Learning from a Living Cretan Tradition There are some things about Crete that reveal themselves immediately: the mountains, the sea, the light, the olive groves and the villages set into the folds of the landscape. Others take longer to understand. For me, the mandináda was one of those. Over the past two years I have…
In My View Crete has produced extraordinary people. Some are known throughout Greece and far beyond it. Others are remembered principally in the part of the island from which they came, their names carried through families, villages, songs and local history. Influence here has never depended entirely upon office, title or recognition. It has also…
The hills above Meskla appear quiet now: olive terraces, pine, broken limestone and narrow tracks climbing away from the Keritis valley. During the German occupation, however, this wider landscape was used by an ELAS guerrilla group and became the setting for the defeat of a raiding party from Jagdkommando Schubert on New Year’s Day 1944.…
Some ruins are reached by following a sign. Others are found by following the shape of the ground. The Koules above Neo Chorio belongs to the second kind. From below, it is little more than a broken line of ochre stone among the pale limestone, thorn and burnt grass of early September. Only when you…
From the high country to the Frangokastello plain, and back by the road through Kallikratis The way down lay in full view and told us almost nothing. It was only a pale thread scratched across the limestone, appearing on one shoulder of the mountain and vanishing behind the next. Far below, the Frangokastello plain spread…
I have lived in Crete long enough to know that there is no single Cretan landscape. The ground changes continually, not merely from place to place but from month to month, sometimes from one week to the next. A track ridden in February is not quite the same track in August. The stones are the…
The landscape itself can preserve the memory of an industry long after the buildings, tools and people have disappeared. The ride began, as so many do, in Kokkino Chorio, following familiar roads across the Apokoronas before descending towards the coast. The morning was warm but clear, with excellent visibility across Souda Bay. Although the GPS…
Two Days in Sfakia There are places in Crete where the road itself seems to announce that you are entering different country, and the approach to Anopoli is one of them. From the coast the road climbs relentlessly into Sfakia, twisting upwards through country that becomes progressively barer and more severe until, eventually, the village…
We had driven across from Kokkino Chorio with the bikes in the car, leaving the familiar country of Apokoronas behind and crossing Crete towards Sfakia. By the time we reached Anopoli, the journey had already brought us into another landscape. The Libyan Sea lay somewhere below and behind us; ahead rose the great pale mass…