The White Route: Curiosity finds the Path... Or Alonissos Travelogue Part 12

From the coast at Tsoukalia, an asphalt road winds inland up a gentle incline to connect after 30 minutes walking to the area around Mega Nero. A little whiles before this point, at about 20 minutes from the coast, a dirt track heads off through the pines to the north in the direction of the little cliff top chapel of Agioi Anargyroi. It is a pleasant, if storyless little jaunt, taking in ever more satisfying glimpses of the sea through the pines until one arrives after another 20 minutes or so to the chapel itself.


As you can see, it is a singularly picturesque spot - although one, admittedly, which is endlessly repeated throughout the Aegean - and must be even more breathtaking in the softer colours of a summer evening when the sun dips down low on the facing horizon.

It is also a blessed spot in that it is situated in the general locale of some secluded little coves, offering the, by this time rather exhausted walker, an opportunty to cool their feet in the Aegean. To reach this area, known as Tourkoneri, one need only descend via a pleasant shady track through the pines which after ten minutes, will bring you to the grounds of a single house situated in an enviable poistion overlooking a sheltered bay.


You can just glimpse this house in the top left hand corner of the above photograph. However, one cannot see this little cove, where I swam naked for half an hour or so in complete isolation, from the path leading down from Agioi Anargyroi. In fact, on arriving at the coast by this path, one is met by a dirt road which, if followed, would take one back up inland eventually to meet up with a bigger dirt road running parallel to the main road through an area know as Rahes. This would be my route home; but before then, I fancied exploring the hidden inlets and coves on this part of the coast... but how?

The answer came, as usual, after a brief period of curiosity.

Leaving the house, I walked along the dirt road past the baking bodies jostling for a little more room on the tiny cove which was Tourkoneri proper, and up and a little inland on the dirt road. Sensing that this was the same road marked on the map and that it would soon take me back in the direction of home, I sought a little shade under a pine tree growing at the edge of the road to get my bearings once more. Looking up from my map at one point, I saw that I was actually sitting on the top tier of a stepped olive grove which wound around a little cove in an elegant arch, hugging the horse-shoelike contour of the land. Not only this, but there, a couple of tiers down below me and only just discernable, was a path which followed the countour of the olive grove first inland then back out again on the finger of the opposite peninsula. Once again, a little disinterested curiosity had shown me the way forward.

Getting up and following this path, I was led to a gate beyond which the path forked, with one route heading up onto a cliff-top path and another heading down the peninsula in the direction of the bay. Taking this latter path, I found myself after 5 minutes at the secret cove snapped in the photograph above and, confident that I would have the place to myself for a good while, stripped off for a highly refreshing and much needed skinny dip.

Refreshed and ready for yet more walking, I took to the cliff top path in good time to admire the view of a tourist kaiki gliding into the bay below me, the passengers of which would have got an extra little thrill if they had arrived five minutes earlier. From here, the path descended once more to the coast for the remainder of the walk, all the way to Megali Ammos beach in fact, alternately looping around little coves and out onto the rocky fingers of interposed peninsulas.

All in all, it was a beautiful and none-too-demanding stretch to top off what had been a long day's walking. So long in fact that when I got to Megali Ammos, I realised that this was as good a place as any to call it a day and head back to Patitiri on the wide road through Rahes...

... A route that I would revisit the next day on my way to Steni Vala.

The White Route: Sherds, Sherds and More Sherds OR Alonissos Travelogue Part 11

Over the years, I have steadily added my own touch to the standard Greek holiday activities of swimming, trekking and eating. First there was fishing, a fleeting fad brought to an abrupt end when Maria arrived on the scene with her swift judgement that no man of hers should come within down-wind smelling distance of fish, nevermind 'murder' them. Next, there was an equally fleeting love affair with geology which for the most part saw me needlessly burdening myself with interesting looking rocks in the course of a holiday's walking only to chuck them all away at Eleftheros Venizelos airport flummuxing thus the odd itinerant geologist. And of course there has always been a healthy interest in cafes, with many an evening spent combing cycladic alleyways in search of the perfect view to accompany a sundowner... or two.

But none of these myriad ways to eat up time when not actually trekking or swimming can come close to the thrill of amateur archaeology. I always had at least passing interest in exploring the rich variety of ancient sites to be found on the islands, but it was not until I met Maria that my wall climbing and earth raking took on a more serious air. With 13 years spent studying the ancient artefacts of the Aegean, as well as practical experience of excavations, she was well placed to point me in the right direction.

Not that there was any great secret about it: all she did was make a casual remark while climbing up a low hill on the site of a Mycenaen Acropolis near Naoussa, Paros in the Autumn of 2004

"This place is full of pottery", she remarked.
"Really!? Where!?", I responded whirling round and raking the panorama less it should fly off like some startled bird
"Under your feet silly", she added tramping on ahead.

I looked down. She was right; the entire site was strewn with fragments of rust coloured sherds. What seems so painfully normal and obvious 3 years later - that even the most scrupulously excavated ancient site will contain traces of pottery - seemed like a revelation back then. I bent down to take a closer look, picking up an interesting sherd and rolling it around in my hands, only to toss it aside when a brighter or bigger one caught my eye.

Simply put, this discovery was a revelation, and even more so when I found fragments of fine-wear vessels whose light black brush strokes made even Maria excited.

Since then, I have always kept a keen eye out for finds, especially while exploring the more remoter sites, and thus have unearthed such finds as fragments of bronze, cup marks and even obsidian flakes in addition to scores of interestingly painted sherds.

But I had never seen anything like the amount of sherds scattered around the unexcavated site of the classical era pottery factory at Tsoukalia. Not only was the beach thick with ostrika, many of the chunks were sufficiently large enough to incorporate whole handles and lips. Here are just a few of chunks that I found lying around.

However, despite this wealth of finds, I found the location of Tsoukalia to be a little disappointing. Although initially impressive, on closer inspection the vast array of pottery appeared to be composed almost entirely of coarse wear, with few indications as to which period, ancient or not, they might date from. Also, the beach too was a little uninviting as the prevailing northerly winds had raised the waves and chased a fair amount of rubbish into the bay.

So it was that having clambered about in the sherds for while, exchanging first one then another for a brighter, bigger chunk, I decided to hit the road again, this time bound for the picturesque chapel of Agoi Anargiroi.

The White Route: A to E via Q, Z, and X... OR Alonissos Travelogue part 10

Looking back on my ten days of walking on Alonissos, I am on the whole proud of my little adventures: not only did I cover a hell of a lot of terrain, I did so with the minimum amount of getting lost. Equipped with an accurate map, two independent descriptions of each route and most of all, the patience to study the lay of the land and the position of the sun with some degree of accuracy, I almost always made my way from A to E via the logical progression B then C then D.

The spectacular exception to my otherwise impeccable sense of direction came during the next stage of the white route from Mega Nero to Tsoukalia. On paper this stretch appears impossible to cock-up, not least of all because a sign-posted asphalt road separates the two locations by all of a 30 minute walk. However, on leaving Mega Nero, little did I know that I was about to embark upon an unplanned excursion up a mountain.

In my defence, I was subject to mitigating circumstances: I had set out on this route backwards.

Flashback to the early morning of that day. Andrew sits outside his tent, drinking coffee and studying the map...

... So where do I want to go today?.. Tsoukalia, yes... Oh and here's the walk to Tsoukalia in the guide book, excellent... but wait a minute... this route goes first north to Megali Ammos before taking in Tsoukalia on the way back... I'd much prefer to go the opposite way... I wonder if it is possible to follow the directions from the end of the walk and work back to the beginning and still be able to follow the route?... let's try... [...] ... seems easy enough, all I have to remember is that left is right and right is left... got it. Piece of cake!

And it was... right up until the point when I was directed to walk up a gorge.

I think you may be one step ahead of me here... but let me pull you back a little to walk a ways with me in ignorance so that I can tell you how it all happened.

Like I said, an asphalt road links Mego Nero and Tsoukalia, but the route described in the guide neatly avoids this completely by following a dirt track beginning some metres before the turn off to Tsoukalia, and leading one on a path through a charmingly sheltered patch of pine forest. In fact, this path penetrates so deeply into this patch of woodland that after fifteen minutes or so, the road disappears from sight altogether. It was at this point that I understood that I had to turn right; that is, had I been doing the route in the direction that the authors intended, I would have been directed to turn left at this same point having just emerged from the direction in which I was now about to set out...

...Got it? Not so easy after all, eh?

Anyways, what threw me here was not the cat's cradle of figuring out left from right, this was relatively simple; rather it was the more prosaic yet infinitely more frustrating situation of being confronted with 2 possible rights. Indeed a path did slope down away from me to the right, but on closer inspection, this forked after 10 meters or so leaving me with no indication just which of these two rights I should take.

The intrepid walker will often be faced with this very dilemma, though it should be the aim of all guide books to eliminate the agony of such 'russian roulette' moments. In practice one must call upon all one's resources to make an informed choice: the lay of the land, the position of the sun, moss growing of the northern side of tree-trunks (and other such 'boys' own' fun). However, in those cirumstances where doubt persists, there is no other solution than to choose a path, set out, and seek to confirm or reject your groundless hypothesis by checking the lay of the land against the description of the route.

Choosing the left fork, I wandered down a wide path flanked on one side by pines and on another by an olive grove before arriving at a little track which left the wider path to the left and led me into a shallow gorge. As all this checked out against the description of the route, adjusted, naturally, to compensate for my backwards direction, I felt confident that I was now within a brief walk a Tsoukalia.

Safe in the knowledge that I was well and truly on track, I paused for while in the little gorge to enjoy the silence. Just where I had entered, a handful of olive trees stood in a flat patch of long grass, sheltered from the elements and presumably well watered by what would have been a seasonal stream. Although I must have been a short walk from the road leading down to Tsoukalia, I might as well have been in the middle of nowhere; so quiet it was. Paradoxically perhaps, the sense of peace was made more intense by two hawks which at that moment were circling above me, plaintively screeching and every so often swooping close enough for me to hear their wings cutting through the air.

Perhaps it was the fact that I was caught up in the atmosphere of this little place; perhaps it was the sense that the difficult part was behind me. Whatever it was, when I got up and looked at the map to figure out in which direction I should walk to get to Tsoukalia beach, I did not walk down the gorge as common sense would dictate, but up it. What had momentarily escaped my attention was that when you read route directions backwards, not only should left be read as right, but following a similar topsy-turvy logic, up the gorge should actually be rendered as down it.

Think about it...

So with a spring in my step, a song in my heart and two harbingers of doom screeching and swooping above my head, I set out to ascend the gorge.

Two minutes later I hit a dead end: a dense thicket of thorns blocked the conventional ascent up the bed of the gorge. No worry, I thought as I took to a narrow and precipitous goat track ascending sharply up the right face of the gorge. Within a further twenty metres or so, this petered out, as so often is the case with goat tracks, leaving me to rely solely upon my sense of direction to see me through to Tsoukalia (which, as you will no doubt realise, was situated at an ever increasing distance behind me.)

Things went from bad to worse. The terrain became first steep and rocky, forcing me up ever higher onto the mountain and away from the gorge, then, when I had hit a sufficiently high enough altitude as to impress upon me most forcefully that I was definitely not headed for the coast, I found myself in the midst of a dense thicket of hollyoaks. The sun was pretty high at this point, and I was running desperately low on water too. And to top it all, the hawks were still relentlessly pursuing their quarry high above me. But despite all these set-backs, I remained cheerful: there are precious few opportunities to feel like a hero in this day in age... especially if you are the English teacher in a small provincial German town.

Eventually I broke out of the cover of the hollyoaks to see a little church crowning the ridge at the head of the gorge, which I could now see as a dark gash into the landscape way below me. Checking this against the map, I realised it must be the panagia sto boyno and knowing it to be loacated in the direction of a natural spring, struck out for the little church. After a few moments I came to some residential houses and a dirt road, and with half an hour I was drinking cool clear water in the shade of the little church.

Having quenched my thirst, I took stock of my situation. I still couldn't figure out what had gone wrong down in the gorge, but that mattered less than trying to salvage the walk. A glimpse at the guide revealed the answer: if I were to retrace my steps back along the dirt road, away from the church in the direction of the houses that I had seen, would come to the end of the road and a large property surrounded by olive groves. Arriving at the gate of the yard of this property, I should follow the perimeter wall in search of the familiar red splodges of paint upon boulders that seem to act as way markers throughout the Aegean.

Sure enough, as soon as I left the gate of the house and entered the olive grove, I found a string of way markers which eventually started to lead me back down the mountain. After a short while I entered pine forest again and the path began to get steeper and steeper... and every so often as I glimpsed the sky between the pines I could see the pair of hawks circling, swooping and screeching.

It was a beautiful walk, as usual accompanied by a symphony of sights, sounds, and smells: again the air moving through the trees, again the heady resinous scent of the pines; but this time the kind light of the forest floor and everything punctuated by the mournful screeching of the hawks, whom I was now considering less as harbingers of doom and more as companions on this little adventure.

After a while, I reached the edge of the forest and as is so often the case in dear green Alonissos, the beginning of an olive grove. Here, the ground became ridiculously steep, necessitating my gingerly proceeding crab like, inch by inch down a rugged track. But this was to be the last obstacle. Soon the landscape gave way to gentle tiers of olive groves affording a view of the last leg of the asphalt road down to Tsoukalia.

On hitting the road I heard the sea, which soon revealed itself... as did several hundred thousand pottery sherds.
.

Same face... different name OR why has this blog changed its name?

When I was born, my parent's named me after my father, Alexander. However, subject perhaps to the same chronic indecision that sometimes paralyses their son, they changed my name after three days to Andrew. This confused my elder sister who on being told that this was now baby Andrew, plaintively inquired: "But what happened to baby Alexander?!"

As was the case with my nascent self, only the name has changed: I still reserve this space for experiences, memories and impressions that, otherwise, would be ill-formed... if not irrevocably erased from consciousness all together.

So why the pearl factory?

One will no doubt be familiar with the process whereby an oyster forms a pearl: a tiny foreign body enters the oyster's mouth, irritating it to such an extent that it is prompted to secrete layers of a crystalline substance called 'nacre' in order to render it more acceptable. With time, the layers of nacre build up forming one of nature's most wondrous and valuable prizes.

In the beginning there is this niggling irritation, the sense of being subject to an impression.

Next there is the attempt to come to terms with it by rolling it around, transforming it eventually into...

...something not just benign; but beautiful.

Welcome to the pearl factory.

The white route: spiders, cypresses, startled fowl and springs OR... Alonissos Travelogue Part 9

Having picked Dave and Gerry's brains about where to go the previous night, I thought it might be nice to walk to the beach of Tsoukalia on the South West coast to take in the as yet unexcavated classical era pottery factory located there, before looping up a little further on the west coast to visit the picturesque church of Agoi Anargiroi and the nearby coves of Tourkoneri and Megali Ammos.

It would be a long walk, all of eight hours what with breaks and swimming time, so I set off nice and early bound for the starting point of Patitiri... and the harbour shop to get myself my breakfast of a little tub of 'Total' yoghurt with a couple of miniature preserves of honey. This I slowly savoured under a tree down by the harbour, enjoying the comings and goings of a work-a-day port.

As with the red route, this white route starts with a thoroughly pleasant stretch once you clear the perimeter of Patitiri. The path proper begins at the first hairpin bend on the road up to the Hora where a sign for Mega Nero, ostensibly pointing at the house situated on the bend, but actually sending one up a slope skirting the perimeter wall of the house, leads, after a couple of minutes, into the familiar Alonissos landscape of pine forests and olive groves.

It was amazed to find this Arcadian stretch with its herb strewn paths and surprisingly dense thickets of ferns so near to the main road up to the Hora. It seemed like I had been transported into a different land on clambering up that little slope -- an impression made all the more forceful by the fact that one emerges into the little glade from the relative darkness of a thick kopse of pines.


I was used to seeing such undergrowth in the forests and moorlands of Scotland, but not in the Aegean in late July!

I should also add that other attractions on this five minute stretch included...

A: Startling some kind of wild fowl on rounding a bend (being Scottish I would identify it as a grouse or partridge or something like that, but I feel sure this can't be right). It had been hidden from view in the kind of thick undergrowth you can see above when this lumbering giant happened along, causing it to take to the sky with much clucking, flapping and fuss (beware of spoonerisms here).

B: Taking a momentary wrong turn on my way back through this glade and briefly entering the narrow channel of a track that, by the looks of things, hadn't been used in a while. I was quite sure of this as no sooner had I entered the space between the two hedgerows than I found myself gazing eye to eye with a huge spider (and I mean big enough to make the author yelp expletives of terror and surprise) perched horny and crab-like in a thick spun web which totally sealed the entrance to the path.

C: Cypress trees. Three of them. Baby ones. I do like cypress trees.

After this idyllic little stretch, I emerged at the spring of Mega Nero. Here, in a little depression surrounded by fields, was a rough build concrete trough in which a couple of taps had been inserted. As I ventured closer to fill up my bottle with the cool water, bravely sweeping aside the clouds of thirsty wasps grazing from the droplets clinging to the underside of the taps, I once more wondered just how it was possible to have the miracle of fresh running water in this parched land. As I had learnt the previous night from Dave and Gerry, those islanders who weren't fortunate enough to be connected to the mains water supply had to make do with collecting and storing what rain water they could by their own means and filling up the rest of the time from springs such as this one. It was another hot day, the earth was cracked from weeks, if not months of drought; yet here was an abundant reserve of water which was not only openly available to all, but which at that moment was leaking its way back into the earth by virtue of numerous instances of careless plumbing.

My water bottles replenished, my hair soaked with cool water, I was ready for the off once more. So, greeting the old woman gathering the lush sprigs of horta thriving in the midst of this little oasis, I hit the road.

I guess I should start publishing these walks in installments as they are growing way beyond control and heaven forbid that I should bore the few people who aren't even reading anyway.

Off the beaten track and back for a beer OR... Alonissos Travelogue Part 8

The day after the red route, I walked up the eastern side of Alonissos as far as Chrysi Milia. It was a nice walk at stretches, especially the cliff top path north from Spartines beach where I snapped the following photo:

View of second, more northerly Spartines beach from the cliff top path between the two beaches

But besides this stretch, however, it really was a bit of a disappointment. It was the one time that I abandoned the guides and set off in search of that most satisfying route: the coastal walk. One of the first places in Greece that I ever went walking was on the south west coast of Crete. Here, in the region of Hania, where the White Mountains tumble into the Libyan Sea, are miles of coastal paths stretching almost the whole length of the region. With the proximity of the sea on one hand and the mountains on the other, such walks are always a real joy.

Unfortunately, the topography of the south-eastern coast of Alonissos is such that no route can feasibly be undertaken over the jagged outcrops, scree-strewn ravines and, at times, residential housing that characterise this coast. Time and time again I was forced to make headway on the asphalt, thus losing instantly that childish yet highly agreeable sense of being an explorer.

Anyway, when I got to Chrysi Milia after a 3 kilometer stretch on the asphalt to find the tiny beach packed with young families enjoying the only sandy beach with shallow water on the island, their young kids volubly voicing their wants, I decided that I had had enough. After a fruitless period awaiting service at the crowded taverna, I phoned a taxi and escaped back to Patitiri where I beered and tramped cheerily back up to the campsite on my little path through the pine forest.

That night, I finally met up with Dave and Gerry and enjoyed a sociable evening up in the old town over a few beers and a plate of yemista. It was a chance for me to effervesce about many of things that I here describe as well as get a few tips about where to go next.

And so it was that awaking the next day, just a little fuzzy headed, with another day's walking ahead of me, I knew just where I would go.

The Red Route: A long way to come to watch bats OR... Alonissos Travelogue Part 7

I undertook the first part of this walk, from the campsite to Megalos Mourtias, on that first restless evening on the island. So it was that when I awoke the next day with this circular route in mind, I knew what to expect of the first leg. Flanked on either side by olive groves, one walks south from the campsite on a quiet asphalt road with the sea to your left, where occasional yachts are the only addition to a seascape punctured by scattered low lying islets. Soon, you meet a dirt track sloping up to the right: the road to Megalos Mourtias. Here, the scenery changes as you head east through pines with distant views of Evia to the south and facing you, the forested flank of Skopelos.

Although it was the first stage of my first walk on the island, this stretch was amongst the most beautiful of my entire tour, and, conversely perhaps, one of the most accessible in terms of walking surface and distance from the main settlements (drivable in a normal car and a mere 30 minutes on foot from Patitiri). Despite this proximity, it was, more often than not, completely deserted each time I visited it, leaving one to enjoy the views of the islands peeping out from behind the pines in perfect peace.

Substantially more relaxed on this first morning, with a corresponding tendency to the treat the walk as an end in itself, I was also much more in the mood for distractions along the way to Megalos Mourtias. To wit, I had already explored those off road curiosities which had presented themselves on the walk down the south eastern coastline, namely:

A) A narrow cove 100 metres or so south of the campsite, but unobservable from the road, and accessible only by bringing your own rope to scramble down the last three metres of sheer gorge face onto your own private beach.

B) Marapounda resort: A raucous Italian holiday village consisting of faux cycladic alleyways laid out around incongruously lush green lawns where, on the basis of my unintentional visit, every aspect of one's precious time away from the deadlines and demands of everyday life appears to be planned with boot camp precision (think megaphoned reps directing wholesome group activities). Mercifully, the considerate owners have fenced off the entire site thus preventing all but the most curious of walkers from stumbling upon the tackiness it conceals.

C) The remains, at the edge of a cliff just south of the cove and half covered in vegetation, of a very old dwelling place indeed.

Wall and steps on coast facing side of cliff-top dwelling, south east Alonissos

While unlikely to be of ancient origin, the position and state of this dwelling were of enough interest to the author to prompt a brief 'discovery of something important' fantasy.

However, perhaps the most entertaining diversion presented itself on attempting to gain access to the beautiful and seldom frequented beach of Vythisma at the very south of the island.

The descriptions of this beach in the two guides that I had read were alluring: remote, sandy, south facing and thus sheltered, and seldom frequented by reason of its unaccessability. Lying at the foot of a cliff, both guides describe how one picks one''s way down from the dirt road on a path strewn with fallen pines to arrive, tantalisingly, about 5 metres above the beach with a sharp drop separating you from the deserted sand below. Whilst such an descent is by no means difficult to negotiate (standing on the edge of the precipice one can easily imagine jumping down onto the soft sand below), the ascent back up again would ideally entail, if not a ladder, then certainly some rope.

However, the authors of the internet guide I have mentioned had found an alternate descent, one which, although far from straighforward, provided at least a means of getting off the beach without the assistance of a helicopter.

The description on their internet site goes a bit like this (but naturally I'm paraphrasing):

"...on arriving at the precipice, double back and search the path for a 'double trunked tree'. Just behind this tree, a fainter path runs parallel to the beach. Follow this through the pines for a few minutes until this path runs as thin as the sole of a single sandal and a vertical drop down a scree slope awaits you should you be unfortunate enough to lose your footing. At this point, place your faith in the sparse clumps of scrub like vegetation eking out an existence on the near vertical cliff face, relying on them to take your entire weight as you abseil inch by agonising inch down to arrive eventually at a ruined drinks kiosk. Here you will find something like a rusting postcard stand which you will greet as an ersatz ladder and again rely on it to sustain your entire weight as you once more inch gingerly but hopefully not bleeding too heavily, onto the sand."

I'm paraphrasing of course, but have added nothing but a flourish to this description; in its essence it is as the authors descended onto Vythisma, post card stand and all... I know 'cos this is exactly what I did too.

You gotta hand it to them: they were intrepid explorers with a keen desire to enjoy the delights of the remote and beautiful Vythisma. However, what they and Keller and Tsoukalis fail to relate is that an alternative and incredibly straightforward descent exists.

There are in fact two paths descending from the dirt track down to Vythisma: the first one encountered on approaching from the east leads you into the aforementioned Harold Loyd like japes; the second, however, situated some 10 metres further on toward Megalos Mourtias, leads you down on a relatively simple jaunt through the pines. After five minutes or so the beach swings into easy view and one passes a ruined portocabin whose Greek sign reading "please do not break the door: nothing of value is kept inside", written as it is on the wrecked remnants of the said door lying some feet away on the forest floor, provides brief entertainment. Just below this, a slightly damaged stone staircase begins which leads directly onto the beach.

It is indeed curious that neither guide, whilst obviously written by those in the know, mentions this far simpler descent. And it's not as if the staircase is particularly difficult to locate when on the beach: I had found it within five minutes of the 'conventional descent'.

So finally on Vythisma with no worries about extracting myself off of it, I was in the mood to take a few photos:


As you can see the shadows in this photo are pretty long: I guess I did get up pretty early that morning. But here, in all its glory, is the ruined drinks kiosk:


Onwards from Vythisma, it was my pleasure to take a swim at the popular beach of Megalos Mourtias, which, at that time in the day, was agreeably empty. Then it was off and up to the Hora on the hiking trail which provides a neat way of avoiding the asphalt.

This part of my journey was again a joy. Starting as a scramble up an embankment off the main road just outside Megalos Mourias, the hiking trail up to the Hora crosses the road once more before ascending steeply on a thin trail parallel to the perimeter wall of the tennis court of a private house eventually to lead one to a tiny kops of trees and bushes which provide sufficient respite from the sun to gather your breath and admire the views back down to Megalos Mourtias in comfort. It was here, neath this little green kops, that I had one of those moments of quiet euphoria which solo walkers are often prone to. Whether these can be put down to a quasi-spiritual affinity with nature, or, as I would believe, the body's unfamiliarity with endorphines after months of sedentary slothing matters not; the point is that such experiences have always accompanied my trips to the islands and have, like the light and the mythology, contributed to making the Aegean the wonderful place that I feel it to be.

And so to the Hora itself.

I found myself there almost my accident, so involved was I in the rhythm of the walk. But, grateful for the opportunity to distract myself with coffee and company for a while, I headed to a cafe where I spent a good hour or so admiring the view and lapping up the entertainment provided by holidaying Greeks. To wit, a story:

Having sat for some 3/4 of an hour on the terrace of a traditional coffee and cake shop, the relative peace and quiet of the post lunch lull was shattered when a group of four well-to-do Athenian ladies sporting voluminous and colourfully printed beach smocks, huge wide brimmed floppy hats and chunky YSL fly-goggle sunglasses burst onto the scene with copious ooohs and aaahs at the view that greeted them. There was further cackling and chaos as they debated the relative merits of locating at one of the three free tables and indeed who would sit where once the table had been decided upon (in the sun, in the shade, facing the sea, nearest the toilet, etc.). Finally, when they were all settled, each to their satisfaction, and any normal person would think that they could do no more to make a spectacle of themselves, the girl brought out the sweet menu and the little party erupted again into ebullient life .

This was too good to miss. There are few types in this world who take the ritual of coffee and a cake as seriously as well-to-do Athenian ladies. Sure enough they began cooing as soon as they set eyes on the array of home made sweets on offer.

It was at this moment that the loudest and most colourful one among them, the leader if you will, took the initiative and, grabbing the menu from out of the clutches of an unsuspecting other and pausing only for as long as it took to gain fully the attention of the entire coffee shop, proceeded to intone the names of each dish with a lusty suggestiveness whilst the others sucked air in sharply through pursed lips and repeated: kataifi, ffffooo!... soutzouki, ffffooo!... melamakarona, ffffoooooooo!

However, when it came to the crunch, this was as far as her gang were prepared to go. Content just to roll the words around in their mouths, they each declined to order from the gooey menu for fear of compromising their figures in what is Greece's most diet wrecking season.

Their leader would have none of this. With the kind of extravagant gesture all too typical of a Greek in the grip of kefi, she ordered four plates of the richest gooiest and most expensive sweets on the menu, reasoning perhaps that by the charm of her extravagant gesture alone, her minions could be persuaded to join her in her indulgence... and thereby, perhaps, sanction it.

It was a bold move, and one which, I remember pondering as I looked on at her savouring the first morsels in an orgy of ostentiation, might have worked... if it were not for the untimely intervention at that very moment of their tour guide with his sudden declaration that their bus would leave from the main square in five minutes.

What would you have done?

She didn't let herself down. True to her plan, she continued to entice her friends to join her in finishing off the four ample plates piled up in front of her. Again and again she petitioned them and again and again they declined, each time giggling a little more at the sight of this well-to-do Athenian lady, replete with all the accessories of her position, gorging herself on the gooiest of gooey sweets, firmly convinced that she would, by her example, persuade the others to help her out of what was becoming an increasingly intractable situation.

Eventually, inevitably, she accepted that circumstances had gotten the better of her and that she was all alone in her crusade to champion these homemade delicacies; but to her credit, she held fast to her course and continued to praise them, now through smaller mouthfuls and more sympathetic laughter, right up until it became time for the cabaret to leave.

Such consumate entertainment is the stuff of dreams. My entertainment gone, my frappe finished, I paid the girl and took to my feet once more, this time bound for the picturesque beach of Gialia.

I had wanted to visit Gialia for some time because of the impossibly picturesque appearance of the little beach: situated at the head of narrow inlet and neatly offset by a wind-mill. The walk down was without event, plodding away on a dirt track downward, ever downward toward the coast.

Gialia beach

Here I stopped for a brief swim, then snacked on some soutzoukakia, picking out the saucy meatballs from the tin with my fingers. It was by now around 3 o'clock in the afternoon and very hot indeed. I had been walking since about eight in the morning, had just eaten, and quite frankly was in need of a little snooze. All this I barely registered as I closed my eyes, savouring the touch of the sun upon my skin and the knowledge that I could lie here as long as I damn well pleased.

When I awoke the sun was just a little lower in the sky. Refreshed, I rolled up my psatha, picked up my bag, took a long swig on my water bottle and readied myself for the upward march back to the main road

What actually happened after I reached the main road is far from interesting and would involve travelling on through a beautiful yet storyless landscape back to the campsite. So let us travel back by a more entertaining route...

I had that evening travelled back to the old town by bus to see if I might be able to meet up with Dave and Gerry, but had succeeded only in meeting their cats and scoring an ouzo and sunset mix back at the cafe where I had enjoyed my afternoon entertainment. It was now around half eight and had, by kilometres as well as hours, been a long day, so I decided to call it quits and head back to the campsite for a well earned rest.

Now I could have taken the bus... as I walked past the square, one was due to leave in a little under half an hour; but it was such a beautiful night and I was so captivated by walking on the island that it felt like a betrayal of my purpose to take the bus back when I could walk on the old kalderimi back to Patitiri and from thence on a fifteen minute jaunt through the pines to the campsite. So I stopped in at the shop for a little retsina and that is exactly what I did.

Strolling down that dusky kalderimi with my destination, the sea, a dark band between the treetops and the azure blue sky, was a perfect end to my day. With my little bottle dangling from my fingers and a song in my heart, I drew out my steps to savour the colours of the dying day: the golden fields of the hora where the sunset still reddened the sky; the shimmering silver of the olive trees as they lost their colour with the dusk; and eventually that murky little glade where I watched the dark silhouettes of bats flit against a dull metallic sky.

I must have spent a good half hour watching them flit to and fro, and these days, some 4 months later, it is this memory more than any other that dominates from that first walk.

The Pre-amble to the Ambling... or Alonissos Travelogue Part 6

The aim of the posts that follow is not to provide a detailed description of the walks of Alonissos. As I mentioned in my previous post, such guides can be found in the form of Keller and Tsoukanas' "Walking on Alonissos" as well as the internet site:

http://www.foxysislandwalks.com/AlonissosMain.htm

My aim, rather, is to give you a sense of what it is actually like to walk the paths of Alonissos with reference to some of the highlights of my tour. In addition, I will also try to ensure that future walkers are well enough informed to avoid the very few tricky situations in which I found myself after following, as best I could, complicated, vague, or just plain baffling descriptions of the route.

For the purposes of writing up my experiences to entertain rather than inform, I have divided my ten days walking into 4 routes . These I have illustrated with regard to the following map and the accompanying descriptions below.


KEY

RED: Plaka Campsite - Vythisma - Megalos Mourtias - Hora - Gialia - Kalderimi into Patitiri - Plaka

WHITE: Plaka Campsite - Mega Nero - Tsoukalia (via forest / gorge walk) - Agoi Anargiri - Tourkoneri - Megali Ammos - Mega Nero (via Raches)

PINK: Plaka Campsite - Mega Nero - Raches - Isomata - Agios Petros - Steni Vala - Ghlifa - Steni Vala (bus back to Patitiri)

YELLOW: Mourtitsa - Strovili - Kastanorema Gorge - Mourtitsa

As you can see, with the exception of the Kastanorema Gorge walk, the bulk of the walking to be done on Alonissos centres around the south and central parts of the island. This is not to say that walking opportunities do not exist in the north of the island; but these present themselves as a less attractive option than the circular routes of the south and centre which can be more satisfyingly negotiated from a base in one the charming settlements to the south of the island. More importantly perhaps, the southerly walks in particular afford the opportunity to break one's journey in a cafe to sip a frappe, take in the views and rest on one's laurels for a while.

It should be noted, however, that my actual movements during the time that I spent on Alonissos bare little resemblance at times to these four routes - both insofar as they appear on the map and as they are related below - and that what you will read here is, in keeping with the rest of this travelogue, 'a story'. Although I have made every effort to be scrupulous where accuracy has mattered, I have, in most other cases, been guided by the requirements of style.

And so to the walks...

A Walkers' Paradise... OR Alonissos Travelogue Part 5

You need to be in the right mood to walk. Sometimes it takes time, and your initial steps can feel like nothing so much as an incovenience, something to be tolerated along the same lines as going to the gym. At times like these, the destination dominates as the only end: the cessation of all unwanted exhertion.

In contrast, when you do find yourself in the right state of mind - and let's face it, it is not a mood that is easily cultivated - the end is at all times immanent; present and perpetually fulfilled with every step. Possessed of this awareness, one needs no encouragement to keep going for to do so is constantly to reach one's goal.

Something similar can be said of the difference between a good and a bad book: the feeling: 'I've started it so I must try to finish it even though it feels like I'm dragging my eyes through treacle" or :"I'm so caught up in this book I wouldn't notice even if my pyjamas went on fire." So it was with my walks on Alonissos. From that first night when I arrived back late to my tent, a little tipsy, but a lot satisfied, right up until I when left the island ten days later, I hardly stopped walking. However, this was not only on account of my mood.

Alonissos is a walker's paradise.

This term is often overused, especially in relation to the islands; but let me tell you why I believe it to be particulary apt in this case.

Alonissos is covered in pines. This, as I have explained in earlier posts, I found a little discomforting at first as such verdure didn't seem to lend itself to the wilderness landscapes of the cyclades. However, very shortly after beginning walking that first evening, I understood that the pines dramatically enhanced one's experience of the landscape by appealing to the full range of one's senses. Not only could you appreciate their colour, or the texture they lent to the more distant slopes, but at all times you were surrounded by their heady resinous sent and the crackling cacophonous din of a million hot cicadas. For me, the impression resulting from all this stimulation was of being constantly aware of the environment. I no longer had the opportunity to get distracted by the vestiges of my work-a-day preoccupations; nothing could compete with the imminence of such a landscape.

The geography of the island too makes it an alluring walkers location. Lying just off the mainland coast, the last in a chain of three major islands and surrounded my smaller satellite isles, the coastal views, depending on where you are positioned on the island, can consist of either the distant peaks of Evia, the low lying forested flanks of Skopelos or Peristera, or various scattered isles whose darker forms against the light blue sea seem often to describe a 'hat' or 'a wedge of cheese'. Indeed, keeping track of these little isles as I moved between kopses of pines, or in and out of olive groves, was to prove an entertaining means of estimating my progress.

On dry land too the geography proved most interesting, particularly with reference to the numerous narrow inlets and bays, most notably at Steni Vala, that form a feature of the coastline and provided the happy walker with frequent opportunities to cool their feet in a clear calm sea. Further inland, Alonissos cannot rank among the most mountainous of islands: the highest peak rises to just under 500 metres and, with the exception of some coastal cliffs on the western side, there are few rugged slopes to attract those who like to mix their walking with a little clambering. However, like the rest of Greece, Alonissos is definitely hilly and presents in its more extreme contours 'a damn good challenge'.

Typical narrow inlet found on Alonissos' coastline (taken from Hora)


As for flora and fauna, I saw precious little of the former - it being the middle of one of the hottest and driest summers of recent times - but I am told that as with most of Greece, Spring, and to a lesser extent the first rains of Autumn, see the island awash with wild flowers. What I did see in the way of flora however was a wide variety of wild herbs and particularly, lush sprigs of wild sage.

Wild sage growing next to the road side (I used to chew this on my walks for a bit of extra zing!)

As for the wildlife, the island is famous for its marine park and certainly it is not altogether uncommon to see dolphins and monk seals in the quieter waters of the north coast. On the mountains, on the other hand, the big attraction here as with other locations on the Aegean, is the rare Eleonora's falcon. For my part, I didn't encounter any of these exotic species but did have the good fortune to be tracked by two circling birds of prey for almost an hour whilst descending through thick pines en route to Tsoukalia. It seems from their intermittent shrieks and dogged pursuit of their quarry that I had unwittingly intruded onto their patch.

Walking-wise, Alonissos does have a lot going for it; but perhaps its greatest asset in this area is an extensive network of well marked and well maintained paths. Unlike other so called "walkers' paradises", there is no secret about how to gain access to and exploit the landscape of Alonissos ... far from it.

Before I left Germany, I had found, after the briefest of internet searches, this site on walking in the Aegean and the writers' Alonissos pages:

http://www.foxysislandwalks.com/AlonissosMain.htm

As you can see, the writers are themselves enthusiastic walkers, with a great eye for detail, and have created in these pages a superb guide to the best walks on the island (with one notable exception, of which more hereafter). And as if this wasn't enough, long term residents Bente Keller and her husband Elias Tsoukana have seen to it that the islands beauties are accessible to anyone possessed of 11 euros, a sense of adventure and the ability to read a simple map with their excellent guide book "Walking on Alonissos: A walking and swimming guide."

http://www.bentekeller.gr/en/gen.htm

All things told, with the time, the energy, the inclination and the resources, one could do far worse than to opt for a walking holiday on Alonissos. And this was just the fortunate situation I had found myself in as I left my tent early on that first morning with a bag packed for a days walking.

Not just an island, but a state of mind... OR Alonissos Travelogue Part 4

I have, through experience, come round to the opinion that the best time to arrive at one's destination is in the early evening: such are the demands of travelling that one is more often than not in need of 'a nice lie down' at the end of it all; on the other hand, such is the excitement of having a new environment to explore that it is equally nice to do some low key wandering when one arrives, if only to nose about and get one's bearings. An early evening arrival time accommodates both of these needs, whilst, one might feel, simultaneously revealing one's new home in the kind, calm colours of an early dusk.

For my part, I arrived at the campsite on Alonissos in the early afternoon, and so, it seemed, was stuck with more time than energy until the close of this long, long day. But, as fortune would have it, I was about to waste some time... spectacularly.

When I eventually got my tent up, and had secured it fastly at each of the four corners by stringing up the frame to heavy rocks, and when I had at last located and unpacked such necessities as toiletries, inflatable mattresses, torches, candles, sleeping bag, psatha, wine, etc. and made myself thoroughly comfortable by dragging substantial logs and boulders over to my little patch to serve as ersatz tables, chairs and shelves, only when I had organised my pitch entirely to my satisfaction did I decide that I didn't like this spot after all and that I should move lock, stock and barrel to a quieter spot some fifty metres or so away in the corner of the campsite next to the perimeter fence.

Such comic indecision, I'm sure you'll agree, is a prime symptom of the stress of modern life. Yes, I was finally out underneath vast scented pines, within a 2 minute amble of the sea, with the sun and the breeze on my skin, and with no one to answer to but myself for the next five weeks... but, there is a certain knack to relaxing, and I was still too used to running about with a 'to do list' in my head that I just hadn't got it yet; in short, I needed a little more time to adjust.

All this I recognised in myself only too well, and so, facing the unenviable chore of relocating with knowing self-mockery, I made a little drama out of a crisis and diverted myself for another hour... or so.

The tent finally up, the mattress inflated, stones and logs arranged into ersatz furniture, and a string strung twixt adjacent pines to serve as a clothes line (the ultimate 'territorial pissing'), my final resting place looked like this:


Or this, taken from some ways behind:


As you can see, the campsite near Patitiri has in abundance that most precious of resources: shade. Indeed, I could, reasonably comfortably, snooze away until ten o'clockish without being boiled alive... as is usually the case. However, what really made it for me was that it was quiet.

In the second photo you might just be able to make out the nearest tent to mine away in the distance (they, incidentally, were really lucky, as not only did they find the most private of pitches, they could also see the sea). It was high season on the islands and this site was easily big enough to accommodate those curious and clued up campers who, like me, had made the crossing. Not only this, but attracting the curious and the clued up, it was also possessed of a wonderfully laid back atmosphere, the kind of place where you could pass your whole visit either in monastic silence or in mingling with fellow campers in the open-air communal kitchen area.

The facilities, admittedly, were basic, but no more so than is standard where it really mattered: the showers, were clean, with a decent water pressure, and had hot running water at the peak post beach period of around 5pm; the toilet block, though mostly equipped with "Turkish toilets", as the Greeks call these holes in the ground, were new; likewise the outdoor cooking area where there were plenty of fridges, sinks, bins and electrical sockets to cater for all. A nice little touch here, I thought, was a communal cool water tap in which spring water was chilled to an impressive extent - ideal for quenching your thirst on arriving home after a baking days walking.

If the Patitiri campsite can be faulted, however, it would be by more discerning residents who would notice and mind the fact that it is located about fifteen minutes walk from Patitiri proper up a fairly steep but asphalted road (a short cut exists through the pines which is really beautiful); or that it has no shop, nor sandy beach. But if you want to experience the peace and quiet of the outdoors, and prefer to string together your swimming opportunities in a days walking, then this might well be for you.

So, there I was, all organised and this time with about three hours till sundown... so what shall I do now?

Like I said, I wasn't used to being on holiday yet and still felt that I needed to be worthily engaged in pursuing some end. Now that I was finally settled with no boats to catch, nor tents to put up, now that I could simply sit outside my tent in the early evening sunlight, I felt kind of... aimless. I fiddled with the array of distractions I had brought with me for just such moments: my ipod, the binoculars, newspapers, my fishing rod, books, diaries, radios... nothing seemed to do the trick and give me that precious sensation of involvement that I desperately needed...

There were three hours till sunset when I left my tent, a little bottle of retsina tucked under my arm, bound to eat up as much time as I could on the beach. Instead, I arrived back at my tent with the last rays of daylight fading from the sky, an empty bottle dangling from my fingers, and a look of quiet satisfaction of my lips having walked a good ten kilometres or so round the South coast of the island.

For the next ten days, I forgot my array of distractions, I didn't need them. All I needed was to walk.

Just because it's better to travel than to arrive doesn't mean it's not nice to arrive in the end... OR Alonissos Travelogue Part 3

Leaving Agios Konstantinos, on the ferry to Alonissos.

I can remember a time, not so long ago, when a journey by ferry was an absolute joy. Not only were you outside, under the sun, up on deck with a 360 degree panorama of the Aegean and it's scattered islands, you could also enjoy that singular atmosphere of camaraderie which comes from being 'all in the same boat'.

These days, however, I more often than not view ferry journeys as a necessary inconvenience. After all, the Aegean has long been the place where older vessels, no longer fit to serve in the North or Baltic Seas, go to cruise the more placid waters of the Mediterranean. By the time they find their way here, consequently, they have seen better days. Not to put too fine a point on it, many of the passenger ferries that link the lesser isles are great, loud lumbering beasts whose rusting funnels belch out a steady stream of acrid fumes that I can never seem to evade no matter where I sit.

However, such aging vessels do have one saving grace: their names. Unlike the modern and sleek "Flying Kat 2", no one who has ever travelled on Dimitroula, Romilda, or Rodanthi can fail to feel at least a little tenderness for their dear rusting hulks.

So passed my journey to Alonissos. Deprived of the most effective means of passing time (I had given up smoking some 4 months previously) I could only attempt to eat up the hours by snoozing in those areas of the ship less plagued by fumes, and fiddling with my ipod... Oh, and scanning the passing islands with my binoculars.

To wit, I must mention the astonishing verdure of Evia's northern coast seen here from the ferry a hour or so after leaving Agios Konstantinos:

The thickly forested northern coast of Evia.

Unused as I was to seeing such greenery on the islands, this really impressed me. Later, on Alonissos, whilst discussing this impression with Greeks and other travellers, I was to find out that northern Evia is renowned for the beauty of its forests as well as its trekking opportunities. Indeed, so intrigued was I by this discovery that we made a snap visit to the island 5 weeks later on my last day in Greece where what I saw was enough to convince me that a walking holiday on Evia may well be on the cards for next year.

(While the fires which blighted Greece in the summer of 2007 did affect considerable regions on Evia, fortunately, they did no significant damage to the forests of north).

All this, however, was an afterthought. At the time, I was as yet unsure how to react to this verdant landscape. Yes, it was impressively green... but wait a minute... that's not any Greece I recognise!

For so long I had associated holidays in the islands with the parched lunar-like landscapes of the southern islands. Whilst they do not exactly conform to the accepted idea of a desert island paradise (not only do they have no palm trees, they more often than not have no trees... period), they do have a stark beauty which exerts itself ever more strongly with each subsequent visit. Quite simply, I was used to associating the pleasures of a holiday in the Aegean with a certain kind of landscape... and it didn't matter how impressive these views were, I felt a little... displaced.

A couple of packets of chewing gum and a paximadhi or two later, I woke up from a fitful snooze to admire the impressively rugged coastline and peaks of Skopelos from close up as the ferry prepared to make the final turn toward nearby Alonissos. Here at least was a feint echo of something that I was used to... exposed limestone rock cliffs interspersed with scree and boulder strewn stretches.

Rock slide on Skopelos as seen from ferry.

The ferry turned... and at last Alonissos swung into sight. Green. Out came the binoculars once more.

I knew roughly what I was looking at from the maps that I had studied and was able to make out the village atop a ridge above the south coast and the scattered southern beaches below. As the ferry drew nearer, I tried to find the campsite, which I knew was somewhere on the south east coast. But it was no use: the tree cover was just too thick.

And then there was no more time to contemplate Alonissos from afar. Despite the captain's thick Greek accent, the wind, and the dodgy tannoy, there could be no mistaking the message: "Would all passengers whose destination is Alonissos kindly make their way to the exits."

Down in the belly of the ship, the doors opened slowly to reveal... the open sea: we were still turning, eventually to back up against the port. As is always the case, the wind had died down now that we were next to land and the temperature had risen noticeably. It had been cool in the morning at Agios Konstantinos and now that it was mid-afternoon, the familiar relentless heat of the Greek summer greeted me like an old friend.

Soon the door was fully open and I could see what I could hitherto only expect.

It was nice... very, very nice.

Disembarking from the ferry, I finally stepped out onto the port. There was the usual hustle and bustle as rooms were touted and passengers vied with vehicles for a way off and on to the ship simultaneously, but Patitiri does indeed please at first sight. Enclosed by steep, markedly striated yellow limestone cliffs on two sides, the town winds around the calm bay. Whilst not the quietest or smallest of places (and let's not forget that I am used to THE quietest and smallest of places!) it was in ample possession of that most important of qualities: atmosphere. The guide books had indeed got it very, very wrong. It was high summer on the islands and what presented itself was a lively and thoroughly charming little port side town, the kind of place where one could sit quietly and comfortably in a harbour-side cafe and pass a good hour or so just soaking it all up.

I didn't have time more to form a fuller impression; the campsite jeep was about to leave. So off we rattled past the brightly painted fishing boats tied up under the cliff, past the central harbour-side cafes, through the winding whitewashed alleys draped with shocking violet bougeanvillea, up onto the narrow winding road flanked by thick scented pines... and all the while a million hot cicadas crackling away.

It doesn't matter how organised you are, some Greek official will bugger things up... but what the hell... it's sunny! OR Alonissos Travelogue Part 2

I more or less consistently subscribe to the belief that it is pointless to look forward to something 'too much'. Such an all consuming desire for things imminent, and the calender watching it entails, can only limit your ability to live in the reality of the present. Nevertheless, I equally consistently find myself counting the days and searching desperately for ways to speed up the passage of time in the pre-summer months.

Maybe it's because I'm a TEFL teacher and that by this time, I am almost convinced that half the words in the English language mean the same thing in the madness of continually approximating meaning through the twin beacons 'good' and 'bad'.

But I had an extra special reason to be restless in the run up to Alonissos, 2007. From late May on it rained almost relentlessly here in Germany such that by mid-July I had begun to suspect that the April heatwave was actually our summer, precocious though it was, and that what we were now experiencing was an equally precocious Autumn. In fact, so pervasive was this sensation that I recall firing off an email to Dave and Gerry, nervously inquiring whether it was 'nice and warm' over there.

In retrospect, as we look back at a summer when Greece was plagued by heatwaves, water shortages and devastating forest fires, this behaviour seems a little neurotic. But in my defence, I would say this: it is difficult to believe sometimes when you are lazing on a quiet island beach in late afternoon, where there is not a breath of wind and the sky above your head melts from deep blue through tourquoise to the fiery red hues of the setting sun, it is difficult to believe in such an environment that the heavy leaden skies of northern Europe could ever exist. The vibrant, heavenly light of the Aegean reveals a very different world.

But finally the day of departure came, and with a somewhat teary goodbye, I left my wife in rainy Marburg and headed south.

The journey from the Eleftheros Venizelos airport to Alonissos can only be described as smooth. After all, I had had about 12 weeks to prepare and had read and re-read (and printed out) Dave and Gerry's advice about this very journey many times. Sure enough we stopped at the Joe 90 cafe and sure enough our departure after much queueing was barely signalled by our driver -- such are the 'hazards' of travelling in Greece that can infuriate the one time visitor, while thoroughly entertaining those who are possessed of a hard won familiarity with the culture.

I should also point out that the trip itself was a pleasure. Even though I was tired from a night flight on which I snatched all of 30 minutes sleep, I found ample energy to marvel at densely forested mountains, (makari na zoun akoma!), lakes and craggy limestone outcrops whose smooth pink to yellow rock and dark fissures stood out in stark contrast against the morning sun.

Only one, slightly awkward part of the journey deserves comment: the bus to boat transfer in Agios Konstantinos. I knew that it would be tight: the first bus rolls in to Ag-Kon at 8.45, the exact time that the first ferry leaves for Alonissos. Now this might not be so bad... if the bus dropped you at the ferry terminal and there was the opportunity to buy tickets quickly from a port-side kiosk for example... or the next ferry left within, say, an hour of the first; but neither of these were the case. As it happened, the next ferry left at 10.30, alright for some, but I really didn't want to wait. And as for the ticket office, well it was in a square on the other side of a busy dual carriage way (in fact the main road north of Athens) with no opportunity for a pedestrian weighed down with a 20 kilo ruck sack to make it across the barrier of the central reservation by any means other than hurdling. As usual, it is that quintessentially Greek approach to organisation where the right hand doesn't know (nor give a shit apparently) what the left hand is doing.

In the end I made the connection,... precisely because I chose to hurdle.

But like I said, after years of travelling in Greece these things only serve to entertain... Besides, if I had got stuck for two hours in Ag-Kon I would have been hard pushed to find anything to do bar sip a frappe and read a magazine whilst looking at the sea... and isn't that what holidays in Greece are all about?

How to go on holiday ... or Alonissos Travelogue Part 1

In April of 2007, Germany experienced a remarkable heatwave. From the middle of the month on, temperatures soared into the high twenties and for a period of 6 weeks, we didn't see a drop of rain.

It was around about this time, sitting by a lake, watching my wife swimming and sipping on a frappe, that my thoughts turned to Greece and my pending summer vacation. Where would I pass my five golden weeks in Elladha? I already knew that I would have to spend most of it by myself as my wife was feeling the squeeze after three years study on her Phd. She just couldn't afford the luxury of five weeks off -- and I couldn't imagine spending any part of my summer vacation in hot, sunny but landlocked Marburg.

So it had to be somewhere like the small, atmospheric, friendly islands with good camping opportunities that I had hopped around before I met Maria: something like Donoussa, Amorgos, Koufonissi, Anafi, Gavdos, Tilos, Kimolos, Karpathos, Lipsoi, Fournoi...

... that was the problem. I had pretty much exhausted the possibilities in this area, sometimes more than once. Or had I?

I had pondered the Sporades before, but had never visited the island chain. Like many aficionados of the islands, I used to land at Eleftheros Venizelos and get the first bus to Piraeus... with the result that I had hopped only in the Cyclades, the Dodecanese and some of the Northern Aegean islands. Moreover, those times that I did consider the group, I recall being put off by disparaging guide book reviews of the touristic horrors of Skiathos, the inaccessibility of Skyros or the infamous earthquake struck, vineyard ravaged and un-Greek Alonissos... Nevertheless, I was intrigued and, knowing how wrong guide books can get it, I turned to the internet for a second opinion...

...And that is how I met Dave and Gerry. There were many internet sites about the island of Alonissos but theirs excelled where it really mattered: it is informative, user friendly, entertaining, comprehensive and so obviously written from the perspective of a couple who have a great fondness for the island. See for yourself:

http://www.ivicourt.com/

I had to get in touch.

A couple of days after I sent them my congratulations on the quality of their site, together with a query re the campsites on the island, I received a friendly, informative and comprehensive reply together with a invitation to meet up with them should I find myself on the island during the summer.

Now this initial contact had a quite magical effect on me. All this research about where to go for my summer vacation boiled down to one thing: I wanted to experience being on the island before I got there. One instinctively knows when something is right and this applies particularly to island hopping. Sometimes, you fall in love with an objectively unremarkable place the minute you step off the ferry. Atmosphere and the idiosyncrasies of subjective experience go a long way to colour one's experience of a place. So it was that on receiving this friendly reply, I had stepped off the boat and knew that it was to be Alonissos, 2007.

A list of things that I find important... and what I actually have

A list of things that I find important:

1. The touch of the sun upon my skin.
2. A certain quality of daylight that makes the colours of the world vibrate.
3. The sensual proximity of the sea.
4. Stimulating friends.
5. Simple wholesome fayre: goats cheese, fresh tomatoes, oregano, whole wheat paximadhia, olives and barelled wine.
6. Maria.

Six should do it. And of the above? What do I have? Well, let me post here something I wrote from around about this time last year. Trust me, nothing has changed: as I look out the window here at work I see rain... and it has been raining for about as long as I can remember.

... I´m sitting in the office at work once more, once more alone, once more bejacketed, once more rubbing my cold fingers and nose and every so often reaching over to the radiator for warmth. It is cold. And what´s more, it is very, very wet. The sky is grey and it feels like it has been raining steadily forever. I cannot believe that I used to walk around outside wearing a swimming costume... and that that was only l0 days ago.

On Friday after work Maria came to pick me up from the school. Whilst walking to a bistro through the pissing rain we decided to go to an industrial park the following morning to pick up some shelves, a mirror and maybe a washing machine.

The next day we woke late and shagged away the morning. So it was that we reached the bus stop - through slanting rain and wind - at 2 o´clock.

On arriving at the bus stop, Maria decided to be hungry and, as we had 20 minutes to spare before the bus, we went in search of Käsestangen (whatever).

On reaching the bakery, it decided to be closed, so we walked for a further ten minutes into town because she wanted a specific kind of Kasestange from a specific fucking bakery. Needless to say that although we got the pastry, we missed the bus.

It was, she assured me, OK. We would take the bus from the other bus stop and make it just the same. We waited under the rain at this bus stop for half an hour before it transpired that in reality, no such busses as the ones we required had ever passed this way nor indeed were planning to do so in the near future. We walked desultorily back through slanting smir to our first bus stop.

When we got to the industrial park, it was even more dark; the rain a little more persistent. We found the warehouse in the bleakest zone imaginable and the mirrors and shelves it contained. But, we thought, we might find something better and cheaper at the recycling centre that we had visited once, briefly, two and a half years ago. We left the shop, centre bound.

Some time later, as we emerged from the relative shelter of an arboreal tunnel which we had found through lack of knowledge about where the fuck we were going, it started to rain heavily. I mean it pelted it down. I mean there was donner and blitzen. I mean
the rain was horizontal. I mean it was a fucking monsoon.

As we sheltered in the doorway of Hansel and Gretel´s hardware store (closed) wondering where the fuck we were and in which direction civilisation might decide to be found, we realised that this was not a hardware store at all but the recycling centre. Hurray! we thought, unbowed by nature´s torments, then, sortly
after: Shite! It had closed down and moved next to my school. This last we knew because we read the sign: "Grand Opening at new premises on Gisselberger Strasse 33, Sat. 7th of September." (naturally, I have translated, but note the date.)

Once more we walked once more through the rain once more desultorily this time back to the grimmest zone of the industrial park. On arriving simply drenched to the skin we bought the said items and emerged out into... more rain.

She took the mirror, I, a large twenty kilogram pack of wood that had the potential to be shelves. We walked to the bus stop through slanting rain.

On arriving at the bus stop, the busses decided not to run after 4:30. It was a quarter to five at this point and though I remained as cheerful as one can be when one is carrying a twenty kilogram block of wood through an industrial estate with wet clothes, I was
becoming a little weary. We walked to another bus stop, only ten minutes away, through slanting rain.

We eventually got home at 6, lay down our things, took off our clothes and sank into the bed. I was bloody knackered and just wanted to sleep. However, unfortunately I had somewhat shortsightedly offered to cook Maria a tortilla when her brolly committed suicide in the monsoon. As I now learned, she had, at the time, fantasised a tortilla with a specific kind of cheese from a specific shop down in the unterstadt. The rain continued. Maria pulled the duvet up around her ears. I pulled on my squelching
shoes and went out once more into slanting rain.

I do not have sun. In fact, I do not even have sky at the moment. Just grey. It is cold and I miss my paximadhia. But I have Maria and all is well.

Like I said, nothing much has changed.