ANNUAL NEWSLETTER 1996

THE ROAD TO GYTHION

Barry and Margaret Williamson

The newsletter describes a motorhome and bicycle journey from Italy, through mainland Greece, back to the UK and out to Italy again in the year 1996.

Salute from Pompeii at the end of yet another year. We have now been living and travelling in Rosie, our 27 ft, 6 ton motorhome for 20 months, following Barry's early retirement from Huddersfield University and Margaret's resignation from the Technical College.

Our first newsletter described how we left the UK at the end of March 1995 on travels which took us to Venice by the end of the following October. The next 3 weeks were spent travelling south down Italy's Adriatic coast, with time in Ferrara, Bologna, Rimini, San Marino (the tiny mountainous Republic), the busy port of Ancona, the magnificent Promontorio del Gargano, chaotic and crowded Bari and, finally, our destination - Brindisi. For much of the time we were driving and sometimes cycling on quiet roads through olive groves and tiny fishing ports, just inland from the sea and parallel with rolling hills and distant mountains.

There are few ancient Roman remains on the east coast of Italy, but about 30 miles north of Brindisi we came to the excavated site of the Roman town of Egnazia, with an amphitheatre, forum, huge underground granary, a temple on the cliffs and a vast area of necropoli - stone tombs cut into and below the rock. In keeping with the atmosphere of the place, we were warned that 'banditi' prowl the roads at night

We spent nearly a month in and around Brindisi, cycling as far as the tip of the 'heel' of Italy at Santa Maria di Leuca. Brindisi itself is a lively naval port as well as a ferry port for Greece, Albania, Cyprus, Israel and Egypt. An impressive column marks the end of the Via Appia Antica which we once traced by bicycle as it left Rome. Brindisi's thriving open air market offers a bewildering array of local fruit, vegetables, cheese and slices off whole roast pigs, sacks of nuts, dried fruits, rice and flour and there were many kinds of fish, both dead and alive. Merchants offer samples to try and one cracked a walnut in his fist and gave it to us - not a man to argue with!

In mid-December we left Brindisi for a stormy crossing of the Adriatic to Igoumenitsa in Greece (near the Albanian border). Motorhome travellers normally sleep in their vehicles on the ship's open deck but it was much too rough for that. Rosie suffered the indignity of being chained to the deck, deep down below, among the few lorries who also shared the crossing. We got a free cabin with hyperactive bunks that fell away into space and then reared up again, pushing the pillow into your face and making a trough in the meagre mattress for a suddenly-heavy body. Some night.

We staggered onto the deck at about 5 am to watch Albania float past on the port side and Corfu appear to starboard, in the pale pre-dawn light. As the channel between the two narrowed and the lights of Kerkira emerged beyond the dipping bow, we remembered Corfu one October, on bicycles, taking the ferry across these waters to Igoumenitsa, cycling down the coast of Greece and seeing a small VW motorcaravan parked down by the sea: the inspiration for what is now our way of life.

We are still in Greece and we have quickly learned to love: the people (kind, honest and very friendly); the alphabet (physics and mathematics made at least one of us familiar with some of the 'symbols'); the language (which we found hiding behind the symbols); TV (the many channels broadcast undubbed English and American films and documentaries); the cost of living (about the same as the UK with many imported foodstuffs but supplemented by inexpensive fruit and vegetables); the weather (usually dry and warm/getting hot and made better by winter reports of the big freeze in northern Europe); diesel at 38p per litre; the ambience; the light; the music; driftwood bonfires on the beach; shepherds (with their flocks of sheep and goats); crops of rice, cotton and tobacco; bamboo sun-screens; Christmas-flowering roses, geraniums, wild rosemary, irises, daisies, cyclamen and cactus; almond trees in blossom; vineyards; bananas; figs; oranges and lemons (hanging from their trees and littering the ground - we've made 34 lb of marmalade so far and gallons of orange juice); the grass grows green and there are still olives lingering from the end of the harvest (we've even found something edible to make with them - 'anchoiade', a spread of anchovies, olives, garlic, onion and tomato, delicious grilled on toast).

Everywhere there are memories of a rich past - Neolithic, Minoan, Mycenaean, Hellenistic, Roman, Byzantine, Frankish, Venetian and Turkish - whilst modern Greece struggles for an identity within borders still challenged by its neighbours. Since Igoumenitsa, we have visited: the Venetian fort at Parga; the entrance to the underworld at Ephyra Nekromanteion; the Oracle of the Dead on the banks of the river Acheron; the magnificent Roman Theatre at Nikopolis; Byron's heart buried where he died in Missolonghi; the Oracle and the Sanctuary of Apollo at Delphi above the gorge of the river Pleistos (for a warm and sunny Christmas) and the Byzantine mosaics and icons in the Ossios Loukas Monastery.

We visited Athens but only briefly to give Rosie a refill of LPG (Liquid Petroleum Gas) - we will return later for another refill and to spend a few days exploring this ancient and congested capital. Our next long stay was in Corinth where a 4-mile long canal cuts through the isthmus which joins the Peloponnese to mainland Greece (the 6th century BC slipway can still be seen on which boats used to be hauled across the isthmus). Ancient Corinth, 3 miles behind our campsite (which was 'closed') was once the capital of Roman Greece and it is a splendid site of temples, houses, shops, taverns and fountains dating from the 8th century BC. St Paul was judged there after preaching to the Corinthians (and found not guilty). We used our bikes to climb 2,000 ft above Ancient Corinth to Acrokorinthos, a magnificent mountain whose top holds one of the world's largest fortresses, dating from the 16th century BC and used by the Greeks, Romans, Byzantium, Franks, the knights of Rhodes, Venetians and Turks, each adding their stones to the weight of history.

After Corinth we spent a few days in Mycenae, visiting the city fortress dating from the 16th century BC. The massive walls, with the famous Lion Gate, were built by the Cyclops, and for 400 years it was the richest kingdom in the Mediterranean world. This was the home of King Agamemnon and his queen, Clytemnestra, who was the sister of Helen (of Troy), who was married to his brother, Menelaos, King of Sparta. Helen's elopement with Paris, son of the King of Troy, started the Trojan Wars, which the Greeks eventually won and Helen was taken back to Sparta, 19 years later. Agamemnon, on his victorious return, was murdered by his wife's lover, and was avenged by his son, who also killed his mother (we knew we wouldn't miss the Archers). Amazing stories, told by Homer in the Iliad, where legend and history are inextricably mixed. Whatever the truth, some astonishing royal tombs, with precious jewellery and gold artefacts, were found by a retired German grocer and amateur archaeologist last century, successfully searching for treasure.

We cycled to Argos, home of the Argonauts, where there is an amazing theatre from the 4th century BC, seating 20,000, and carved out of the rockface of the hillside. We also visited Tiryns, a 13th century BC palace with Cyclopean ramparts, which suddenly and unexpectedly towered above the road as we were riding to the sea. We then moved to Epidauros and the sanctuary of Asklepios (God of Medicine, son of Apollo, suckled by a nanny goat and good enough as a doctor to raise the dead which naturally upset both Hades and Zeus, who were waiting for them). Among the extensive remains at Epidauros, there is another magnificent 14,000-seat theatre, famous for its acoustics and still used for concerts.

From Epidauros we drove down the beautiful coast of Arcadia, spending nights as near as could be to the tideless sea. The weather turned to winter for a week, and we were turned back at 4,000 ft on a mountain road by the snow. Near Tripoli, at 3,000 ft on the high central plain, Rosie burned some of her precious LPG to keep us warm on a night when the temperature approached 35°F but now baby lambs and kids are emerging into a spring where it's back in the 70's, it stays light until well after 8pm, the grass is growing green and birdsong and flowers fill the fields and orchards.

Near Sparta, we camped in an orange grove ('help yourselves') and lemons and grapefruit were freely available. Our cooking is still citrus-led - in addition to the 2 years' supply of marmalade, we have made orange and lemon curds, cakes, biscuits, puddings, pancakes and squash; fish, chicken and rice cooked with oranges or lemons; and fresh juice every morning! We visited ancient Sparta and saw the amphitheatre where young Spartans were flogged nearly to death to prove their worth (memories of FE colleges!) We also cycled to the nearby abandoned medieval town of Mystra, an exceptional Byzantine site on a 1,000 ft high mountainside, with the fortress and Despot's Palace at the top, and ruins of houses, churches and monasteries tumbling down below.

Greece has finally helped us to learn how not to rush: we average less than 20 miles per day of driving (this is a quarter of our average when we cycled across America). Our mentors have included an intriguing young Canadian couple, Eugene and Nicole, who were waiting on a beach near Gythion for a ferry to Crete. They were travelling in an ancient and battered Nissan van which had been their home for the last 4 years, sharing its tiny living space with a motorbike and a large black and white dog they called 'Francis' after the saint of the same name. They had rescued him from an Italian beach, starving and suffering from gunshot wounds. Somehow, they squeezed us two in to share their coffee and carrot cake!

They are musicians, specialising in Elizabethan music, playing the lute and baroque oboe and living hand-to-mouth playing at medieval banquets when they can get bookings, and busking on the streets when not. We thought we were being self-sufficient until we learned they grind their own wheat and make their own pasta! They had no oven, just 2 gas rings, but they baked bread and cakes in a hob-top-oven-pan they'd bought in Germany, which worked very well. They were relaxing on southern beaches for the winter, before returning to the richer countries of western Europe to continue saving for their dream - a plot of land and old barn in France, not too far from some medieval chateaux. They gave us Old Age Travellers a fascinating insight into the world of the New Age Traveller. They bought (or found?) their vehicle in the UK but left when they heard about the MOT, the 6 months' quarantine and the recent Criminal Justice Act (we have our own list).

Since Gythion we have travelled the 100-mile road round the Mani Peninsula which leads out to the southernmost cape of the Greek mainland. To get to that point from where we spent the night in Rosie was the hardest 25 miles of cycling, walking and climbing we have done since the Alps. The road became a track and then a path and then a rock-scramble, forcing us to leave the bikes with a donkey-owning peasant. For much of the time the road round the Peninsula lies on a corniche, sometimes rising high above the sea, sometimes plunging down to a cove, a beach, a tiny fishing port. A whole day was spent driving 30 miles, the road being so narrow, twisting (Rosie needed a couple of goes at some of the hairpins), steep and splendid. Uniquely, the houses in the Mani take the form of square towers, built of stone, some going back to the 15th century. Many villages are abandoned and perch on easily defended cliff and hill-tops and it's a poignant moment to see houses and villages so well defended from perceived external threat, dead and forsaken from internal decay (more memories there of FE colleges). Fortunately, the population of the Peninsula are descended from the Spartans and are therefore well suited to live in this splendid desolation.

The Messenian Gulf Road provides a splendid route to Kalamata, climbing and falling, crossing the foothills of snow-capped mountains, but always in sight of the sparkling sea. Still recovering from the 1986 earthquake which nearly destroyed it, Kalamata has the kind of narrow streets with tight corners and low balconies which give Rosie a headache. She was pleased to leave for Koroni, near the tip of the westernmost peninsula of the Greek mainland, a little port below a ruined Venetian castle where she could watch the sea through a screen of palm trees. She always gravitates towards the sea, when she can; we sometimes think that she should have been born a houseboat.

Going north again, we visited Olympia (the home of the Olympics, not the mountain home of the gods - that's much further north). The ancient site, developed around the Temple of Zeus, is set at the junction of two rivers, the Kladeos and the Alpheios (this is the one that Hercules diverted to clean out the Augean stables). Although already devasted by an earthquake (massive temple pillars lie where they fell) and robbed for building stone by barbarians and Christians alike, the site was ultimately preserved by river floods providing a layer of silt 12 ft deep. The museum is superb; the highlight is the statue of Hermes attributed to Praxiteles but the metopes from the frieze showing the 12 labours of Hercules are also unforgettable.

Although we remain keen and regular cyclists, an urge to walk and explore the mountains and islands of Greece encouraged us to spend 4 happy weeks searching for, buying and registering (the latter took longest) a Greek Yamaha motorbike called Alf (after his model number: 100 alfa). He only weighs about 90 kg and travels comfortably behind Rosie on a rack we designed and had made in Corinth. In Greece, everyone (who is someone) has a small motorbike or scooter: the red-blooded young man-about-town, cruising of an evening; the secretary going to work; the housewife shopping; the peasant carrying produce and livestock to market; the father taking his family on a picnic; foreign tourists looking for an easier way of getting into the high mountains and the more remote villages.

Alf is great fun and does his best to carry 2 adults and a lot of kit up 5,000 ft climbs on unmade roads, his little heart buzzing like a bee trapped in a bottle. His only protest has been to snap his spokes in occasional exasperation. This has happened 5 times so far, so we have got used to it. As have Greek mechanics who can replace a spoke or two without stirring from their chairs, taking a cigarette out of their mouths or compromising their lifelong commitment to good conversation.

With Rosie as a portable base camp and using Alf and the 2 bicycles, we continued our exploration of the Peloponnese throughout the Greek spring and early summer. In no particular order, we visited: the tiny port of Killini and the vast 13th century hill-top fortress at nearby Kastro; the Ionian Islands of Kithera, Zakinthos and Kefallonia - offshore lies the tiny island of Ithaca which Odysseus left and then sought on his 20 year long Odyssey. Using Ithaca as a metaphor for 'the journey', the modern Greek poet CP Cavafy wrote: When you set out on the voyage to Ithaca, pray that your journey may be long, full of adventures, full of knowledge. Always keep Ithaca fixed in your mind, to arrive there is your ultimate goal but do not hurry. Ithaca has given you the beautiful voyage, without her you would never have taken the road.

St Andrew's Cathedral in Patras keeps its patron's head in a golden casket and it preserves relics of his true X-shaped cross (but how did he get to Scotland?) Beyond Patras, a French-built rack-railway climbed the Vouraikos Gorge steeply through tunnels and bridges to Kalavrita, high above the winter snow line.

We explored the monastery of Mega Spileo ('Big Cave') founded in 362 AD; Corinth (again), giving its name to currants and home to Diogenes the cynic, Sisyphos (progenitor of the workaholic) and builders of motor-bike racks from first principles; the Heraion Headland, complete with lighthouse and the ancient sanctuary of Hera; Nemea (4th century BC Temple to Zeus, lodgings and stadium for ancient games and the scene of Hercules' first labour - the killing of the Nemean Lion); nearby Lake Stymphalia (here Hercules was on his fifth - the killing of the Stymphalian Birds); Athens, giving us the most exciting and potentially final 50-miles' cycling of our lives; Olympia (again), this time to watch (us and Hilary Clinton both) the ceremonial lighting of the sacred Olympic flame and the runner setting off for Atlanta; Bassae, 4,000 ft above the plains of Olympia, its almost-intact 450 BC Temple to Apollo shrouded in mist and a tent; Kalamata, still being rebuilt after its disastrous 1986 earthquake; Ancient Ithomi (much of its 4th century BC circuit walls and 4 gates intact); Sparta (again), for extensive cycling, walking and motor-cycling in the 8,000 ft limestone-gorged, snow-capped Taygetos mountains.

We enjoyed Byzantine Monemvassia on its 1,000 ft high island, capped by a fort and linked to the mainland by a narrow causeway; Gythion again for the ferry to Crete (which finally went bankrupt and stopped running the day before we were to catch it); the haunting turret-housed Mani Peninsula; the Diros Caves (2 kilometres in a rowing boat along an underground river as it flows to the sea, head-bumping tunnels linking vast caverns in the limestone of the Mani); Kyparissia ('Town of Cypresses') dominated by its Frankish castle; the remote Mycenean beehive tombs (royal burial chambers) at Peristeria; the tiny fishing port of Marathopoli where Geoff was pausing briefly in a passage down the coast in his mobile home, the 30 ft catamaran Gable Moon. He taught us many things - from navigating by satellite to catching, killing, cooking and eating an octopus: we could manage it all but the last.

By June we were back at Ionian Beach with Rosie's brakes causing some anxiety. They were running very hot, as was the weather; tourists were beginning to gather, taking over the beaches for their own esoteric purposes and we were keen to do some serious cycling. So we headed north, leaving Alf for a summer locked up in a partly-completed holiday home, reminding us of the pathos of Home Alone.

In Patras, we signed up for a 20-hour passage on the open deck of the good ship Anna V to Brindisi, sleeping and eating in Rosie. We had the company of 2 New Zealanders on the Grand Tour in their VW Kombi and an impressive Bavarian couple, Albrecht and Mariana, in their 'Panzer', a much-modified caravan somehow fastened on the back of an even-more-modified Toyota Landcruiser truck. It looked as though it could go anywhere and had been everywhere. It didn't really surprise us to find that Albrecht was a Baroque wood carver and restorer in Oberammergau.

We drove the length of Italy and into Switzerland, crossing the Alps through the St Gotthard Tunnel (the world's longest road tunnel) out of respect for Rosie's (former) brakes and in sharp contrast to last summer's pass-seeking months. We spent time in Germany, cycled in the Taunus (north of Frankfurt) and then retreated to Dunkirk.

After 15 months abroad, we were culture-shocked by Ramsgate: Boots; WH Smith; Tesco; Woolworth's; Halford's; the Oxfam Shop; McDonald's; Fish & Chips; Tea & Toasted Teacakes. Luckily, we adjusted rapidly to this culture and we soon re-learned the appropriate habits and social customs.

The summer went by getting Rosie to stop and stay when asked, meeting family and friends and travelling. We cycled in central Wales, looking for the source of the Severn, walked in the Lake District and recalled Barry's rock-climbing student days on the west coast of Scotland in Glencoe and Glen Torridon. This route led naturally to John O'Groats which is not Britain's most northerly point (so we also went to Dunnet Head) nor the most north-easterly (so we went to Duncansby Head).

We also fulfilled a long-standing ambition to take the passenger and bicycle ferry from John O'Groats to the Orkney Islands - a magical experience among the standing stones of the Ring of Brodgar and the Neolithic houses in the sand dunes of Skara Brae, pre-dating the Egyptian Pyramids. Another place to which we must return. Travel begets travel.

Reluctantly driving south, we called on Ian, Alison and their Rosie - an intelligent black-and-white collie, who took us on a walk to the nearby grave of Rob Roy MacGregor (at one time, even the name 'MacGregor' had been banned, adding poignancy to the graveside inscription 'MacGregor Despite Them'). Sadly, recent films have made a tourist attraction of Rob Roy and his resting place, but it is still a magnificent setting in a deeply wooded glen below the 3,850 ft Ben More.

Before we left the UK, we went to Alton, in Hampshire, for a service for Rosie (one in a garage, not a church), to get her ready for her long miles on the road. She doesn't like it, having strange men crawling inside and underneath her, drawing out her warm oils and replacing them with cold, raw, unfamiliar liquids, having grease pumped into her most intimate parts and nuts and joints painfully tightened. She was quite happy as she was, growing old gracefully, a bit overweight, not washing too often, getting a bit slack here and there. Nothing wrong with that. We should know.

With an indignant but fitter Rosie, we spent a few days in Winchester (our first visit to this ancient and affluent city) before driving to Ramsgate. We enjoyed that little town much more (we are good at simple seaside pleasures) and topped up on culture and diesel before taking the peaceful 2.5 hour Sally ferry back to Dunkirk.

When we cross France, we always spend some time on one of that country's many battlefields. This time we went initially to the Vimy ridge above Arras which has a sombre monument to the Canadians who died up there during the First World War. The site includes preserved trenches, tunnels, woodland still pock-marked with shell-holes and cemeteries. It was misty, when we visited, looking north towards the nearby Belgium border, from where the Germans came in 1914 (and, again, led by Rommel, in 1940). It is strangely evocative of those times and events; we had been there before but it will never fail to affect us deeply.

After Vimy, we spent a few days exploring the Somme battlefield (July - November 1916), camping near Bapaume and using the bicycles to ride along the front line in the area between Bapaume and Albert. 1,200,000 men were killed or injured in that battle, roughly equal numbers on each side, over a 15-mile front where little land was gained. The front line is marked by 188 cemeteries - men were buried where they fell - and there are many memorials to the British, Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders and South Africans who fought and died there. On a hill at Thiepval, the Lutyens memorial lists 73,412 men for whom there are no known graves.

A particularly moving memorial is that to the 'Accrington Pals', a battalion of about 800 men, all recruited from Accrington. It stands in the 'Sheffield Park', a small area of preserved woodland and shell-hole filled battlefield where the Sheffield City Battalion gathered. There were many such Pals' Battalions and when they were virtually wiped out in a morning, as the Sheffield and Accrington Pals were, whole communites in England were devastated. The Accrington Pals' Memorial is in the form of a plaque on a wall built in the small wood. Right on the edge of the wood, in front of the memorial, the front line trench has been preserved, the trench from which the Sheffield and Accrington Pals went 'over the top' at 7.30 am on 1 July 1916. Just 100 yards out from the trench, in the rolling fields, there are 4 cemeteries, in a row; a heart-numbing indication of just how far they got: over half of them were killed within 20 minutes on that summer's morning. On that same, single day, 100,000 troops tried to move forward and 60,000 were killed or injured within a few yards: the bloodiest day in British military history.

Madame at the campsite was just 19 when the second world war ended. She showed us her family photo album which focused on the years 1870, 1871, 1914, 1918, 1940 and 1944: the years the Germans passed through, advancing or retreating; the years when every house in the village and for many miles about was destroyed. One phoptograph showed the campsite - a tank sits in the middle of a devastated area of mud! Who needs a referendum on a United Europe?

To keep our balance, we then crossed into Germany, into the Saarland, beautiful in its autumn colours with many areas of woodland and river easily accessible by cycle-path. We visited the European headquarters of Winnebago at Kirkel and stayed there for over 2 weeks, writing an article, enjoying the area and waiting for spares from the USA. Whatever else they may or may not have done, the Germans have certainly created a very beautiful and orderly environment in which to live.

After Germany, we drove into Switzerland for a few cold days in the Lauterbrunnen valley, below the 13,670 ft Jungfrau and one valley away from Grindelwald and the Eiger. The steep walls of our valley let the sun lie in until 10 am and sent it to bed by 2 pm; they were climbed by rack railways and cable cars, hovered over by helicopters and plunged over by 28 waterfalls. Summer had gone and the ski season had yet to come. It was very quiet: just us and the marmots.

We crossed back into Italy through the familiar St Gotthard Tunnel (still the longest in the world), since all the high-level passes were closed by snow and will remain so for many months. We by-passed Milan, made for Italy's west coast at Viareggio and progressed through Pisa, Livorno, Civitavecchia, Ostia Antica, Anzio (another cemetery-marked battlefield) and Naples to Pompeii (the old town a fine memorial to the life and work of Frankie Howerd).

Eventually we may even reach Brindisi and the ferry to Greece! We hope so. We still plan to see Crete and some of the Aegean islands, using next spring to explore Turkey, northern Greece and Sicily. We are enjoying writing and photography and we have started to get published. There are tentative plans for travel in the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand. But when travelling, it's best, we've found, to take it a day at a time. And to make it last. Ithaca will wait.