can usually be found at Maria's Taverna, Zapi.  I have been going there for many years now and although through the years there have been many changes, Maria's is still very much what it was when I first discovered the place; a simple, very informal, family run taverna directly on the beach.  In those early days of my acquaintance with the place there would be as many, if not more, boats pulled up on the beach or bobbing in shallow water as there were vehicles in what passed as a car park.  Venturing down the narrow, deeply rutted un-mettled mountain track that served as Zapi's road access was not for the faint-hearted.  The wise walked (Indeed, the very wise still walk!), rode down on their donkeys or came by sea.  The route has not altered but the road is now mettled; the final few kilometres were asphalted during last winter.  The first stretch of the road to be mettled, that nearest to the main road from which it branches, was competed several years ago and is now showing signs of deterioration; in all, and including that of last winter, there were four further sessions, over half a dozen or more years, of extending the tarmac surface!  This is quite normal here.  At sometime during the road improvements Zapi was, for the first time, linked to the national electricity grid.  The economics of supplying a hamlet of but few dwellings  with mains electricity and seven kilometres of good road  escape me but maybe these infrastructural improvements may eventually encourage the more self-interested among the well-heeled to do what they have elsewhere; to clear the beautiful wild scrub and grub up olive groves to make way for their palatial, tasteless 'holiday homes', thereby rewarding the state with their singularly material return for which its financial advisors must hope.

During the German occupation, not the present civilian one, the 1940s military occupation, Zapi served as an entry and exit gate for allied military personnel who either had business in Greece, organising and advising terrorist bands,  or who had become accidentally trapped here.  Many years ago I met an old man at a party who had been a Zapi resident during the war and who had hidden four British airmen in his house for an entire year before they were eventually taken by submarine to Alexandria.  The submarines could get in close enough to rendezvous with one of the small inshore fishing boats.  My informant has since died as must have most, if not all, of his contemporaries; sadly their potentially fascinating stories will have gone with them.

What did he want of me?

As I strolled home after lunch yesterday I had an uncomfortable feeling that I was being followed.  I turned to check and there he was; tall and dark and close enough to be touching me.  I asked him what he wanted of me but got no reply so continued on.  With silent step the fellow remained with me all afternoon, sometimes venturing from behind to stroll beside me , oddly, only to my right, never to my left.  Occasionally, after rounding a sharp bend in the road, he would suddenly appear directly in front of me, menacing, as if trying to block my path.  When that happened I did my best to stamp on him but he always seemed to manage to be one step ahead of me.  Eventually, as the sun sank below the mountain, I managed to shake him off.  It was an altogether most unsettling experience.

Material disquietude

I have here a 'Sony Walkman' radio and a 'Sony Walkman' compact disc
player. These I link to a pair of powerful 12v speakers to
satisfactorily serve my want of audio-entertainment. Last week the
jack-plug that connects these elements, and is necessarily frequently
transferred from radio to player and vice-versa, revolted; internal
wires within the tiny factory-sealed unit became fractured. A major
disaster; no music, no news!
'Wind', an internet service provider, provide my a slow but generally
adequate internet connection. Last week it failed. When I tried to
connect I could get no more than an error message. I telephoned 'Wind'
to report my problem and was told that the service had been suspended
because the last two monthly accounts had not been paid. I argued that
because I had set up a direct debit to settle my accounts as the fell
due this could not be so. The voice on the other end of the phone
confirmed that was indeed correct but, nonetheless, no money had
transferred from my bank; perhaps I ought to phone them to find out why.
My bank is not easy to telephone. Almost entirely automated, disembodied
voices offer seemingly endless choices of 'options' which do not include
'difficulties with Greek internet service providers'. Eventually I
managed to speak to a barely less robotic 'Customer Advisor' who advised
me that he could not help me; I would have to speak to 'Wind'! Next week
I shall travel to the nearest 'Wind' office at Kalamata to endeavour to
pay my outstanding accounts and to have my service restored. Practically
all cafés in the resort villages near to my home offer free wi-fi
internet connection but the nearest of these is a half-hour drive away.
I have become used, and to a degree dependent, on having a connection at
all times; another major disaster!
Last Thursday evening, as I was driving home, the rear nearside spring
of my trusty machine, a venerable Susuki jeep, suddenly and with a
dead-waking bang, snapped. I drove at walking speed to my garage where
Yanni, who for ten years now has looked after my machine, told me that
he could probably effect a repair by Tuesday. Normally I would have been
happy to walk anywhere I needed to go, far from being a hardship,
walking hereabouts in our usually benign climate is a great pleasure,
but I had staying with me a daughter and three grand-children who are
not used to having to walk a couple of hours or so to reach a beach and
another similar time to return home. I hired a car. A new spring and
four days car-hire; a major economic disaster!
Reflecting on my difficult week I realise that the stress and
disquietude caused by my major disasters all resulted from my
materialism. I was stressed and irritated because I have all these
material trappings. I am sure that there is a wonderful life to be
enjoyed without a personal vehicle, a computer (I have three here!),
cell-phone (I have many here!), camera (Three!), private internet
connection, radio (Four plus others built into in telephones and MP3
players!), GPS and so on and on and on. All of these things are
wonderfully clever gadgets but their life-enhancing qualities are
shallow and quite out of proportion to their capacity to induce stress
when, having become dependent upon them, they cease to function as they
are expected. To read Francis Chichester on astro-navigation and dead
reckoning or Frankl on Gothic architecture or Synge on the wheel-less
Aran Isles is to understand the extent of what can, and has been,
achieved by human beings with only the simplest of tools. Knowledge,
surely, is the foundation of a good life; knowledge including that of
how to live a contented life with only a minimum of material clutter.
Perhaps my difficult week has set me on that road but somehow I rather
doubt it.

It's all over for another year

Here in Greece the last weekend of August marks the end of summer. On
the following Monday car parks in seaside resorts which had
for weeks past been packed with visitors' cars quite suddenly revert to dusty patches of land and and harbours where elegant yachts, had moored cheek by jowl with local fishing boats, revert to being sheltered sweeps of deep blue sea, their purpose marked in
the case of the car parks by just a few locals' vehicles and in the
harbours by a handful of fishing boats.
As if responding to this exodus the weather has changed, equally
suddenly; a week ago a few clouds appeared in the sky and temperatures
dropped a degree or two but the clouds soon evaporated and the
temperature returned to blood-heat or above for much of the day; night
temperatures were, as is usual in the summer, around ten degrees less
than those of the day.
On the last evening of August, I drove my visiting daughter and her
children home from the beach at Methoni under gathering towers of cloud;
cumulus, some dark, portending rain. At home we dined outside under the
canopy of the generations-old Carob tree that is our summer dining room
but as the evening wore on the breeze strengthened to make the evening
unusually chilly. I was surprised to wake the following morning to a
cloudless dawn and to realise that the night had remained dry but it was
into a different morning that I moved from the house, a morning that
even after sunrise felt fresh and clear and through which blew a strong
and blustery breeze; for the first time since it was installed in June
the marble of the work-surface on which I prepare my early morning
coffee felt cold to my touch.
On the forth of September I am typing in a café‚ adjacent to the beach.
My grand-son is sleeping in a push-chair at my side, his mother and
sisters are swimming. It is a fine, clear, summery afternoon but I know
that summer, sizzling summer, is over. Through something less than the
past twenty-four hours, edges, distinctions between solid, liquid and
gas; sea and sky, sea and land, land and sky have become razor sharp.
During high summer there is little colour here, little to distinguish
the shadowless pale pastel blue of sea and sky from the of the pale
grey-greens of foliated land and the buff and dun fawn of bare rock.
Today's colours are clean, clearly defined, intense; there is nothing
remotely pastel toned about the sea, it is strong turquoise blue close
by darkening to ultramarine towards a very positive horizon which
separates it clearly from a clean pale blue sky.
Beyond the shelter of the headland the wind, occasional strong gusts of
which are making the sun shade awning above me rumble like thunder,
flecks the dark (some might have said 'wine dark') sea with myriad
'white-horses' or 'sheep' as they call them here.
It is very pleasantly comfortable, temperatures are already settled at
ten degrees or so lower than they were a week or so back and soon,
perhaps within a day or two, it will rain; short-lived but violent and
extremely dramatic end-of-summer storms will come to clean and refresh
the parched and dusty land. A few remaining holiday makers, particularly
those from Northern Europe, will be disappointed but those of us who
have been here and seen no rain for months will be rejoicing at the
prospect of some refreshing downpours and a comfortably cool verdant
autumn.

To any pejorative, rather than constructive, critics who may choose to read my ramblings.

Consider this:
"I am self contained and self-reliant; your opinion is nothing to me; I have no interest in you, care nothing for you, and see and hear you with indifference."
Dickens, Little Dorrit