Why it’s time to liberate the Elgin marbles

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Horse’s head from the chariot of the moon goddess Selene is a copy of the original sculpture now in the British Museum

IN a corner of one of the rooms in the British Museum displaying the Parthenon Sculptures (popularly known as the Elgin Marbles), I could see beyond a darkened alcove a half-open door strung with some tape that read: “Gallery closed to the public.” But plainly visible through the door was the haunting image of a Caryatid statue, which once held up the porch of the Erechtheion (temple) on the Acropolis in Athens, with her five identical sisters. It’s an iconic image of Ancient Greece that everyone recognises. However, the other Famous Five reside at home, in the New Acropolis Museum in Athens. Only this one is in confinement in the BM, and has been since Lord Elgin sold his collection of looted antiquities to the museum in 1816.

Statue of the lone Caryatid in the British Museum in London

The famous five Caryatid statues before removal to the New Acropolis Museum

While I was admiring the lady from afar, I could hear a young Greek couple chattering beside me about the off-limits statue. One was urging the other to take a picture. In the end the woman ducked under the tape and took a quick snap from the door, poring over it sheepishly on the back of her digital camera. Then the pair hurried away. What they were planning to do with it I don’t know. Perhaps to make an angry statement back in Greece to their friends about the Caryatid sister imprisoned in a dreary ‘closed’ room of the BM. I hope they do because despite pleas to bring this wondrous statue home to Athens, which happens on a fairly regular basis from Greeks and Grecophiles all over the world, this is where she’s fated to stay, it seems, along with the rest of the Elgin marbles.

The British Museum built ironically in the image of the Parthenon in Athens

Marjory with the motley crew of sculptures in the BM’s Elgin collection

The British Museum, its design ironically imitating the Parthenon with columns and an ornamental pediment at the front, continues to ignore countless requests to have the collection of sculptures returned to Athens and the debate about it rages on and on. Many celebrities and modern cultural ‘icons’ have added their tuppence worth to the debate, such as actor Stephen Fry and George and Amal Clooney, but to no avail. Why the BM won’t budge on the issue is unfathomable. It grips fearlessly to its role of guardian of the world’s cultural wealth. To be fair, while there is some altruism and vision in what it does, the assumption that it can look after other people’s cultural inheritance better than they can is outdated.

The Parthenon today without its ornamental sculptures

Carved metope of a centaur and lapith wrestling, in the BM

The Elgin exhibits include half the surviving items from the Parthenon, which was created in the 5th century BC during the “Golden Age” of Greek civilisation.  Created as a temple to the goddess Athena, it was designed by some of the city’s great architects and built of Pentelic marble. The sculptures were entrusted to the revered artist Pheidias. They included the life-sized figures on the pediments (gable ends) of the building depicting the Olympian gods and goddesses and their struggles. The BM holds 17 of the best of these, including Helios, Dionysus, Artemis, Hestia and Aphrodite. The other sculptures are carved metopes, which sat above the columns and the frieze from the inner colonnade of the Parthenon. The BM holds 115 parts (247ft) of the frieze depicting the important Panathenaia procession with horses and riders, which took place in the city every four years.

Even Lord Byron decried the plundering of the Parthenon and its artefacts

Processional horsemen from the north frieze of the Parthenon in the BM

The BM in its display notes for the sculptures explains its position and Elgin’s with these words: “The Parthenon sculptures have always been a matter for discussion but one thing is certain: his (Lord Elgin’s) actions spared them further damage by vandalism, weathering and pollution.”

This is an old chestnut and it’s partly true as the Parthenon had been damaged by earthquakes as well as during the occupation by Ottoman Turks in the 19th century, when soldiers used it for target practice and much else besides. When Elgin was given the go-ahead to remove the sculptures, in the process many were dropped and smashed. And when the BM bought them they were overzealously cleaned with bleach and other harsh substances that would have done them no favours.

Lord Elgin and an Italian translation of the Ottoman authorisation, the ‘firman’

In the late 18th century, Lord Elgin was British Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, which ruled Greece at the time, where he got permission to remove items from the Parthenon by way of what is now considered by many historians to be a dodgy ‘firman’, official authorisation. In the end Lord Elgin took as much as he could, amounting to half the sculptures and other items, around 220 tonnes.  He also took a large number of objects from ancient Athenian burial sites, including steles, grave markers, and the funerary urns of prestigious Athenians. Why did he want it all? Not for the money initially, although he had to sell much of the collection to the BM in 1816 because he came back to Britain broke and in dire health. He got £35,000 for the collection, half what he initially wanted. But the main reason for taking the artefacts was a piece of aristocratic folly and hubris. He wanted them to decorate the ancestral pile he was building in Fife, Scotland to share with his wealthy Scottish heiress wife, Mary Nisbet.

Broomhall House in Scotland is still home to the Elgin family

Broomhall House today, in its vast grounds in Fife, is a grand pile occupied by the 11th Earl of Elgin, Andrew Bruce, now in his 90s. It’s a notable country seat but not a very illustrious repository for a significant collection of Greek artefacts. The Parthenon it isn’t, and neither is it Downton Abbey! In no-one’s imagination could the house be worth the desecration of ancient Greek culture. But the current family did manage to salvage something of Lord Elgin’s plunder. Not everything was bought by the BM and what remained – the inferior or very damaged pieces, and smaller items from other locations, were taken to Broomhall House and have apparently remained there.

I attempted to visit the house in 2014 for a newspaper feature on the current Earl’s collection. The house is off-limits to the public and I was barred from speaking to any of the family. It was a maid, over the phone, who finally told me that the Elgin family never discuss the marbles. No surprise there! One local Scottish journalist I spoke to however  told me he’d been lucky to see inside the house and had reported there were quite a few Greek artefacts inside and in the grounds.

“They’re scattered around the house informally like bits of furniture,” he said. (To read my full account click on my earlier blog post from 2014 titled Scotland’s role in the Elgin Marbles mystery. www.bigfatgreekodyssey.com/blog/?p=1430

One of the galleries for the Elgin collection, BM

So Elgin’s grand folly has perhaps become the BM’s in some people’s mind. To be fair, the sculptures are prized by the BM and adequately displayed in several large airy galleries, but unimaginably so. There’s a despondent drabness about their surroundings. There were plenty of visitors the day I went, mostly Japanese, it seemed.

For them, the collection will have been fascinating, but for anyone who has seen the other half of the original collection in the fabulous New Acropolis Museum in Athens, this forlorn exhibition cannot compare in any way with what the Greeks have done. The Athens museum, opened in 2010 in the midst of the country’s economic crisis, was planned to house all the treasures of the Acropolis but mostly the Parthenon sculptures. For this it has a state of the art, purpose-built top gallery to restore and display all the surviving sculptures in the correct order, as they would have appeared on the Parthenon in the 5th century BC. The museum is built on the southern slope of the Acropolis and the Parthenon is within view through massive glass windows, giving the collection its true context.

The original chariot horse in the BM for which a copy has been made (above) to sit on one of the Parthenon pediments

Where some of the sculptures are missing – because they mostly are in the BM –  they’ve been replaced with (obvious) copies. The most significant argument for the sculptures being returned and housed in the Athens museum is that this vast sequence of sculptures (and in particular the carved metopes and the frieze) have a narrative. They tell particular mythological stories of Greek gods, their triumphs and struggles, or they depict, as in the frieze, a grand procession including scores of men and riders, which is unique to Athens.

To see these items in bits and pieces in the BM makes no sense at all. The narrative is splintered, the meaning gone. To keep the two halves of the sculptural narrative  separate is cultural vandalism that benefits no-one, especially the visitors.

When Lord Elgin returned to Britain with all this loot in the 19th century he was at least condemned by many of his detractors for his heist, including poet and Greek defender, Lord Bryon, who said: “The antiquities have been defac’d by British hands.”

The BM has its own take on the validity of ownership and its aims, as it explains at the Elgin display: “In London and Athens the sculptures tell different and complementary stories. In Athens they are part of a museum that focuses upon the ancient history of the city and Acropolis. The British Museum sees them as part of a world museum where they can be connected with other civilisations such as Egypt, Assyria and Persia.”

“World museum” sounds lofty but just how these antiquities might connect with the other bits and pieces of world culture also displayed out of meaningful context is left to your imagination. It would now be magnanimous if the BM gave the sculptures back to Greece so that we can all finally see them in their own historic context.

Actress and politician Melina Mercouri at the Parthenon

Actress and former Minister of Culture in the Greek government, Melina Mercouri, speaking at a UNESCO conference in 1982, said the sculptures “must be reintegrated into the place and space where they were conceived and created. They constitute our historical and religious heritage.” She also said: “The English have taken from us the works of our ancestors. Look after them well, because the day will come when the Greeks will ask for them back.”

The Greeks have been asking, and asking again, but sadly the British just aren’t listening. To my mind the most poignant symbol of this cultural intransigence is the lonely Caryatid statue I saw in that corner of the British Museum. She’s not holding up anything with her head as splendid as the Erechtheion temple she once graced but at least she’s still holding up – for now.

For information about the Parthenon Sculptures and some of the debate about them, click on the very informative The Acropolis of Athens site run by Greek research scientist Dr Nikolaos Chatziandreou. He also has some interesting theories on how the Scots in particular could help in the drive to get the sculptures returned to Athens.

www.acropolisofAthens.gr

Also: www.theacropolismuseum.gr

www.britishmuseum.org

Books about Greece

To read my travel memoirs of life in Greece during the economic crisis visit www.bigfatgreekodyssey.com/greek-books

My first novel set in Greece, A Saint For The Summer, is a contemporary tale of romance and adventure but with an exciting WW2 thread. If follows the disappearance of the protagonist, Bronte’s grandfather serving in the Royal Army Service Corps during the infamous Battle of Kalamata, often called the ‘Greek Dunkirk’. It’s a mystery that once solved will change the lives of everyone involved.

Here’s what one reader recently wrote in an Amazon review: “Spectacular descriptions of Greece, a love affair, snippets of history, plus an intriguing storyline make this an exciting novel. I thoroughly enjoyed it.”

https://bookgoodies.com/a/B07B4K34TV

For more information about all the books please visit the books page on our website www.bigfatgreekodyssey.com

Or visit Marjory’s books page on Facebook

Thanks for dropping by. All comments are gratefully received. Just click on the ‘chat’ bubble at the top of this page.

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Five on Friday with Marjory McGinn @fatgreekodyssey #FiveonFriday

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Hi friends,

Something a bit different this time as I share a lively blog interview I did this week called FiveonFriday on the popular book blog, JillsBookCafe. It’s a fun format of five questions that reveal lots of surprising things I’ve never shared before about journalistic escapades, lunch with a sporting legend, and what it was really like to be a ‘£10 Pom’ going to Australia. Enjoy!

Blog via Five on Friday with Marjory McGinn @fatgreekodyssey #FiveonFriday

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Secrets of life in a Greek village

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Part of the lovely plateia in Makrinitsa village, Pelion

NOT all Greek villages are created equally. Two villages can be several miles apart, with roughly the same background and geographical aspect, yet one will be thriving, with a plateia rimmed by busy cafes and tavernas, while the other is on the slide. Sometimes there’s no explanation apart from something that’s now lost in the natural twists of history.

When I was in the mainland region of Pelion last year I was strongly reminded of this fact and also how fiercely loyal and competitive Greeks are about their own village, no matter what shape it’s in. Jim and I had rented a villa in the south of the Pelion peninsula for a month. It was on the edge of a small village, which was quiet, with not many inhabitants apparently, but with gorgeous views down to the Pagasitikos gulf and well placed to access both this side of the peninsula and the other, on the Aegean. As people who don’t like touristy locations in Greece, we thought we’d done pretty well to find a comfortable house in this location.

View from the village of Metochi towards the gulf 

Yet, while browsing in an old-fashioned souvenir shop in the coastal village of Milina, the black-clad owner of a venerable age asked us where we were staying. I told her Metochi, in the foothills behind. She pulled a great lemony face. “Metochi! Why would you want to stay there? There’s nothing there. Nothing but old houses. Pah! Here is better,” she said, waving towards the vista of crowded tavernas and sun loungers along the beachfront.

I laughed at her put-down of Metochi for being the poor relation to the buzzy, thriving Milina. In her mind Metochi fell into the second category of villages dwindling into oblivion. There are a number of run-down and abandoned houses in the centre of Metochi, that’s true, and it wasn’t hoaching with people, in September anyway. On the surface it was just a village on the way to somewhere else as it’s on the ‘main’ road from the popular town of Argalasti to the bigger village of Lafkos and then to the south of the peninsula. Lafkos is elegant with a large church and wide plateia (square) with classical houses and busy tavernas and cafes.

The elegant plateia in Lafkos village

Makrinitsa in the Pelion mountains is one of the most picturesque in Greece

The plateia is usually the hub of a Greek village and always a good indication as to whether the place is thriving or not, and it’s worth flagging this up when you’re in the market to buy a house in Greece. Some of the more remarkable villages in the Pelion mountains further north have sumptuous plateias, like Makrinitsa, set under huge plane trees and with a view down to the city of Volos. But Makrinitsa is well established with a stronger foothold in the region’s history. It has old churches with frescos and an impressive museum. This village has been the haunt of artists, writers and revolutionaries. Milies and Tsagarada are smaller mountain villages yet they too have obvious treasures. Milies has a public library with one of the largest collections of Greek and foreign books in Greece, with some of them dating to the 14th century. Its church of the Taxiarchon is also world famous for its acoustics. Tsagarada has a 1,000 year old plane tree in its beautiful plateia.

The surviving kafeneio in Metochi has rustic charm and doubles as a shop 

A slightly forlorn sign on the plane tree in Metochi says: “Our village square.”

Metochi’s plateia was a ghost plateia during the day at least. It was large enough and well situated, high above the road under plane trees with incredible gulf views, and perfect to catch a cool afternoon breeze in summer. It must have been lovely once, with a traditional kafeneio on the far side, now closed, and a smaller one beside it, still operating for limited hours and serving also as a general store. The only time we saw people in the plateia was at night, men mostly, drinking beer and playing the board game, tavli.

At the top of the steps was a sign fixed to a plane tree saying: “Our village plateia”, which was a touching and yet forlorn message. Such as it was, many people obviously still took great pride in their plateia. But its semi-abandonment speaks of a village having lost its way somewhat, apart from some modern, yet discreet, holiday villas at its outskirts, surrounded by olive groves, where we were staying.

The deserted grill house in the village that is a quiet reminder of more convivial days in Metochi

The village had obviously had a different life once. At one end of it there’s a natural spring, spouting cool sweet water, where people still stop to fill up bottles. Across the road from the spring, there’s an abandoned psistaria (grill house) with its huge barbecue still visible at the front, for spit-roasting meat. The broad terrace here would once have been packed, especially on important feast days, but is now just an empty space where fallen leaves twirl in the wind and people park to fill up their bottles across the way.

This is a reflection of what’s happening everywhere in rural Greece, in hillside locations. In the Mani we found many villages that were beautifully sited with once-lovely stone houses that now seemed dead. In one village we found an abandoned kafeneio, its door hanging open and a collection of old junk and furniture piled up inside and old bottles and dusty glasses still on the wooden counter. It was as if the owners had hurriedly disappeared and left everything as it was. In another village we found a group of old people sitting around the front door of a crumbling stone house. There were five of them, most of the current full-time population, they told us rather mournfully.

The village of Metochi is not in such bad shape, not as long as an essential road cuts through it. It wasn’t vibrant and yet we liked its wound-down appeal, its solitude, the view, and no-one bothered us at all, apart from one village gossip. She regularly passed by on the road and one day stopped to ask a slew of personal questions, as Greeks often do, including how much we were renting the villa for because her daughter also had one to rent nearby if we were interested. Cheeky!

Greek rural villages at least are a world apart, whether they buzz or not. When you plan to live in one for any length of time you have to navigated them thoughtfully and choose wisely. Too quiet, too noisy, too parochial, or too steeped in difficult history, and you might be in peril.

A view of Megali Mantineia under the northern slopes of the Taygetos mountains in the Mani

The small sign on the main road to Megali Mantineia. It’s all you get. Blink and you’ll miss it! 

When we settled in the Mani, southern Peloponnese, in 2010, for our long Greek odyssey, we picked a hillside village that felt remote, with the Taygetos mountains as its backdrop, but in fact was only a 15-minute drive to the outskirts of Kalamata at the head of the Gulf of Messinia. As it turned out, Megali Mantineia was perfect for us and our crazy Jack Russell Wallace, a type of dog that none of the villagers had seen before and thought resembled a small goat – and he often acted like one!

Megali Mantineia is a successful working village where locals still cultivate their vast olive groves and herd goats. We decided the best way to live there was to befriend Greek villagers rather than cultivate the British expats because we didn’t want to live an expat life. Not that trying to fit into any village as a foreigner is easy. It’s not. Had I not spoken reasonable Greek from a long association with the country and endless Greek language classes, I would have found it more difficult, as few of the villagers spoke much English. I quickly learnt the secret of fitting in was simple: go well beyond your comfort zone and leave all your preconceptions about life, up to a point, behind you.

Foteini, thrilled to have a copy of my first memoir which features her, and donkey Riko, on the cover

Riko grazing outside Foteini’s farm compound 

When we first met the goat farmer Foteini – who features in my three Greek memoirs – she was riding into the village on her donkey. Conversing was a challenge as she spoke a heavy mountain dialect and things could easily have gone nowhere. But there was something so unique about her that Jim and I instantly took to her and when she invited us back to her farm compound (a place of rural junk and manic disorder) we never thought twice about it really. And so a strange and unusual friendship flourished, particularly between myself and Foteini. She certainly trounced all my personal preconceptions and, in her way, became a very unlikely muse. Our regular, generally very funny, interactions sparked my journalistic curiosity and inspired me to write the memoirs. How could I not? Fate had cast her on my path, on the very first day in the village.

Some of the villagers and priests from Megali Mantineia on a special feast day. Jim standing in back row, right 

Since my first memoir, Things Can Only Get Feta, was published in 2013, readers have contacted me to confess they want their own Greek odyssey, which is lovely, and have asked for advice. I don’t have much really except for this: learn some Greek, talk to everyone. Go beyond what’s comfortable and take part in all the village celebrations (there are many during the year), and church services too because this is the best way to see Greeks as they really are. It’s a window into their society and shows villagers that you respect this, and their culture, and you’re not in the village just to have a remote, parallel life to them.

Before we finally returned to Britain, for personal reasons, we invited many of the villagers from Megali Mantineia to a farewell meal at one of the local tavernas. It was a bitter/sweet night and very sad to say goodbye at last. Everyone lined up to kiss us farewell, some bringing small gifts. One of the women, Voula, whom I’d also become fond of, hugged me and announced: “You’re one of us now Margarita (the name Foteini had given me). You’re a Maniatissa.” Maniatissa is the Greek word for a woman of the Mani. It was humbling to get the title; far better than a Queen’s honour.

Navigating the cultural terrain of a Greek village isn’t easy. It requires more of you than you sometimes want to give. But in the end, it offers you life experiences and insights you will struggle to find elsewhere.

Greek book offer

If you want to read more about life, drama and romance in Greek villages, my first novel A Saint For The Summer is currently on an Amazon ebook promo, 99p/99c (UK/US) from August 16 to 23. It’s a tale or heroism, faith and love with a narrative thread back to WW2 and set in the wild Mani region of Greece. One reviewer described it as: “An excellent read. I was hooked from the first page.” Another said: “The story made me laugh, made me think and made me cry a little.”

Link: https://bookgoodies.com/a/B07B4K34TV

If you have read any of my books and liked them, please think of leaving a small review on Amazon. It will be gratefully received. Thanks.

For more information about all the books please visit the books page on our website www.bigfatgreekodyssey.com

Or visit Marjory’s books page on Facebook

Thanks for dropping by. All comments are gratefully received. Just click on the ‘chat’ bubble at the top of this page.

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Pelion: mountains, myths and mayhem

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Unique Makrinitsa village in the Pelion mountains

IT’S always a nervy experience, arriving at a Greek destination late at night, one that’s completely new to you. Jim and I landed at Volos airport, in the Pelion region, around 10 o’clock one hot August night last summer. Half an hour later we were still there, sitting at a coffee table outside to see the young hire car guy. There was a small queue and the coffee shop was his ‘office’. It all seemed to take ages, but the guy was genial and after all the paperwork was signed he explained how to get to Volos city, around 20 miles away at the head of the Pagasitikos Gulf.

We had booked a room in the Volos Palace Hotel, with the intention of an early start the next day, driving down to our rented villa in south Pelion. We had brought our sat-nav along because we planned to do a lot of touring around the long Pelion peninsula. The hire car guy blithely waved us off and we headed  towards the bright lights of Volos in the distance, nestling in front of the brooding western flank of the Pelion mountains. What could possibly go wrong? Well, everything really. This was Greece, after all, a country that we knew – after four years living in the southern mainland – could spin you a curved ball at any time.

The journey started off okay, until we reached the motorway exit for Volos. It was closed for road repairs. Why hadn’t the hire car guy mentioned this? Who knows? We had to keep heading north on the motorway, which was not where we wanted to go. A few diversion signs on the way weren’t helpful, as Volos didn’t seem to figure in any of them. On we went, becoming more and more lost, the poor sat-nav announcer woman yammering out unfathomable requests as the night was slipping by.

The view down to Volos from Makrinitsa 

We did find a place to turn around in the end, and headed south again. By sheer luck we spotted an exit ramp marked Volos. Jim punched the air with relief as we drove towards the western edge of the city. But when we got there, we faced even bigger problems. Every road into the city seemed to be having road repairs on some part of it, with closures and yet more diversion signs and traffic cones. Why would the city fathers want to do this in August, the busiest month in Greece?

We began a tormenting, rubber-burning foray into the city and out again (so many times we lost count) desperately searching for the road (any road!) that would lead us to the hotel, near the port area. No point in stopping pedestrians because I’ve found the Greeks (God bless them) are like the Irish with their left-field directions. It’s diverting and funny, but always gets you into more strife.

We could actually see the top of the Volos Palace Hotel twinkling in the distance like a siren on a rock, but we could never quite reach it because of the roadworks, and we had to concentrate more on Greek drivers (equally frazzled) pulling maverick stunts, especially on roundabouts. It was now nearly midnight. We were exhausted and hungry, and Jim resorted to a few strops (unusually for him) at the wheel. The sat-nav woman had also gone off her trolley, a gibbering wreck by now, spitting out instructions that she instantly cancelled and updated every 10 seconds, and all in her crazy, mispronounced Greek.

At one point she pleaded pointlessly for us to try for the “Lambro Gorilla”, which sounded like a Latin American dance move, or a strong cocktail. We’d have killed for a cocktail by then, if not a hot Lambada. In the end we silenced her.

Volos has a strong café society

We were close to giving up, dumping the car on a street near the hotel and lugging our suitcases there on foot, when a young couple swung by. I wound down the car window and pleaded for their help. The girl told us to forget the “crap” sat-nav (how did she know?) and explained the best route to the hotel. It was a bit tortuous but we finally arrived at the hotel, even snagging a parking space outside.

The four-star Volos Palace looked plush on the outside but inside it seemed like a relic from another era (well before Greece’s economic crisis), with plenty of marble and swish curtains. But it seemed tired, just like the guy on reception. We were at wit’s end when we asked him about room service (having eaten our last modest meal eight hours previously) and were told emphatically ‘no’. “All the catering staff have gone home now.” What in August? Midnight in Greece, in August, is only just time to put the kids to bed, or head out to dinner to eat and then dance around in circles til 4 in the morning, in our experience of high Greek summer.

There seemed to be no-one in the hotel, apart from a few bleary residents hugging the bar, watching a football game on TV. We were given a city map, however, and shown where we could find a ‘lively’ street with a huddle of tavernas.

Replica of the ancient Argo ship

On the map it looked easy but in reality it was a longish walk beside a wide busy road (not blocked!), and as we trudged along we discovered finally what a Lambro Gorilla was. It’s a major road to the harbour area called Grigoriou Lambraki, named after a 1960s Greek hero, which the sat-nav minx had got back to front as well. We had a good laugh wondering why the hell we bothered with sat-nav and all that flaky euro-bla-bla.

Those who have read my third travel memoir, A Scorpion In The Lemon Tree, may remember our other experience of crazy sat-nav instructions – same contraption, same minx – when we were driving in southern Greece. She kept warning us about ‘calamitous coronaries’ and other dire disasters on the road from Kalamata to Koroni. Time for a new sat-nav.

We were beyond tired when we saw signs of life: a street with a row of cafes and a souvlaki joint still buzzing, which is usual on hot nights in Greek cities. It had a nice vibe, with a few tables and chairs on the pavement, people sitting about still eating. This was more like it. The staff were helpful, bringing us not only two servings of souvlaki wrapped in warm pita breads but little bowls of salads and Pelion specialties, which we hadn’t ordered. And a couple of cold Mythos beers. For the first time since we’d arrived hours earlier, we felt our shoulders drop with relief, and we tucked in.

We mentioned the road block disaster to the owner. He grimaced and waved one arm around in the diverting fashion of Greeks when they’re hacked off over something. “No one knows why the council does things this way. Ridiculous!” he complained. Just another imponderable to add to the load of crisis anxieties this country has faced for years. But despite everything, it’s the human touch, which Greeks have in abundance, as well as their conviviality, that makes you love this country and keeps you coming back.

View from the tip of the Pelion peninsula

The next morning, after a hearty hotel breakfast (the staff were back!), we had recovered from our arrival anxieties, though I can’t say we felt rested because all night long from our front room we could hear people trudging up and down the street going home, singing old Greek songs, talking loudly in huddles, shouting “Chronia Polla!” (a common Greek wish, “many years” for birthdays etc). This was August party mode of course, that had seemed lacking on check-in, now played out at full volume. But at least the drive south from Volos was a dream.

The views of the long gulf reminded us strongly of the Messinian Gulf, with Kalamata at its head, with a series of small coves along the coast. Pelion is a rather magical region about four hours’ drive north of Athens. The other side of the peninsula faces the Aegean Sea close to the islands of Skiathos and Skopelos. Some of the beaches on this side, especially in the north, are stunning, like Papa Nero and Damouchari, where some of the beach scenes in the first Mamma Mia movie were filmed.

Paltsi, one of the Aegean beaches on the east coast of the peninsula

It’s a unique region dominated by the Pelion mountainous in the north, fabled in ancient times as the home of the legendary centaurs (half man/half horse) and called the “Mountain of the Centaurs”. Volos city is believed to have been inhabited since 700BC. There have been Neolithic and Mycenaean settlements here and a trip to Volos’s Athanassakeio Archeological Museum is a must, with its small but perfect collection of antiquities.

View of the gulf, Tiseo mountains and island of Palia Trikeri

We had booked a villa for a month just south of the small town of Argalasti, close to the gulf side with stunning views towards the Tiseo mountains in the south. We planned to spend the first week or two exploring beaches while the weather was hot and the sea calm, and then make a few excursions into the Pelion mountains to visit some of the more traditional villagers tucked into the mountain slopes, such as Makrinitsa, Milies and Tzagaratha.

Yiorgos Koutzifelis in his traditional store in Argalasti

Old bottles of retsina from the 1950s

Argalasti is the main town in this part of the peninsula and a good base for exploring the region. The town is very appealing, with a central old-style plateia, square, under plane trees, which is rimmed with cafes, tavernas and shops, like the traditional general store run by Yiorgos Koutzifelis, whose family have owned it for several generations. On one of the high shelves Yiorgos pointed out his prized bottles of retsina dating from the 1950s, not for sale of course. In mid-summer the town is fizzing with visitors, but off-season it’s very Greek and its square reverts back to a lively local hangout.

It attracts people from the surrounding area and even the odd person of dubious importance like Boris Johnson’s father Stanley, who owns a plush villa in the hills behind the town, where Boris had a much-publicised love tryst with the new, young, woman in his life, a week or so ago. We saw Stanley shambling down a hill one day, with bulging shopping bags in each hand, and showing the family propensity for shabby-chic couture and muppet hair. But celebrities are the least attractive aspect of the Pelion, to my mind.

The fishing village of Ayia Kyriaki

The further south you drive on this peninsula the more the area has an island feel, very wound-down and easy. The tip of the peninsula hooks up at the bottom like the tip of a scorpion’s tail. With the backdrop of the Tiseo Mountains lie some remote villages, like Trikeri, and Ayia Kyriaki, an old fishing settlement still thriving with a huge flotilla of traditional Greek caiques and a row of excellent fish tavernas by the water.

The place where we ate lunch seemed like a trendy spot for a remote village. At the table next to us, a stylish couple, dressed for an Oscar awards night, set up a tripod and camera and filmed the whole of their lunch, complete with serious dishes of seafood, without hardly saying a word. Why, we don’t know. But somewhere on that film there must be background footage of a scruffier, slightly more lively couple, devouring their calamari and Greek salad and toasting their latest holiday in Greece. Fame at last!

Tzasteni is simply one of the most photogenic beaches in Greece

A few miles north on the gulf side is the gorgeous and colourful Tzasteni, which has a promontory on one side of the cove with renovated white houses, once owned by fishermen no doubt. This was an idyllic spot with a narrow sandy beach which improved even more as September wore on when there were fewer yachts and other craft, lured to this beauty spot, dropping anchor just off the beach. I wouldn’t recommend it in high summer, but off-season – perfection.

The elegant square in Makrinitsa

A mountain village seen from Volos

Some of the best places we visited in Pelion were the mountain villages, of which Makrinitsa was the most memorable, partly for its dizzying view down over Volos city and its old-fashioned style. As an official area of ‘cultural interest’, and therefore protected from modern development, it has probably changed little over the centuries and owes much to its wealthy trading past, with grand buildings in classic Pelion style: a mix of local stone at the bottom and mudbricked, whitewashed upper floors (for summer use). The square is stunning, shaded by giant plane trees with excellent tavernas and cafes on its periphery. The best tables are on the edge with the dizzying view down towards Volos.

A cobbled path near the square with the Leonidas taverna

Detail from a famous Theophilos mural in a Makrinitsa cafe

We had lunch just off the square in the Leonidas Taverna, a traditional place on a small cobbled pathway with a few tables outside overlooking the square. The meal was delicious and simple and it was next to one of the village’s most famous hangouts, the Café Ouzeri Theophilos, named after the famous folk artist Hatzimihalis Theophilos, who frequented this place and painted a fresco over one wall with the theme of the 1821 Greek War of Independence. You really do feel the weight of Greek history and culture in this village.

Sitting room in the Makrinitsa museum dating back to mid-19th century

One of the best places to go here, if you have the time and inclination because it’s a bit of a walk down one of the famed cobbled (kalderimia) paths, is the Museum of Folk Art and History of Pelion, situated in the former mansion of a wealthy merchant and built in 1844. Since it was taken over by the Ministry of Culture from the Topali family 20 years ago, the house has been restored but kept as the residence used to be, with all its historic grandeur. It is simply stunning. There are riches galore in this place, from folk art to traditional rugs, costumes, embroidered saddlebags, paintings, historical artefacts from the War of Independence, and much more.

The charming guide Kostas Patsiantas likes to entertain visitors with an old gramophone in the village museum

The museum was just about to shut when we got there but the guide, a young guy called Kostas Patsiantas, was incredibly generous in keeping it open a while longer and gave us a special guided tour. He was particularly knowledgeable about the village’s own 1878 revolution against the Ottoman Turks and there are interesting artefacts here, including a painting of the idealistic British journalist and philhellene Charles Ogle, who was murdered in the village by the Turks.

There is much to see in Makrinitsa and it’s worth staying a couple of days. There are plenty of hotels, and if you don’t want to drive there’s regular transport from Volos bus station up all those steep windy roads – it takes about an hour.

Jason and the Argonauts left Volos on this ship seeking the mythical Golden Fleece

Volos itself was also a revelation. After our snarl-up on the way in we probably had poor expectations of what it had to offer, but we drove back several times and couldn’t have been more wrong. We thought it was one of the loveliest cities in Greece, very laid-back and easy to navigate, on foot at least, with a large pedestrianised shopping area, a buzzy café society in the centre and a large choice of places to eat and drink. Our favourite taverna was the trendy Ouzo Therapy at 230 Ermou Street (www.ouzotherapy.gr), which was bursting with Greek families on the Saturday we went, with every table booked. The food is exquisite, with nice touches like green salad with sundried tomatoes, walnuts and balsamic vinegar. The seafood was divine.

Happy hours in Volos at the popular Ouzo Therapy restaurant

The city is full of art galleries and museums. There is a wooden replica of the legendary Argo ship next to the seafront promenade. It was from this city in ancient times that Jason and the Argonauts set off, seeking the mythical Golden Fleece.

There are some unusual shops in the shopping precinct. My favourite was the lovely art jewellery shop called Voulgari, one of those traditional shops so hard to find in Greece now if you like folk and arty jewellery that is local and handmade with unique designs. The shop is owned by artist Vasilia Voulgari, a delightful woman who produces her own pieces from mostly silver and semi-precious stones. They are exquisite and very reasonably priced. Voulgari’s, 18 Glavani Street (near Ermou Street). Tel: 24210 31626.

For more info about Volos www.volosinfo.gr

On the next blog I will continue my narrative on Pelion, on some very different kinds of villages, some thriving and authentic, some definitely not. And I look at a few more of the remote mountain settlements with surprising riches, like one of the oldest and most curious libraries in Greece. See you then.

Novel set in Greece

My first novel, A Saint For The Summer, set in southern Greece, is my latest book, following my Peloponnese trilogy of travel memoirs. It’s is a gripping contemporary story but with a narrative thread back to the Battle of Kalamata in the Second World War. On a trip to Greece British Journalist Bronte helps her expat father to sleuth out a family mystery: what happened to her grandfather who disappeared during this infamous battle that has been called “the Greek Dunkirk”.

“This story will renew your faith in mankind.” WindyCity online magazine, Chicago.

The book is available on all Amazon sites and through Barnes & Noble. For Greek readers through the www.public.gr stores.

Here’s an Amazon link: https://bookgoodies.com/a/B07B4K34TV

If you have read my books and liked them, please think of leaving a small review on Amazon. It will be gratefully received. Thanks.

For more information about Marjory’s books visit the books page on our website www.bigfatgreekodyssey.com

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Thanks for dropping by. All comments are gratefully received. Just click on the ‘chat’ bubble at the top of this page.

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Uncovering my father’s war

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RAF Regiment 2771 squadron at Monte Cassino, Italy, Second World War. My father, John McGinn, centre, with the mortar gun 

IT’S spooky, the rare times when reality imitates fiction. In my case, this was something of a huge revelation and it happened a few months after publishing my recent novel, A Saint For The Summer. It’s a contemporary story set in the Mani region of southern Greece but with a narrative thread going back to the Second World War in Kalamata. I spent four years in this region, from 2010, and I have written about my experiences there in my three travel memoirs (see website books page).

A cove in north Mani with Kalamata city to the left

The new novel follows the story of Scottish journalist Bronte McKnight, who goes to Greece to help her expat father Angus solve a mystery from the war, when his father Kieran, serving in Greece with the Royal Army Service Corps, went missing in the Battle of Kalamata. This disastrous battle in 1941 has been called the ‘Greek Dunkirk’, when around 17,000 British and allied soldiers, retreating from the German advance in central Greece, ended up in Kalamata, the ‘end of the road’, awaiting evacuation to Crete. Around 8,000 were left stranded on the city’s beach at the head of the Messinian Gulf as British warships, under heavy German fire, were forced to retreat.

The novel follows the exciting but difficult path Angus and Bronte must take, with few leads, to find out what became of Kieran during the battle, and if he died in Greece, where he was buried. They are helped in their quest by a cast of memorable Greek characters.

Readers have asked me what provided the inspiration for the war strand of Bronte, Angus and Kieran. I became curious about the Battle of Kalamata while living in this southern region, partly because it had a huge impact there, and yet beyond Greece, it was almost unknown. I began researching the topic while living there. The plot idea about Bronte and her missing grandfather pretty much dropped into my head during my stay in Greece. I did think though of my own father, John McGinn. He served in WW2 in the RAF Regiment, which was a specialist airfield defence corps and fighting force, formed in 1942. I knew he had been deployed to north Africa and Italy, and was in some horrific combat situations, but that’s all I knew.

I therefore didn’t base Saint on his war experience, and as far as I knew he hadn’t been sent to Greece, but I did base Kieran’s personality and his Celtic looks on my father, who had magnificent wavy auburn hair and fine bone structure. He was a handsome young man, full of high spirits, Scottish born, but also with Irish heritage.

John McGinn, 18, a new recruit in the RAF Regiment in WWII.  (Family photo)
John McGinn in north Africa

Writing Saint had been a fairly intense experience, with quite a bit of research to undertake, so after it came out, I took a summer break from writing. Yet I couldn’t quite get the WW2 aspects of the story out of my mind. Curiously, it brought my thoughts back to my father again and made me speculate some more about his own war exploits. I knew so little. As a kid, I used to ask him for his war stories and he always flinched, saying he didn’t feel comfortable talking about it, and I accepted that it was something he preferred to forget.

As he died a long while ago, sadly, and was estranged from much of his family when we moved from Scotland to Australia in the 1960s, I had no way of finding out any more. A search online a few years ago for his war record had yielded nothing, as I didn’t have his squadron number for one thing. Or so I thought. I did have, however, a fine collection of old family photos and some of my father in the war (above), and a mass of memorabilia that had been in storage for some years. I promised myself I would sift through it properly once I took a break from travelling and writing books. It was now time to get started.

After sorting through some old documents, I came across two yellowing photocopies of censored Allied Forces postcards from my father to his family back in Scotland. The first carried Christmas greetings, sent from the Middle East in 1943, with a flourish of palm trees and minarets, with my father’s tiny, cramped handwriting across the top from “LAC (Leading Aircraftman) McGinn” to his family, wishing them a Merry Christmas. It also contained his squadron number and service number. I was thrilled with this. It was invaluable. The second Christmas postcard, dated 1944, was similar but showing just a map of the Mediterranean. With this information, I went online to see if I could find out anything about the exploits of this squadron. Fortunately, there is now a lot more war information online than in previous years and the amount of material uploaded (eyewitness accounts, journals) from the two world wars grows continually.

It was online that I had a breakthrough. And oddly enough, it was this factor of being able now to search for vital war information on the internet that had been a pivotal part of Saint when the fictional father Angus tracks down a possible pointer to the disappeared Kieran on an online veterans’ site. The reason for this inclusion in the plot was because in Greece I had come across several expats researching the Battle of Kalamata and lost relatives, who had done something similar, and it had impressed me. So, in effect, I was, without really meaning to, following my own fictional plot.

On a couple of sites I found accounts of the exploits of my father’s 2771 squadron, particularly in Italy in 1944, and some of the information was attributed to a book published in 2013, which I immediately purchased and for which I am eternally grateful (RAF Regiment at War 1942 to 46 by Kingsley Oliver). I was able to establish for the first time exactly what my father had done in Italy, which gave me huge reverence for his war experience and explained why he hadn’t wanted to talk about it.

John McGinn, right foreground,  with the RAF squadron keeping watch over enemy positions in Cassino, Italy
Detail of the main photo (above) of my father manning a mortar gun as the Allies attacked German strongholds on the steep hill in Monte Cassino

Not only that, I had the amazing good fortune of finding photos online (and some are also in Oliver’s book), which I had never seen before of the squadron during the battle of Monte Cassino. I recognised my father straight away in one of the pictures of the squadron in a ravine near Cassino, bombarding enemy positions (above). He was manning a mortar gun, looking impossibly young. And in another, he is standing in the allied ‘headquarters’, an archway under the Colle Belvedere aquaduct north of Cassino. Firm proof of where he had been during the Italian campaign. And there was another surprise too at the end of my research that I was wasn’t expecting. More of that later.

The squadron had initially been deployed to north Africa and after the surrender there of the Axis powers in 1943, the squadron were sent into the Italian Campaign against the occupying German forces. They went first to Naples and Rimini, and in the spring of 1944 to the front line, not far from Monte Cassino. The Battle of Monte Cassino was four massive assaults by the allies on this strategic part of the German-held ‘Gustav Line’ that crossed the rugged terrain of central Italy, with the aim of forcing the Germans to retreat, and to protect the route to Rome. Much of the fighting centred on the steep hill at Cassino, crowned by a vast and ancient Benedictine monastery which the Germans were using as an observation post, though firing from obscured positions on the steep sides of the hill.

The allied efforts to trounce the Germans in Cassino were amongst the fiercest and bloodiest engagements of the war in Western Europe, involving French and American troops and several British regiments, along with its allies: Indians, New Zealanders, Poles. Because of the intractable terrain, cut by rivers and deep ravines, the British troops dubbed the area ‘The Inferno’. The battles here were comparable to some of the worst scenes of WW1, with 55,000 allied casualties. And under heavy aerial bombardments, particularly from the American forces, the old monastery was reduced to rubble.

The RAF Regiment was there in a strategic fighting role alongside other British regiments. One of the other aircraftmen in the 2771 squadron, who would have fought alongside my father, Corporal Alf Blackett, later wrote of his wartime experiences in Cassino and the relentless fighting. “It’s a grim life, clinging tenaciously to the side of a steep hill with the Germans in strength on the other side and the RAF regiment men holding a sector of the front line.” At one point during an assault he said: “The regiment moved up to their positions on a moonless night in their tin hats and khaki. Near to the front, the officer told them to smoke their last cigarette. ‘This, chaps, is going to be one mad ride’.”

One eyewitness described it as a “living hell”, with the wounded and dead ferried down the hill in a vehicle called the Death Wagon. Although the allied forces were finally victorious in driving the Germans away from the Gustav Line in this decisive battle for Italy, I did begin to understand at least why my father had never had the stomach to talk about Monte Cassino. And while he wasn’t killed, like the fictional Kieran, or badly wounded, he came out of the ferocious bombardments having lost much of his hearing, a disability that affected him for the rest of his life.

Allied troops entering Kalamata in 1941

But the greatest surprise to me from my research into the operations of 2771 squadron was that after the Cassino engagement ended in May ’44, the squadron was deployed to Greece in the autumn, after the German withdrawal from the country. Some British forces, including the RAF Regiment, were there to support the Greek government troops, fighting the Communist Party (EAM), at the start of the Greek Civil War. The 2771 squadron defended the Hassani airfield, south-east Athens, and were also tasked with supporting British ground forces in central Athens against communist attacks. My father, as far as I remember, had never mentioned his time in Greece, but I calculated that the second postcard I found would have been sent by him from Greece, Christmas ’44. By the spring of the following year he had been redeployed to Yugoslavia.

The fact my father had been to Greece at all was a huge revelation to me. From a personal point of view, Greece has always been a driving force in my life from my childhood – and fate definitely had a hand in it. As a newly arrived Scottish migrant to Australia in the 1960s, at my Sydney school, I was put under the wing of another ‘migrant’, a young Greek girl called Anna. We spent many long summers together and in time I became almost part of her extended family. After leaving school, I had gone to Athens to work for a year and have visited Greece numerous times, culminating in my recent four-year stint. In all that time, I had no idea that my father’s war postings had taken him there.

For me to have written a novel with a Scottish soldier lost in the Battle of Kalamata in Greece, whom I decided to create in my father’s likeness, seems incredible to me now, as if the strands of our lives had become woven together at strategic points and fate had lured us to the same location, although I, at least, never knew until now.

When I see old photos of my father, after signing up to the RAF Regiment, it tugs at my heart to see how boyish and full of enthusiasm he was. Aged 18, and a gallus young lad (daring, high spirited), it would have seemed in the beginning like a grand adventure into the unknown, something I could relate to when I went on my own youthful journey to Greece.

My father was born in a rundown tenement in the infamous east end of Glasgow and the war was, for him, as for many working-class kids – the great escape. That much at least he told me when I was a curious youngster. “It was an escape from poverty,” I remember him telling me. Yet it turned into a descent into the Inferno in Italy. At least he survived.

Had I not written my first novel with its WW2 strand, it’s quite possible I may not have felt inspired enough to dig further into my father’s war record. I’m certainly glad I did and the fact that my book and his life are somehow now intertwined on some level has touched me greatly.

With the 100th anniversary of the RAF this year, it’s pertinent to remember all those who fought so valiantly in it, including the great RAF Regiment. We salute you all. And I dedicate this post also to the late, and much loved, John McGinn.

  • If any readers have relatives who were in the RAF Regiment’s 2771 squadron and who have more information about their operations or who may just want to get in touch, please do. You can email the website info@bigfatgreekodyssey.com

Information and photographs of the RAF Regiment’s war history can be found at the RAF Regiment Heritage Centre www.rafregimentheritagecentre.org.uk 

A Saint For The Summer is available on all Amazon sites and through independent book stores, quoting the ISBN number: 978-1-9999957-1-3 If you like the book and if it resonates with you, please do get in touch. I love to receive messages and feedback from readers, and Amazon reviews are also very welcome, too.

Here’s a universal link: https://bookgoodies.com/a/B07B4K34TV

Comments on the blog are very welcome. Thanks for calling by.

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On the Poldark trail . . .

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AS someone with a healthy obsession for the Poldark phenomenon, I recently travelled to Cornwall, where this historic tale was spawned, to get a better handle on the whole thing, and to see if this wild outpost was now awash with Poldark ambience. Would I meet rural folk lugging scythes and imploring me to “have a care!”. Or find that the famous Cornish pasty is now shaped like a tricorn hat? Or would I spy Aidan Turner (who plays Ross Poldark) walking down the street wearing one – the hat, not the Cornish pasty, silly! Most women apparently would rather see him wearing only the hat, but that’s another story!

What I did find on my travels, however, were some fascinating snippets relating to the creation of the Poldark book saga and the wonderful TV series, returning this Sunday (series 4) on BBC1. I discovered that the creator of the Poldark books, Winston Graham, had another family name in mind originally for his 18th-century hero – an outrageous idea! I discovered also where actor Aidan Turner likes to stay when he’s filming at Charlestown, near St Austell, and what the hotel staff had to say about him. And I found out what happened in southern Cornwall when the film crew clashed with an irate resident. More of all that later.

An iconic image, Holywell beach with Gull Rock at low tide

Porthcurno beach, one of the locations representing Nampara Cove 

What I mostly found while travelling around this luscious county was that Cornwall is most definitely the biggest star of the TV series which also has Eleanor Tomlinson, as the feisty Demelza. My partner in odysseys big and small, Jim, and I had gone to Cornwell in search of the locations from the show – the wild romantic clifftops that are momentous even without Turner in his tricorn galloping Seamus in a flat race, close to the edge; the long sandy beaches, like Holywell and Porthcurno, and also locations on the north coast that inspired Winston Graham’s 12-novel saga which he started in the 1940s.

Moody Charlestown and a Tall Ship

We wanted to see the locations that feature so iconically, like historic Charlestown harbour near St Austell, with its Tall Ships, that is possibly the most Poldarkian of locations. This harbour is used for many of the scenes of old Truro in the TV series.

Most of the main locations, however, are in the southwest and north coasts and can easily be covered in a couple of days. Porthcurno’s wide sandy beach in the southwest is an awesome location and is used for many of the shots of the fictitious Nampara Cove, close to where Ross and Demelza have their farmhouse. This is also a favourite site in the TV series for the pair to have a romantic wander or for the often hot-headed Ross to outrun his constant frustrations with 18th century life in Cornwall. Nearby is the narrow cove of Porthgwarra, where a lot of the fishing scenes were shot for the series.

Narrow Porthgwarra cove without the sets from the series, used to create a typical Cornish fishing hamlet

A wild sea at Porthcurno

At Porthcurno there’s also a museum, though not a Poldark museum, but the assistants are knowledgeable about the film shoots and have met a lot of the crew. One very affable assistant told us that Turner was a lovely fellow and although as Ross Poldark he has a lot of swagger, in real life, we were told, he’s quite different. He’s still got that Irish charm but he’s also the kind of guy who likes to keep himself to himself; a bit reserved, surprisingly.

During filming, we were told, one of the residents of the nearby hamlet was annoyed at finding the crew blocking the entrance to his front garden, while filming, while he had to wait on the sidelines, kicking up the turf. Perhaps he was one of the few residents in the area without a passion for Poldark. It was Turner, when he heard about the guy’s complaints who went back later to give him a signed copy of a newly published coffee table edition of the book Poldark’s Cornwall as a goodwill gesture. A fitting present really, as Turner has made no secret of his love for this county. “It’s simply stunning,” he has said. “It reminds me of home, in Ireland.”

The Cornwall Hotel, near St Austell

We based ourselves for our trip at the Cornwall Hotel in St Austell www.thecornwall.com which was once a private mansion with sprawling grounds and a laid-back ambience. It’s also where some of the stars stay when filming at nearby Charlestown, including Turner. He stays in one of the suites, and having been sworn to secrecy, I can’t reveal which one. A friendly hotel receptionist did admit, however, that Turner, true to form, prefers to keep a low profile and takes breakfast in his suite. When he calls for room service the housemaids apparently champ at the bit to see who can deliver breakfast to the suite. She also told us how on one occasion, when a few of the cast were staying, Turner and Tomlinson breezed into reception after a day’s shoot in full period costume. “That really caused a buzz in the hotel,” the receptionist said.

Marjory in the tiny Demelza hamlet near Bodmin

Both Turner, and Tomlinson, who is described as “absolutely stunning” in real life, are now like royalty in this county and it’s easy to understand why. Everyone seems to have their own take on the Poldark phenomenon. There’s even a tiny hamlet between Roche and Bodmin called Demelza, and while it’s tempting to think it was renamed perhaps in memory of the Poldark creations, in fact Graham had visited this tiny place in the 1940s  and liked the name (meaning ‘Thy sweetness’) so much, he gave it to his heroine.

Mousehole on the south coast could easily have been a film location

We stopped briefly at the lovely fishing village of Mousehole (pronounced Mousell), south of Penzance. There’s no connection to Poldark but it’s one of the loveliest villages in south Cornwall with a wide harbour. Land’s End sadly felt like a Disney theme park, where tourists were jostling for a place in front of the famous signpost (John ‘O Groats one way, New York the other) to take selfies, most of which were comically ruined by a horrible hoolie blowing in from the sea that made your hair shoot skywards – a Cornwall quirk. We didn’t hang about but headed north to the Tin Coast where once was located some of the biggest tin and copper mines in Cornwall. Although derelict, parts of the old stone mining buildings feature as Wheal Leisure and Grambler mines in the TV series.

Botallack mine, one of the most recognisable Poldark locations

The Botallack coastline with its wild gorsey cliff tops

The mine we visited was Botallack and although mines hadn’t been high on our wish list to start with and we were pushed for time, we were glad we’d made the effort. With few people about, even on a bright sunny day, this turned out to be one of the most memorable locations on our trip: a deserted, ravishing coastline with a big sea worrying the sheer cliff face, and an old mine building below, perched on a rock platform next to the water. Mining was the lifeblood of Cornwall once and is intrinsic to the narrative of Graham’s books, with its drama, plotting, tragedy and success. So it stands to reason you have to see one of these sites.

From here, the drive north to St Ives was equally stunning through rough, wild moorland dotted with farms without boundaries so that signs warn you of livestock wandering across the main road. At times I was reminded of the unstructured west coast of Scotland and Ireland.

Marjory on misty Perranporth beach walking the same path that   Winston Graham took each day to his writer’s cottage

On the north coast, just before Newquay, we stopped at the town of Perranporth, where some of the beach shots for the series are filmed. But mostly, this town is now famous because it was here that Winston Graham penned the early Poldark books. Although born in Manchester in 1908, Graham moved here as a youth, married a local girl, Jean (thought to be the inspiration for Demelza), and made it his home for 34 years, mainly in the nearby hamlet of Treslow. It was here after the Second World War that he wrote the first books in the Poldark saga, drawing inspiration from the town and most of all the beautiful beaches along this coast, which he adored.

The Winston Graham collection at the museum in Perranporth

Graham’s map of the fictitious Nampara inspired by Perranporth

The town itself is a small one with a fishing and farming background and now typical of many seaside towns in Britain, but what makes this place special is its location right beside one of the best beaches along this coast. For me its great attraction was the fascinating Perranzabuloe (meaning Perran in the Sands) Museum on Ponsmere Road which has, apart from a cracking local history section, a small Winston Graham collection with some first edition books, photos, scripts, and even his old brown hat. One of the attendants, a charming pensioner called Pat Treweek, and a real Cornish character with a plethora of local tales, gave us her own impressions of the writer whom she remembered seeing often when she was a young woman.

“One of Winston’s family had a draper’s store in the town so he was often seen there and walking around the town. He regularly went walking on the beach. He was a lovely man, very friendly,” she said.

In fact, in the 1940s, Graham walked the length of Perranporth beach every day, up to the sand dunes and a place known as Flat Rocks, where he had rented an old miner’s cottage so he could do his writing undisturbed. Although he had already written several books before the war, it was here he penned the first Poldark books.

Pat told us that Graham hadn’t always intended to use the name Poldark for the books. Originally, he favoured the surname Polgreen, after a local friend, Ridley Polgreen, whom the author much admired, though the character of Ross was never based on him. Later, Graham decided the surname was too gentle for the turbulent narratives he had in mind. He needed something more formidable, so changed it to Poldark, a totally fictitious name. We’re forever grateful he did. Polgreen wouldn’t have had the same creative thrust, I feel.

Winston Graham memorial seat overlooking Perranporth beach

Pat urged us to cross the beach afterwards and take the cliffside path to the grassy plateau, where Graham’s old cottage used to stand. Incredibly, there is not a thing left of it now after it burnt down in the 1980s. All that remains is a commemorative stone bench with his name carved on the side. A lovely gesture but a modest reminder of someone whom I believe ranks as one of the best storytellers of last century. The scope of his Poldark books, the characterisation and social comment are on a par, I feel, with some of Dickens’ works, and certainly some of Graham’s later suspense novels, like Marnie (turned into a film by Alfred Hitchcock), are also notable.

But sitting at that deserted spot with the wide sandy beach spread before us, and a misty headland glowering in the distance, I felt there couldn’t have been a more heavenly place for writing, and it was easy to understand why Graham’s books are so emotive, and why he adored Cornwall. “I love the smell of the air, the sound of the real Cornish voices, the bleakness of the cliffs and, of course, the beach,” he once said.

Visit the Perranzabuloe Museum

Gull Rock at Holywell beach

Nearby Holywell beach inspired him too, and it was one of the best beaches we’d seen anywhere: a wide sandy expanse, dark cliffs at the far end and the cave that’s supposed to contain the Holy Well that features in the series, where the young lovers Blake and Morwenna make a romantic wish. It’s also one of the beaches used for Turner’s mad gallops on Seamus and apparently he rarely uses a stunt double.

There are more locations in Cornwall to see, depending on how much time you have. Bodmin moor is worth a long visit just for its wild beauty but it also has the actual house used for Nampara in the series, near the village of St Breward, though I hear it’s difficult to find.

Truro Cathedral, an historic remnant of  the old town

The one small disappointment of our trip was Truro, for the simple reason that although it’s pivotal to the Poldark saga, there is little of the historic town left, apart from some old streets around lovely Truro Cathedral. The pub that inspired the Red Lion, across from the cathedral, where so much of the action of the books takes place, all the planning and plotting and mining business, is no longer there, unfortunately.

There are plenty of other reasons to go to Cornwall but for many people, for now, it is intrinsically linked with Poldark and particularly the TV series. Aidan Turner on a TV chat show recently laughed when he admitted that his face is everywhere in Cornwall now, “on tea towels and mugs”! But not the Cornish pasty – for now. The recognition is no bad thing for Turner, or for Cornwall. The fact that the Poldark legend is now synonymous with Cornwall would have delighted Winston Graham. His beloved writer’s cottage on Flat Rocks is long gone but his love affair with Cornwall will be appreciated forever. And I can’t say we were delighted when our Poldark jaunt came to an end.

  • The Cornwall Tourist board www.cornwall.com/poldark has information packs about the 20 or so main locations.
  • Information about Winston Graham www.winstongraham.org
  • The small museum at Lostwithiel, north of St Austell, which was once the capital of this county, is also worth a look and has wonderful collection of historic memorabilia including a bizarre set of old medical equipment. www.lostwithielmuseum.org

NEW GREEK NOVEL

My latest novel, A Saint For The Summer, set in southern Greece, is a contemporary novel and a romance but with a World War II mystery concerning the infamous Battle of Kalamata (Greece’s Dunkirk).

Read an interview about the book, writing and Greece on the Ramblings From Rhodes website.

It was also recently the subject of an interview in the Greek newspaper Eleftheria. Here’s a link for Greek readers and a translation will shortly be put up on a new section of the website called ‘Interviews’.

The book is available on all Amazon sites, Barnes and Noble, the Public stores in Greece. Reviews are most welcome.

For more information please check the books page on the website.

Comments on the blog are very welcome. Thanks for calling by.

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Compelling new novel set in southern Greece

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I am thrilled to announce that my latest book, a novel called A Saint For The Summer, will shortly be published (March 19), and is currently on pre-order at Amazon.

This contemporary story, set in the Mani region of southern Greece, combines family drama, romance and a World War II mystery, with a cast of intriguing and memorable characters.

Here’s the blurb of the book to whet your appetite:

JOURNALIST Bronte McKnight is summoned to a hillside village in the wild and beautiful Mani region of Greece by her estranged, expat father Angus to help him with a medical problem. But she soon discovers that Angus, whom she has barely seen in 10 years, has lured her there with a trickier challenge in mind – solving a mystery from the Second World War when a family member disappeared in Greece during the disastrous Battle of Kalamata, ‘Greece’s Dunkirk’.

With the country gripped by economic crisis in 2012, and the clock ticking against them, their near-impossible quest takes Angus and Bronte from Kalamata to a remote mountain village where its few remaining inhabitants are bound by old traditions and secrecy. As the pair try to reconcile their own fractured relationship, they are helped in their search for Kieran by a cast of intriguing Greek characters, especially charismatic doctor, Leonidas Papachristou. He has a pivotal role, not least in challenging Bronte’s assumption that she hasn’t the time nor the courage to fall in love in Greece.

The secrets unearthed by Angus and Bronte will be painful and astonishing. This is a compelling tale of heroism, faith, and love – with a heart-warming conclusion.

Part of the coastline of the Mani where the story is set under the northern edge of the Taygetos mountains 

The idea for this book began to take shape in my mind during my four years in southern Greece from 2010 with my partner Jim and our mischievous terrier Wallace. While the narrative is based on real events, the characters are fictitious, but there is a gentle nod to some of the more memorable people we met while in Greece, with their eccentric and charming personalities, and lifestyle.

Kalamata city not far from the seafront and with a view of the northern Taygetos mountains whose villages feature in the new novel

One of the snowy peaks of the Taygetos from the settlement that inspired Marathousa village

A pivotal part of the narrative, however, revolves around what happened to Angus’s relative serving in the Royal Army Service Corp in Greece in 1941 and ending up at the Battle of Kalamata. I had heard something about this infamous battle while in Greece and the brave rear-guard action of the allies, particularly on the part of the ANZAC soldiers, against the Germans. I was always surprised that so little had been written about it.

Old photo of allied troops arriving in Kalamata in 1941

In 1941, when the Germans invaded Greece, the British and other allied soldiers were forced to retreat south from northern and central Greece, with a huge evacuation underway, called Operation Demon. Around 50,000 troops were evacuated from the Peloponnese, mainly under difficult circumstances, but many ended up in the southern port of Kalamata, the capital of this region, which was effectively the end of the road.

Here the allies, despite heavy Luftwaffe attack, fought on against the Germans who arrived in force in Kalamata on April 28. After the British surrendered on the 29th, the evacuation came to an end and the remaining Royal Navy ships returned to Crete. Around 8,000 soldiers were left behind on Kalamata beach and were told by their British commanding officer that they were now on their own and free to make their own escape.

Marjory with historian and writer Nikos Zervis at the Popular Library of Kalamata while they exchanged copies of their books

I became interested in the Battle of Kalamata through many of the people I met, both Greek and British expats. It still exercises a huge hold over the imagination of most Greeks in this region – who also fought bravely against the Germans – though it has not been documented to any serious degree, apart from a book of allies’ stories in Tell Them We Were Here by the late Edwin Horlington, and in Greek by the distinguished Kalamatan historian Nikos Zervis, whom I had the honour to meet there several times, when he talked at length about the battle.

Nikos is a delightful man and a great character, who has written a series of history books over several decades (in Greek) about Kalamatan history as well as an enchanting book about English author Lawrence Durrell who, though it’s not widely known, spent six months in the city. He went there in 1940 to establish a school of English studies, before the Germans invaded. Nikos and I talked at the Popular Library of Kalamata in the Pnevmatiko Kentro and also exchanged books. It was one of the highlights of a recent trip back to Greece.

The village of Megali Mantineia in the Mani which inspired to some extend one of the villages in A Saint For The Summer

A Saint For The Summer is not a war book as such, but it is still a gripping tale, and a certain Greek saint may just hold one of the keys to solving the book’s central mystery – hence the title. You’ll have to read the book to discover why that’s the case. And readers of my other books will once again be transported I hope to a sunny, familiar landscape in this wild and beautiful region of Greece, with its inimitable characters. It is also a compelling love story between the protagonist, Bronte McKnight, and the charming, enigmatic doctor, Leonidas Papachristou, with a heart-warming conclusion.

If you enjoy this book please let me know and remember that a review on Amazon is always welcome and helps to raise the profile of an author’s book. Here’s a short video about the book.

https://youtu.be/Xlu490u6nbo

The book is on pre-order for two weeks until March 19 from Amazon UK http://amzn.eu/aj5bkc8 and US http://a.co/36iumko as an ebook with a special introductory price of £1.99/$2.99 and on other Amazon sites, and the paperback will follow. So hurry and order a copy before the price goes up after publication. The cover artwork has been produced again by the very talented London artist Anthony Hannaford www.anthonyhannaford.co.uk

You might also like to read my other books:

Comments on the blog are very welcome. Thanks for calling by.

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Hugged by an octopus …

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I’VE been going to Greece all my life and I had never seen a live octopus in the sea, or come close to seeing one, though I’ve snorkelled a lot in all the right places. But when Jim and I were on the beach late last summer in Koroni (southern Peloponnese), our attention was caught by a German family in the water, and one of the kids shouting the word ‘Octopus!’

Jim and I looked at each other as we splashed about in the warm clear water. We thought it must be a childish wind-up, but the father dived in with a snorkel mask on and after a while the whole family were in a circle, the kids getting fizzy with excitement. It was pretty infectious, so we swam over to have a look and luckily we were wearing swimming goggles. The German guy was friendly and pointed out a flat stone on the sandy bottom in about five feet of water where the octopus had apparently built a lair. It wasn’t much to look at, though it did have a curious arrangement of smaller stones across a gap under the stone and a bent stick wedged across it like a barrier. Where was the octopus? we asked the guy, who it turns out had a nearby holiday home and was familiar with the beach, having swum there for years, and was familiar with octopuses, it seemed.

The beach we visited just north of Koroni town

“It’s hiding under the rock. Give it a moment. It will come out,” he said, putting his foot on the sand right next to the entrance to the lair. By now the kids had skittered off, rather bored, and it was just us three, flattened out in the water in a magic circle, staring at the octopus lair, willing it to come out. After a while there was movement – the tip of a tentacle groped its way out, then more of it, until it was tickling one side of the guy’s ankle. Then another tentacle appeared and finally out popped the whole octopus. It was medium sized and dark brown. The guy seemed pretty relaxed about things, even when two tentacles fastened themselves round each side of his ankle in a strange hug.

Video grab of the German tourist being embraced by the octopus

“He’s pulling me,” the man said excitedly. “He’s really strong. He’s trying to pull me towards his house.”

He wasn’t kidding. We could see the octopus’s tentacles drawing tight, the suckers gripping and his body edged backwards. Was he just playing with the man, or did he fancy having him for lunch? After a bit, the man’s foot was pulled closer to the lair, the creature backing into the opening and then the octopus finally gave up when task became (comically) insurmountable. We felt incredibly privileged, however, to have witnessed this strange encounter.

Back on the beach we chatted to the German guy for a while about octopuses. He was a keen explorer of this local coastline and an underwater amateur photographer as well. This wasn’t his first experienced of being hugged by this octopus. He had already taken footage of a previous episode. He gave us the video link, which we watched when we got back to our holiday apartment. It was outstanding and almost identical to what we had seen that day. (To watch it, click the link below.)

https://youtu.be/_x4bWFA1rGw

We went back to the beach the next day, hoping to see the holidaymaker again and watch another man/octopus interface, but as fate would have it, he never reappeared and must have returned home. His parting gift to us, however, had been the amazing introduction to this curious little creature we named Oscar. And we were left wondering how we could lure him out of his house and experience the hug for ourselves. Obsessions can grow on long indolent holidays when the imagination is given a long rein.

With the October weather in southern Greece being exceptionally good, we went back for the next few days to replicate the German’s stance next to Oscar’s lair. Jim would stand with his foot next to it to entice Oscar out. While I was desperate to do the same, I was too short to keep my foot steady on the sea bottom without drowning! Even for Jim, it proved harder than we thought because the currents were slightly stronger than previously and it was difficult to hold the foot in one place for very long, so I had to add extra weight to his efforts by leaning on his shoulders. I imagine we looked like a funny pair to other holidaymakers, though there are never more than a few bathers on the beach in this slightly remote spot.

We tried this out for a few days, hoping to entice Oscar out of his lair, but he was having none of it. We guessed that after a few weeks of interaction with the German, Oscar had got to know him, as strange as that sounds, whereas we were only on nodding, not hugging, terms yet. We could see him curled up inside the lair, often one eye visible, guarding his turf, but nothing else was stirring.

“One day we’ll get hugged,” said Jim. “You wait and see!”

To be honest, we had never really thought much about octopuses until we read a feature, ironically, just before our Greek holiday. It was about a fascinating new book called Other Minds: The Octopus and the Evolution of Intelligent Life (HarperCollins) by Peter Godfrey-Smith, full of anecdotes that shed light on this amazing creature that has the intelligence roughly of a dog or a three-year-old child ‒ and the mischief to match.

The octopus is a cephalopod related to squid and cuttlefish that developed from a snail-like creature about 290 million years ago. It compensated for losing its shell by developing a large brain. The octopus is capable of playing, recognising different humans, as well as other octopuses; it can ‘see’ through its skin and change its shape and colour according to its moods. The Nobel Prize-winning biologist Sydney Brenner once said that the octopus was the “first intelligent being on earth”. And Godfrey-Smith shows that they’re still one of the smartest, but with their eight legs, three hearts and blue/green blood, he also describes them as the “closest we will come to meeting an intelligent alien”.

Octopuses inspired the imagination of mankind long before we understood much about them. The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle wrote about them and they were admired also by the Byzantine Greeks, who feature them in many of their church frescos, especially the Ainoi (The Praises), with Christ encircled by the sun and moon, the zodiac and various creatures from elephants to scorpions – and octopuses.

A section of Byzantine fresco showing an octopus from the monastery at Homatero, Messinian peninsula

Octopuses are not only smart, however, they are also adept at interacting with humans and manipulating the environment to suit themselves. Godfrey-Smith  refers to one study at the University of Otago in New Zealand, where octopuses were kept in tanks in a laboratory. It was found they could turn off the lights (they don’t like bright light) by squirting jets of water at the light bulbs when no one was watching, short-circuiting the power supply. Or they could squirt water at lab assistants they didn’t particularly like.  In another international experiment, where the octopuses were routinely fed on shrimp instead of crab (which they much prefer), one octopus rebelled and would shove his shrimp into the outflow pipe as the lab assistant passed by his tank towards the exit, as a gesture of disapproval.

Godfrey-Smith, a philosopher of science and keen scuba diver, has done much of his own investigation of octopus behaviour, particularly off the east coast of Australia, where there are large colonies of octopus. He has had many similar encounters to our German acquaintance.

“If you sit in front of their den and reach out a hand, they’ll often send out an arm or two, first to explore you, and then – absurdly – to try to haul you into their lair. Often no doubt, this is an overambitious attempt to turn you into lunch. But it’s been shown that octopuses are also interested in objects that they pretty clearly know they can’t eat,” he wrote.

He also reports that a fellow diver, Matthew Lawrence, had another curious encounter with an octopus while diving off the Australian coast. The octopus grabbed Lawrence’s hand and “walked off with him in tow. Matt followed, as if he were being led across the sea floor by a very small eight-legged child”.

After about six consecutive days on the beach on Oscar patrol, during which there had been mostly cloudy, windy weather with poor water visibility, the weather cleared suddenly and became hotter and calmer again and we were able to check out Oscar’s lair properly ‒ and found him still inside. Maybe it was a case of finally putting a name to a foot, but Oscar seemed more responsive this time to Jim planting his foot by the lair. With our heads just in the water, watching through our goggles, we were finally rewarded with the sight of one tentacle emerging, groping its way to Jim’s ankle and attaching itself, and then another tentacle round the other side. Then, as we’d seen before, Oscar moved completely out of his lair and stood beside Jim’s foot, the two tentacles straining, the others locked into position behind him.

The beach near Koroni with its clear water where Jim had his first octopus hug

“He’s pulling my foot. My God, it feels weird! He’s really strong,” said Jim, with an edge of hysteria in his voice. “I hope he doesn’t pull me into the den!”

“Nah, you wouldn’t fit!” I snipped, because I had octopus-hug envy really bad by then. Why couldn’t it be me too, I thought? It would have been right up there with swimming with dolphins or snorkelling with whales.

After a while, Oscar, bored probably with trying to lug a goliath into his house, slithered back inside, watching us all the while with his dark, shrewd eyes. Maybe he only offered the hug to shut us up; get us off his back finally, but though we returned a few days more and swam around his lair, he never emerged again. Game over!

One night, not long after the Oscar hug, we were having dinner with a Greek  couple we had met in Koroni a few years earlier. Tasos is a genial guy who likes a good wind-up and having been a fisherman early on in life, he was very interested in our octopus story.

“You were lucky to find one. They are quite rare in these parts now. The eggs get eaten by some African fish that’s breeding now in these waters. If you tell any other Greeks where you saw the octopus exactly, they’ll go out and catch him, so don’t say a word. Okay?” We nodded, horrified.

“But you can tell me,” he said with a wink. “Just out of interest.”

Ho, ho! “No way!” I told him.

But that got me thinking. Before our encounter, barbecued octopus was one of my favourite meals in Greece, as it is for most people ‒ but not any more. I haven’t, and won’t, eat octopus again. They live for just a few years, are too smart and too rare in places, too cute all round to devour. Most of all, I’ll never be able to forget the sight of small Oscar giving Jim that shy, watery hug. It’s something we won’t ever experience again. Unless … he’s still there this summer when we go back to Greece!

New Book

Marjory has just published a new book, a novel, set in southern Greece, called A Saint For The Summer. This is a contemporary tale but with a narrative thread back to the Second World War, a “tale of heroism, faith and love” described by a recent reviewer as “entertaining, enthralling”. For more information, see the books page link, above.

The book is available on all Amazon sites.

A Saint For The Summer 

If you have liked any of the books please think of adding a small review on Amazon sites which is always very welcome. And comments on the blog are also very welcome. Thanks for calling by.

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Have the wheels come off Greece in crisis?

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The wreck with no wheels in the Monastiraki flea market is a poignant but spirited symbol of Greece in crisis

WE hadn’t been to Athens since 2012, at the worst point in the Greek crisis, when the city was teetering on the edge of disaster, with austerity, demonstrations and social unrest. I wondered how it would seem now and if the indelible Greek spirit would be trashed, as some reports have led us to believe. But in a narrow street in the Plaka, just under the Acropolis, we saw the kind of feisty, maverick attitude that we have come to expect of Greeks, and admire. It involved a woman driver.

Greek motorists seem to have lost none of their desire to park ‘creatively’, where they please, whether it’s over pedestrian crossings or on pavements, or up trees, if it were at all possible. Outside a popular taverna on an intersection, a policeman was writing a ticket for a car parked completely over the corner of the pavement, blocking the way for pedestrians. What followed was a spirited exchange after the woman driver rushed out of a nearby shop to fight with the young cop (not a traffic warden but a fully equipped cop with ‘astinomia’, police, written on his jacket). She had a stream of excuses for the perilous parking – but he wasn’t having any of it. The parking, he told her, was illegal, and that was it. She started yelling back at him. He told her not to shout. People began to mill about, watching. Outside diners also stopped eating to check out the dispute that went on long after the parking ticket was written and handed over with a flourish.

I marvelled that crazy parking was still a sight in Greek cities (it’s notorious in Kalamata in the southern Peloponnese), despite all the new restrictions and the soul-searching of the crisis. I was also impressed at the woman’s aggressive front with the cop. You don’t see it often in Britain, where you’d probably be arrested for causing an affray or some such thing.

View over the rooftops of the Plaka towards Lykavetos hill

 

Athens, and indeed much of Greece, is now showing signs of crisis fatigue, it’s true, and anger as well. The streets of downtown Athens have a skint, neglected aura about them. There’s still graffiti gashed over buildings and while it’s often an arty emblem of the recent troubles, in other cases it’s downright ugly, especially scrawled over some of the old classical houses, as we saw in the Plaka, that don’t deserve angry art. There are more migrants about, that’s true, and people are still begging, which is sad, though no different from any other major city. What made it exceptional here was the number of older women we saw begging and holding up cardboard signs. One said, “I am a Greek woman and I am living in poverty. Help me.”

Graffiti art or just vandalism on an arty scale?

We heard tales of stress and frustration from shopkeepers and from friends who live and work in Athens, that the crisis has hammered their businesses, with endless taxes and cuts to wages etc, despite what the international media might say. I told an Athenian friend, who has his own business, that we had read reports in British papers that the Greek economy was finally improving and Greece was “turning a corner”. “Yeah,” he said, “turning a corner into a gremos (ravine)!”

A restored iconostasis, church screen, in the Byzantine museum 

But the Greek establishment is still showing stoicism and a ‘business as usual’ attitude in the face of hardships, and has not stinted on cultural events/concerts/exhibitions in Athens. The museums are absurdly well managed and serene and among the best in the world, surely, which is an enormous feat in troubled times. The Acropolis Museum remains one of my favourites for its sheer beauty and serenity on the  elegant pedestrian walkway, Dionisou Areopagitou. The museum has a cathedral calm  inside. On one floor is a dazzling display of Athenian sculptures of young men and women like the almost perfect Peplophorus (530BC) with her braided hair and shoulder brooches.

The Parthenon Sculptures from the pediments of the building, and the Metope panels are arranged on the top floor, the few that were left after Lord Elgin’s infamous heist, and which are not now languishing in the British museum. The Byzantine Museum is often overlooked but is inspirational, with its early Christian artifacts and wealth of Byzantine icons. The only complaint was that there was just too much splendour for one visit and it will need another.

One of the narrow streets of the Plaka with the Acropolis above

I have always loved Athens from my first visit there in the 1970s on a working holiday. The city had a vastly different vibe then, of course, an exotic Greek and levantine mix which I wrote about in my second travel memoir, Homer’s Where The Heart Is. Syntagma Square was then a sociable meeting place in the city, a tree-lined space with outdoor cafes. Once the heart of this city, it has sadly become, because of the years of crisis and violent demonstrations, the focal point of discontent, understandably so, as it’s situated opposite the Parliament building. But the rage somehow lingers, or perhaps it’s just the maelstrom of humanity going in and out of the metro station, or just loitering about, that makes it feel edgy and it’s true to say it’s not everyone’s favourite haunt in the city.

Further down towards the ancient Agora lies Monastiraki. This also had a different vibe once; a colourful place full of traditional craftsmen and a far cry from the tourist hub it is today, with a slew of shops selling Greek goods, mostly made elsewhere. But it’s entertaining and there are still a few old shops left, like the wonderful old bouzouki shop on the main street.

 

Chairmen: Repairing rush-bottomed chairs in the flea market

The flea market here is worth a visit. Like a frenetic version of Steptoe and Son’s yard, without the knackered horse and cart, it teems with junk and the odd treasure, if you’ve time to sift through all the gaudy stuff first. More interestingly, amid all the tat, people are beavering away. We saw two guys with hands like grappling irons repairing rush-bottomed chairs with lengths of dried rushes, and it was no easy job, judging by the sweaty gleam of their foreheads, but it was fascinating to watch.

The ancient Tower of the Winds

Plaka is a place where the ancient rubs shoulders with the slightly more modern – the Byzantine

The streets of the Plaka are still worth a few hours of wandering about for their sheer eclectic mix of ancient sites (like the Tower of the Winds), Byzantine churches, classical houses and coffee shops. There are only a few traditional shops now selling more authentic local goods here but one small gallery at least sparkles with stylish Greek pieces, like small painted shutters with an olive motif, for wall mounting. The Tsolias Art Gallery is run by a genial, chatty guy called Michael Tsipa who, together with his wife Maria, design and make all the artworks.

Due to a slow morning, he was more than happy to talk about Athens and the crisis, and came out of the shop with us to bid us farewell, which was a refreshing change from my shopping encounter a half-hour earlier with the old crone of a proprietor outrside one of the gaudier knick-knack shops not far away. With the pretence of a welcoming handshake, she grabbed my hand with the speed of a black widow spider and tried to haul me into her cluttered lair, and I couldn’t shake her off and had to shout loudly like the woman receiving a parking ticket. What the shopkeeper had in mind for me is anyone’s guess, probably a blue and white cheesecloth shirt circa 1975 and a bust of Pericles in faux marble.

The view of the Parthenon from the roof garden of the Herodion hotel

But despite the pockets of stress and tat, Athens is still a fabulous city and still has a strong community heart. From the dining room of our comfortable hotel, the Herodion in the Plaka, where the breakfast banter was supplied mostly by loquacious Americans swapping notes on the day’s proposed itineraries (bless them!), or in the case of one guy, reading out unremarkable morning emails from his tablet for the benefit of everyone in the dining room, I caught a glimpse each day from our street-facing table of a small coffee shop, one of the many that have mushroomed no doubt during the crisis. It was nothing more than a wedge of paved land at the end of a row of apartment buildings with a small ground floor café and a couple of tables outside under the trees.

Every morning a small group of Greek residents of different ages would gather to shoot the breeze and a have a laugh over their tiny cups of Greek coffee. It was a nice little scene and I enjoyed the seeming conviviality of their lives despite the gloom of their economics. From all the years I have been visiting Athens, I have found this aspect of the Greek character comforting, that their joy of life is on the whole irrepressible. I hope that will continue to be the case. And that even though the wheels may be off their cart, they still have the front to park the wreck wherever they please!

  • The Herodion Hotel, Rovertou Galli Street is a friendly hotel near the Plaka with a great dinner menu if you can’t be bothered to trail out for a meal, and hearty breakfasts. There is a great rooftop restaurant/bar operating in the summer season with a view of the Acropolis. www.herodion.gr
  • Tsolia Art Gallery, Kyrristou 17, Plaka (2130 449337)
  • For more information about Athens do check out travel writer Matt Barrett’s city guide http://www.athensguide.com

On a sadder note

It is with great sadness that I have to tell you all that our dear Jack Russell terrier, Wallace, passed away in August, aged 16. He was such a huge presence in our lives and a dear companion, especially during our four years in Greece where he never ceased to entertain us with his crazy antics. He will be sorely missed by Jim and me  but I hope that his memory will live on in my books and continue to entertain readers.

In my next few blogs I will be writing about the rest of our recent trip to Greece: the island of Poros and the southern Peloponnese.

If you have liked any of the books please think of adding a small review on Amazon sites which is always very welcome. Thanks for calling by.

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Would the Durrells have picked Corfu today?

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Peaceful Kaminaki beach in the north-east of Corfu

THE Durrells, the popular TV drama based on the memoirs of naturalist Gerald Durrell, has just started its second series in Britain. Once again it promises light-hearted entertainment in the glorious surroundings of Corfu, and follows the adventures of the slightly skint Louisa Durrell and her four children as they move from Bournemouth in 1935, searching for a cheaper, more liberating life on a Greek island.

The Durrell family from the popular ITV series

When we were deciding on locations for our own Greek odyssey back in 2009, ironically, we first thought of Corfu, as it was an island we had visited many times, particularly the northern part, which has spectacular beaches and historic mountain villages, such as Old Perithia.

Jim and Marjory in a taverna on Corfu’s nearby island of Paxos 

We were quite in love with the beauty of the place for a while and its easy-going people, but in the end we decided against Corfu as, to us, it seemed the most ‘British’ of all the Greek islands because of its historic link with the UK and ironically probably because the Durrells’ association has lured more Brits there than anywhere else. Not that we had a problem with that, but for a Greek adventure we were seeking a totally unspoilt location, something rougher and wilder, and the Mani, in the middle peninsula of the southern Peloponnese, fitted our requirements perfectly. We were not disappointed.

Having watched all The Durrells’ episodes up to now, and read many of Gerald and Lawrence’s books, particularly Prospero’s Cell, a fascinating account of Lawrence’s time living at the White House in Kalami Bay, when life in Corfu was grittier and more authentic, I can’t help but wonder: if the Durrells were around now, planning a Grecian odyssey, would they really have picked Corfu? Or would they also have looked for a location with more edginess.

Chris Nye, writing for Greece Property Guides www.propertyguides.com/greece/news/ believes anyone wanting to ‘do a Durrell’ these days would be better off choosing Crete for its glorious landscape and affordable lifestyle, and he outlines a helpful comparison of current living expenses in Bournemouth and Crete and what kind of property you can find on this island. Incidentally, Chris is the brother of Simon Nye, who wrote and co-produced the ITV television series The Durrells.

The hillside village of Megali Mantineia, beneath the Taygetos mountains where we first lived in the Mani

Spectacular view from the north Taygetos looking down on Kalamata city, the olive oil capital of Greece 

I can imagine the Durrells in Crete, no problem, but for sheer rawness and rural eccentricity, which Gerald Durrell’s books have in spades, I feel sure they would have gone for the wilder shores of the Mani as well. As a slightly unorthodox family, led by feisty, sometimes bibulous Louisa, they would have been looking for the kind of rural adventure that we were searching for, and you don’t easily find that in Greece any more. You need to go off the beaten track to places such as the Mani and the nearby peninsulas (Messinia, Laconia) of the southern Peloponnese, or the far north and north-west of the Greek mainland.

Local farmer Foteini became a good friend and eased us into rural life

I think the Durrells would have enjoyed reckless encounters with some of the local farming community in the Mani, as we did when we first settled in the hillside village of Megali Mantineia, in the shade of the Taygetos mountains. They would certainly have enjoyed our eccentric, donkey-riding farming friend Foteini, and her ramshackle farm compound. And Gerald at least would have relished our stone house with its scorpions, hornets and the big prowling kounavi, pine marten, not to mention a few fuzzy expats in the undergrowth.

I did love the scene in Episode 2 of The Durrells, where Louisa is holding a food stall to raise some much-needed cash for the family, selling her home-made English ‘delicacies’ to Greeks, like trays of toad in the hole (for non-Brits, that’s sausages baked in a pillow of batter). A philandering British expat called Hugh tries to justify his chat-up lines, saying it’s nice to make contact with interesting fellow Brits, but the petulant Louisa bats him off nicely saying she prefers to mix with the locals and not feel that she’s back in Bournemouth. Good for her!

One of the coves close to where we lived for part of our odyssey, with Kalamata city in the background

The Durrells have many adventures of the rural kind, with animals, guns and dodgy neighbours. And they have house rental woes. In reality, the family moved a few times in Corfu but the house most remembered was the Daffodil House, near Gouvia, a large sprawling Venetian mansion, which is depicted fairly accurately in the TV series as having plenty of ambience, but was pretty shabby and chaotic inside. The best family home they could get for the price. Like the Durrells, we also had plenty of rental woes, many of which I outlined in my three travel memoirs. I only wish we’d had the gumption though to refuse paying rent at times, as Louisa did in Episode 2, when the coquettish landlady called round.

Wallace and his animal magnetism

We had trouble finding suitable houses because we had taken our lovable but bonkers Jack Russell terrier, Wallace, with us. The house we rented in Megali Mantineia had its drawbacks, but was owned by an Englishman who was sympathetic to a resident dog. Wallace rewarded him and the village with a slew of antics, the odd breakout, and some distinctive barking, which I hope they still think fondly of! Every house we rented had issues/difficulties: industrial garbage bins, critter infestations, crazy neighbours, sparse furniture, though the problems were mitigated by stunning views. I will write more about renting in Greece in a later blog post.

Wallace and ‘guard dog’ Zina

The second property we rented in the Mani, from an entertaining Greek family, was a wonderful rambling place, with an olive orchard. It also had animals: chickens, rampant roosters, a big chained-up dog called Zina, plenty of stray cats, but also water strikes, Arctic winds whistling through in winter, and Orestes, the eccentric neighbour with a hunting rifle, who used to drive us mad, firing off rounds regularly, mostly at song birds perched in his precious almond trees. When he took his sheep out to graze nearby, he often carried a long hunting knife, for a worrying reason, which I revealed in my second memoir Homer’s Where The Heart Is.

Marjory, Jim and Wallace spent the fourth year of their odyssey in the nearby Messinian peninsula in lovely Koroni

The southern Peloponnese is the perfect location for a glorious life on the edge, for Brits seeking more than just sandy beaches and an easy, ouzo-flavoured lifestyle. Unlike the smaller confines of most Greek islands, pretty though they are, places like the Mani are BIG and diverse, with plenty of room to spread out and even discover your inner rebel/cowboy. Here you can lead the kind of life that you could only have lived in Britain decades ago. Or okay, at a pinch, you might still discover in the highlands of Scotland, or the wilds of Ireland.

If it was madness and mayhem that the Durrells of today were searching for, trust me, it’s all there in southern Greece. We had adventures we only dreamt about before we left the UK. But there are limits. I would never have flogged a tray of toad in the hole at the laiki, farmer’s market. No way! I think if I’d tried that, Orestes would probably have swung by and shot it!

 

Illustration of Jim and I taken from Womankind magazine

Our big fat Greek odyssey has featured this month in the international magazine Womankind www.womankindmag.com and is available in the UK at WH Smith stores. It will be out in North America shortly (through Barnes and Noble), or via the magazine’s website. I love the small illustration of Jim and I on donkeys in the Mani.

Illustration: (c) Womankind Magazine

For more information about Marjory’s three travel memoirs about living in Greece during the crisis, go to the books page on the website www.bigfatgreekodyssey.com/greek-books www.bigfatgreekodyssey.com or her books page on Facebook www.facebook.com/ThingsCanOnlyGetFeta

New Book

Marjory has recently a new book, a novel, set in southern Greece, called A Saint For The Summer. This is a contemporary tale with a narrative thread back to the Second World War, a tale of heroism, faith and love, described by the Chicago magazine site, Windycity Greek, as a book “that will renew your faith in mankind”. For more information, see the books page link, above.

The book is available on all Amazon sites.

A Saint For The Summer 

If you have liked my books please think of adding a small review on Amazon sites which is always very welcome. Thanks for calling by. x

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