Beside the Seaside

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In Which My Day Just Isn't Cricket.. But Only Just

September 26, 2008 by Mike

Epidavros

Route: Nafplio - Drepano - Portocheli - Galatas - Epidavros

I woke early to find perfect conditions for a book cover photoshoot (hah!):

.. and as an afterthought took a shot from a different angle that I reckon is even better.. but doesn't say besidetheseaside quite as loudly?

What did I see of Nafplio -- the first capital of independent Greece in 1821, home to a Venetian fortress on an islet in the bay, to an ancient castle on a hill over the town, quick-eyed cats patrolling historic squares lazy with summer sun and retsina, a working port with tramp steamers and look-at-me yachts bobbing in the same turquoise sea, higgledy homes and charmed cafes?

I saw.. the insides of an internet cafe. I loaded hundreds of photos to Flickr and several days' worth of my witterings. And now I have nothing to say about Nafplio.

More riding today, in order to make Saturday's baptism. That means one final Peleponnessean peninsula to navigate, and today I was determined to reach all the way to the bottom. But at first, beaten by a mountain called Didimo, which sounds like it should be a Teletubbie, and some ominous warnings about the state of the secondary roads closest to the coast, my route pushed so far inland I was closer to the other side of the peninsula, but I pushed on through nondescript countryside and some big open spaces to Kranidi and then Portocheli.

This is a small seaside town a long way from anything very interesting on the mainland -- a Greek Great Yarmouth -- that owes its considerable through traffic and tourist income to the fact that the chi-chi island of Spetses lies just off the coast. As if Barbados had been relocated just off the Norfolk coast.

I got as far as a large car park just outside town -- it has to be large to make space for all the huge 4-wheel-drive Land Cruisers and executive BMWs. Their owners are ferried across to Spetses by a gang of likely-looking taxi drivers -- only these taxis aren't bright yellow Mercedes, they're old wooden boats, creaking and straining in a long line at dockside. Lovely.

Further round the coast and but for a vast ugly rainstorm that obliterated the horizon, I would have been looking across wistfully at Hydra, another fabled island and the setting for the first grown-up book I ever read. The Magus by John Fowles. No, it would be better to say I devoured it -- I was addicted to it. I couldn't be torn from it to eat or sleep. My lovely Ma despaired (she said at the time, sighing) but was secretly thrilled (she admitted when I was a grown-up who still loved books) that I was showing signs of the same love of good books that had enriched her life since childhood.

Blimey. It's over 30 years since I read The Magus. Is it actually any good? Or was I reading a load of old tosh? Could you let me know if you've read it more recently? Thanks.

Another reason to think of home. Or in this case, a more generic 'home'. The thwack of leather on willow and all that:

There are many Indian immigrants in this corner of Greece. Many are on the roads, riding Honda C90s just as I remember in Goa (if that's not too enormous a generalisation). (And that in itself is a big improvement, economically, on the strange phenomenon of the bicycle-riding West African immigrants I encountered in Almeria, southern Spain, at the start of the year.)

I chatted with one, a Sikh, complete with turban, as we rode down a country lane side-by-side. He was going home from a day's work in the fields.. I think. It was never going to be the most in-depth conversation at 30mph, especially when he pointed out his English wasn't much good, but we shared big grins as well as the road before he waved me onwards.

And as for those cricketers in the picture: they asked if I wanted a game but it was getting dark and I wanted to find a bed for the night. Besides, for all I know (and my undistinguished career as a cricket reporter lasted precisely one One-Day match -- in Scarborough, as I recall) these gentlemen could be members of the Greek national team. Possibly not, judging by the batsman's unorthodox technique with his, err, cricket racquet.

More miles eaten up past twilight. I fell in love with Poros but didn't stop. I couldn't - it's an island. But, dangnabbit, it's only a matter of metres from the mainland. Couldn't they build a causeway or something, so I could have been allowed to move here:

All those little white-walled houses by the sea... *sigh*

Beside the Seaside

In Which My Day Just Isn't Cricket.. But Only Just

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