Yesterday summer suddenly returned to this corner of Europe, but not without a final show of defiance by the outriders of the massive weather system that had been swirling around the Aegean all these days. I woke late and refreshed inside the chapel of Saint Theodoros. Peaking through the door, I noticed that the westward view was mostly clear and blue. It took me half an hour to peel and eat an orange, pack, and perform ablutions of a sort, sluicing my face with bottled water, wiping the sleep from my eyes and brushing my teeth. When I looked up again, a long streak of grey cloud was rolling in from the north west and the world had lost all colour.
I began to run south through pines, then olive groves, past a monastery famed for a miracle involving the transmutation of a stone step into gold, past a dusty agricultural supply point masquerading as a village. Past a steady stream of farmers riding their Toyota Hilux pick ups into town, their dusty weather beaten faces like the cracked earth of summer. All very Cretan.
My destination was Elafonisi (lit. deer island) another coastal lagoon with coral pink sand. I was 9 km from the island when I set off that morning, and around 500m short, the heavens opened in a last tantrum of rain. A westerly wind suddenly got up out of nowhere and whipped drizzle in from the sea, driving it across my path and catching my pack like a sail. I felt the wind repeatedly shoving me out into the centre of the road, and every time I corrected hard to stay right. And I loved every minute of it.
There is something about the sports of climbing and running that they attract, or perhaps foster, a resolutely stubborn and defiant character. Often this expresses itself in egoism and a disregard for social graces. Climbers in particular are notoriously difficult to live with. But for me, my defiance is a game, and on display only when I think that I am being tested. And it is almost wholly directed at the elements, the environment that would constrain and limit my efficacy. And efficacy is the right word - the sense that your will and actions matter, that they can make an impact on the course of events in this world. All this is why running through wind and rain can be so exhilirating. There is the illusion that nature is toying with you, testing your limits. But since nature has no intention, it is only an opportunity for you to realise the freedom you always have to act. And so you push back harder, you refuse the passive role, and you maintain that most valuable of attitudes - self-efficacy.
On reaching Elafonisi 5 mins later, the rain had stopped and the clouds were already drifting inland. I stopped for breakfast at a taverna overlooking the bay, enjoying a local staple of thick Greek yoghurt covered in honey and walnuts. The sun was now beaming down from a rapidly clearing sky, and my thoughts were turning to the prospect of my first swim; but not here. The tour busses had already begun to arrive, decanting a steady stream of Northern European tourists from the resorts of the north coast. I watched them from the veranda over breakfast, a caravan of ill-chosen muscle shirts, pork pie hats and novelty bouyancy aids.
I am a terrible snob at such times. Whenever I tell anyone about my deep love for this island, I am often at pains to distance myself from the popular image of Crete as a cheap and cheerful tourist ghetto, a liminal space where red-skinned and red-eyed louts spend two weeks racking up alcohol-fuelled road traffic accidents. But in truth, it comes down to a simple difference. There are those who use their vacation for pleasure, to gain respite from the daily routine through indulgence or luxury. And there are those who feel on their pulse as an indefatigable truth that the only answer to driving a desk for a living is to seek out adventure whenever you have the chance.
So I paid up and took to the trail again, secure in the knowledge that a wilder and less frequented beach lay literally just around the corner. For here at the extreme south-west of the island, the asphalt stops once more, and a rough trail begins. It proceeds eastward along the south coast, almost uninterrupted, for 50 km through some of the wildest landscapes on the island. Heading south from Hania, the White Mountains rise to 2.5 km before tumbling down into the Libyan Sea, which itself plunges 2 km more into the wine-dark abyss. The one and only time that I saw a whale was, quite improbably, in these waters while travelling back from an offshore islet. The sailors woke me with excited cries of what sounded like falena! falena! I shot up just in time to see what looked like flukes crashing back below the surface around 300 m from our vessel. Unable quite to believe my eyes, I still needed to look it up in my Greek English dictionary to be sure. Sometimes we never forget where we learn a word.
Anyone who walks this trail all the way to its completion in Hora Sfakion may well learn another Greek word: farangi, or gorge. For undoubtedly what characterises the terrain of this part of the island more so than any other are the numerous gorges which slash through the landscape from peak to coast. Tour companies all along the northern strip bus thousands of tourists each year to the trailhead of the greatest of these, the Samaria Gorge, which at 18 km long is Europe's longest. Most make it from here to the south coast village of Agia Roumeli, descending over 1000m in the process. From here only a boat or your own feet can get you home, since there are no roads in this part of the island. And if you decide to walk it out along the coast, you will stumble through a landscape of scree, dust and thorns slashed through with many more gorges, regardless of which way you turn.
It is my favourite place on earth.
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