IT’S been a while since I’ve written a blog piece. Like many of you, I suspect, the last 12 months has felt like being thrown a curved ball – or more of a demolition ball really. The pandemic experience has been troubling and strange, and downright frightening at times, locked in our domestic prisons, experiencing strictures none of us have ever come across before. I have heard my family talk about living through wartime Britain, and although the pandemic is not quite that bad, I could understand for the first time how terrifying and restricted their lives must have been.
Despite having plenty of time to write regular pieces, such as blog posts, I failed at the beginning of the lockdown last March to gather up the motivation when other issues seemed much more important. And the future looked uncertain.
I’m sure the past year has tested everyone’s resolve, our faith in government, in religion, our small place in this terrifying world. If anything good can possibly come of this pandemic, it must surely be to appreciate the simple, true things of life more. If we once complained about our lot: not having the perfect life; enough money; a big enough house; or any of the dozens of things we obsess over in the western world, perhaps we won’t – any more.
Beautiful Kynance Cove in Cornwall, on the far edge of care
Now we know how happy and well-off we really were, all this time, and just didn’t know it. Many of us have gone back to basics, spending more time being quiet, watching instead of talking, thinking instead of acting, appreciating nature, cherishing health and love above other things. I don’t know about you, but I have found how easy it is to live with less, as long as you have health and love. I’m sure we’ve all realised this now. And I do hope you have all survived the pandemic without too much loss or sadness.
For my part, I know that what made the past year easier to bear was the fact I now live in Cornwall, near the sea, a beautiful part of the world and a place where you can really feel the power of nature. With its wonderful coves and big skies, it has felt like the best possible place to be in lockdown.
And I have not been completely idle these past 12 months. After a bumpy start, I did start another book last summer and once it picked up speed, I found it was a superb way to shut out the world and its cares a while. That’s the beauty of writing. It’s your own world for as long as you’re doing it. Yours, and no-one else need see your efforts, or interfere, or take it away from you for that period of time. It’s between you and the page or computer screen. And that’s magical, to have some control after all, to have a refuge. There is nothing else like quite like it!
Foteini with her donkey Riko and a copy of Things Can Only Get Feta
Wallace looking cool in Greece
So, finally the book has just been published, on May 5. A Donkey On The Catwalk: Tales of life in Greece, is the 4th in the Peloponnese series. For those of you who have read my Greek memoirs, starting with the Amazon bestseller Things Can Only Get Feta, this book will seem a little different because it’s separate tales and travel narratives rather than one long narrative. However, the theme is still Greece and most of the tales are set in the wild Mani region of the Peloponnese again, with a return of some of the characters you have loved, like Foteini the inimitable goat farmer with her eccentric take on life. And Wallace, our Jack Russell companion, is still creating mayhem. How could he not? For those of you, however, who haven’t read my memoirs, you can read this one as a standalone, as with all the memoirs really.
As well as tales from the Peloponnese, there are stories from other Greek locations my husband Jim and I have visited, including Pelion and the islands of Santorini and Corfu. This book also offers tales from some of my own earlier trips to Greece, which I have not published before, including a year in Athens during a dangerous time of political upheaval, and a sabbatical in Crete, with a touch of romance in an idyllic setting.
To counteract the times in which I was writing this book, I’ve blended a lot of humour and lightness into these stories because, as psychotherapist Sigmund Freud once said, “Humour is a mature response to human suffering”, or words to that effect. Or rather, there’s nothing like having a laugh when life’s going pear-shaped.
Marjory outside the Ayia Playia taverna in Falanthi, near Koroni
There’s more fun and craziness with Foteini and a strange shoe creation; a comical interface with a religious relic in Corfu, a house minding stint in southern Greece above a taverna with escapades we didn’t expect. But there are other stories too that are thought-provoking and chip away a bit more at the Greek psyche and lifestyle.
I hope you enjoy this book and if you do, please let me know. I always love to hear from readers. And do post a review of the book on Amazon if you care to. It always helps to introduce an author’s work to new readers.
Thanks for dropping by. Stay safe. x
The Greek books
To buy the new ebook (paperback to follow soon) on all Amazon stores, click on this universal link: https://mybook.to/DonkeyOnCatwalk
Marjory’s other best-selling memoirs deal with her time in Greece with her husband Jim and Wallace the terrier, living in the wild southern Peloponnese. She has also written two novels set in southern Greece. You can find them on her Amazon page.
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.”
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
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.
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.
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.
Greek Easter service at Ayios Dimitrios, Koroni, Messinia
WHEN I think of Easter in Greece, I think of dyed red eggs, euphoria and feasting. I also think of mutant incense, terrier rebellion and ‘Ecclesiastical Knee Syndrome’.
The Holy Week (Megali Evdomada) is this week, and it’s the most significant date in the Greek calendar. From all my many years of visiting Greece, Easter leaves indelible memories for its sense of drama and anticipation. Much of the drama is supplied by the daily church services that are like small one-act plays of varying intensity and nail-biting climaxes that progress the story of Easter, which seems unique to the Orthodox Church. Even if you’re not religious, it’s a wonderful chance to see Greeks at their most reverent, and at their colourful best, with plenty of pomp, circumstance and sometimes unplanned slip-ups showing that the best rehearsed productions can be derailed.
When we were living in the hillside village of Megali Mantineia in the Mani (southern Peloponnese), the sombre Easter Friday service ran slightly amok when Wallace, our naughty Jack Russell terrier, disgraced himself, slipped out of our village house and raced along with the procession, turning a timeless ritual into a cross between a riot and a Crufts obstacle course for Jack Russells. The Friday service is the grand procession of the Epitafios, where a flower-decked bier, representing the crucified Christ, is carried through villages and cities everywhere in Greece, and is a magical event to witness.
Our village procession started at the main church, went up to the graveyard, so the papas could offer prayers for the dead, and looped back along village lanes towards the church again, with the papas and elders at its head. Wallace managed to invade it early on. I don’t think the villagers had seen anything quite like the hyperkinetic Wallace, weaving his way through the procession, a blur of white fur, and retrieving him required a bit of a miracle. It became one of the chapters in my first memoir Things Can Only Get Feta.
Marjory with naughty Wallace, the Easter procession buster
The services in this Easter week are awe-inspiring for their organisation, their props and those amazing psaltes, chanters, who advance most of the service and seem tireless. Even during the tough economic crisis, no detail was ever spared and for that you can only admire the Greeks. Yet sometimes nerves get the better of everyone. On one of the Thursday services in our first year in the Mani, which is a particularly long and devotional service, the poor deacon, standing beside the local papas, turning over the pages of the old hymn book, overlooked the massively smoking censer in his hand.
“The incense started off with fragrant puffs but quickly increased to billowing acrid clouds that shrouded the first few rows of seating. We started coughing and choking. If this had been an aeroplane, oxygen masks would have dropped from the ceiling by now.” (Things Can Only Get Feta, chapter 25).
Easter Sunday with the family who featured in Marjory’s second travel memoir, Homer’s Where The Heart Is
I have experienced Easter in many locations in Greece, from tiny islands to cities. In each location, the church services have been handled with aplomb. I have also found the same level of hospitality and kindness from locals, with many invitations to share the traditional Sunday roast with an extended Greek family. One of my first Greek Easters was in Crete, which I first visited in the 1970s on my first long odyssey to Greece. I had been living and working in Athens, but before I left I had taken a few weeks’ break in Crete with a friend. We were offered a tiny holiday house by an Athenian colleague. It was opposite the beach in a completely authentic, untouched area of the northern coast, east of Hania. While the area is, sadly, unrecognisable now from what I remember then, it was a glorious piece of old Greece, with a few nearby houses, a taverna across the road, a deserted beach and not much else.
My friend and I had planned to have a quiet Easter as we knew no-one there and we knew very little about Easter customs and protocol. On Sunday morning, however, there was a knock at the door. It was the farmer who lived up the hill behind us. He vibrantly announced Christos Anesti which I knew meant, Christ Is Risen, the salutation after the Saturday night service. He told us that for the traditional Sunday feast he was roasting one of his lambs and that we must come and join his family. There was no way we could refuse. He insisted.
So we went up to his house, where the lamb was turning slowly on a spit outside and the olive groves around us were filled with succulent meaty, herby aromas. A big family had gathered: grandparents, kids, everyone excited to be eating a proper meal after weeks of the strict Lenten fast. We had lunch at a long table surrounded by these wonderful, big-hearted people, whom I could barely talk to as I spoke only limited Greek then. Somehow we managed okay and enjoyed all the conviviality, the laughter and lusty cracking of the dyed eggs, an ancient Orthodox ritual that symbolises eternal life and becomes a contest to see who can crack everyone else’s eggs without cracking their own.
Boiled eggs are dyed red for Easter and decorated with other symbols of the season
Jim and Marjory enjoying the egg-cracking contest at a memorable supper with their Kalamatan friend Kostas and his lovely family
This Sunday lunch experience was during my first long but youthful foray into a foreign culture and I had never come across such inclusiveness and kindness before from strangers, even having grown up in friendly, knock-about Australia. This was unique and the memory has lingered.
Every Easter I have spent in Greece has taught me something more about the Greek spirit, the sense of filoxenia, hospitality and this unique culture. It has also offered me some unexpected, occasionally humorous, outcomes, and the odd devious medical problem which Jim and I came across during Easter, 2014, for our second odyssey in southern Greece, in Koroni. We had decided that we would set ourselves the task for Lent of going to every evening church service of Megali Evdomada, in a different church each night, which we had never done before.
Some of the chanters at an Easter service in Koroni, Messinia
We made it through the first part of the week no trouble, but by Thursday, which is a very long service, nearly three hours, depicting Christ’s crucifixion, we were starting to run out of steam. Jim developed a painful problem which he called Ecclesiastical Knee Syndrome (EKS) because there is so much standing up and sitting down during Greek services, and at this time of year, churches are slightly cold and bone-numbing.
“The service was longer than I ever remembered any to be, full of Greek I couldn’t decipher, and as I glanced around the church I saw many Greeks looking pale and wilted, with many of the men discreetly slipping outside for a quick cigarette in the cool evening air. As foreigners, we felt the need to stay, and endure, lest we be considered slightly soft or disinterested. Nine-thirty came and went in a strange agony of chanting, incense and a babble of high Greek. Unlike Jim, after a while I welcomed EKS, and every opportunity to stand up and feel my legs like an economy passenger on a long-haul flight to Australia which is what the service began to feel like.” (Chapter 2, A Scorpion In The Lemon Tree).
A Byzantine church in the Mani hills
But the Thursday service actually ended with a surprise, slightly controversial, climax that was worth the wait, despite distressed knee cartilage. And it was a dramatic lead-up to the finale of this week, which is the Saturday service. This is something that everyone should experience once in their lives, which in the Orthodox Church represents the resurrection of Christ. And on a less illustrious level, it also represents the end of the Lenten agony for many devout Greeks, who have lived for six weeks on boiled greens and water, or near enough. It represents the end of an ecclesiastical marathon. I have experienced this Saturday service in Greek cathedrals and also in tiny island churches and it never fails to be affecting and inspiring.
The moment when the church is plunged into darkness at midnight and a single lighted candle is brought out of the sanctuary by the papas and its light slowly shared to every other member of the congregation until the church is luminescent is a simple, yet thrilling spectacle. And if you are lucky enough to also hear a particularly good rendition of the hymn Christos Anesti (Christ is Risen) then you are truly blessed.
Happy Easter!
Καλη Aνάσταση! (Kali Anastasi) Have a good resurrection, as they say in Greece!
(To hear the Vangelis rendition of Christos Anesti performed by Greek actress, Irene Pappas, please click on the link below.)
Readers have made a pilgrimage to a Mani village to see the unique farmer, Foteini
AFTER my three travel memoirs were published from 2013, readers have been in touch to say they visited the locations featured in the books. Many have made it up to the hillside village of Megali Mantineia, in the Mani, where the first book (Things Can Only Get Feta) was set, and mainly in search of the inimitable goat farmer Foteini.
This unassuming rural woman, whom I met at the very beginning of our odyssey on a village road, seems to have struck a chord with many readers, as she has with me. Perhaps it’s her struggle to survive a tough farming life on her own, made harsher still by the Greek economic crisis. It is also, I suspect, her endearing eccentricities, her tendency to wear mismatched layers of clothing and oversized hats, shoes that look like Cornish pasties, and her odd habits, like washing skinned bananas before she eats them.
I recently called one of my favourite friends from the village, the lovely Stavroula (Voula), who lives near Foteini but unlike her, usually answers her village phone. Voula and I hadn’t spoken for a while and at first she thought I must be in Greece. She got excited at the prospect of a visit. When I told her I was in England she shouted vibrantly down the phone: “Well, when are you coming back here? We’ve missed you!”
It’s the quality I most love about rural Greeks, the fact that when they warm to you they are inclusive and caring. Their interest in you is like a big, delicious hug, and is irresistible.
Marjory riding Foteini’s beloved donkey Riko
I was told that all was well in the village and everyone was surviving the crisis, which was good news. The only recent news I could glean of Foteini, however, was that her beloved old donkey Riko, which I rode on my last odyssey in Greece (from 2014 to 2015), has been pensioned out to pastures sweeter and a new beast has taken his place, as Foteini uses her donkeys for her rural work. Riko was a gentle, stoical creature and he made an appearance in all my travel memoirs.
Foteini, however, continues to attract readers to the village. One American Facebook friend told me she went to the village just to find her and was ecstatic when she did, but was then very put out when Foteini rather stubbornly wouldn’t agree to a photo session beside the donkey.
Some readers have told me they have also gone in pursuit of Foteini, waving a copy of Things Can Only Get Feta, which features Foteini and Riko on the cover illustration, which must have amused her, or maybe terrified her perhaps, I can’t tell which. Some have bravely angled for a coffee in her ramshackle ktima, farm compound, which I wrote about at length, but no-one has pulled it off yet, I think. I am left amazed at so many sightings of Foteini when I had always thought of her as somewhat shy!
The village of Megali Mantineia beside the Taygetos mountains where we spent the first year of our odyssey
The church dedicated to the Virgin Mary, in the village
One reader called John recently sent me a long email telling me about his summer visit to Megali Mantineia. He was thrilled to drive along the main village road and find Foteini walking along it with Riko loaded up with wood. John told me that he stopped the car and jumped out, waving Feta, and shouting ‘Good morning’ in his best learner’s Greek.
“She came up to me and put her hand on my shoulder and spoke for about 20 seconds…,” he explained, “though I honestly couldn’t recognise one Greek word. Then she placed one of her big bronze-like hands on my hand. What an amazing experience. To most people this would probably not mean much, but to me it meant a lot. I asked Foteini if I could take her picture alongside Riko and she said ‘yes’. I was totally amazed. It was brilliant. My wife, who hadn’t read Feta at that point, said to me, ‘This has made your holiday, hasn’t it?’ And to be honest, it really had.”
Foteini uses her donkey Riko to transport firewood. Stacking it on a donkey is something of a rural art
At Foteini’s farm there is ingenious plumbing like this hosepipe and a soap holder fashioned from a sawn-off bottle
Recently in East Sussex I was invited to give some talks about my time in Greece at local book groups. I was not surprised to find that it was not Greece in crisis, or the recklessness of Jim and me – and crazy Wallace the dog – going on a mid-life odyssey that piqued their interest so much, but Foteini. They wanted to know all about her: how she lived, what her house was like, and about her outrageous horticultural couture. I passed around photos of her and the village and they were pored over. I imagine the women of peaceful, retiring Sussex have never come across anyone quite like her. Neither had I when we first started our Greek odyssey in 2010 in the remote southern Peloponnese.
Foteini became the most unlikely creative muse for me. From the moment I saw her riding Riko on that village road in 2010, wearing a massive straw hat, her donkey loaded up with ‘half a house’, she stirred my journalistic interest, initially, with her “promise of authenticity, tinged with craziness” as I wrote in Feta. It was Foteini who talked us into renting the small stone house we’d just viewed in the village. We dithered over it for many reasons. She merely said: “But why wouldn’t you take it?” Great journeys can start on such simple promptings as this. It was she who first christened me Margarita, a name that has stuck with me in Greece. But it was also her character that drew me to her, and against the odds, even with my rusty Greek language skills, she and I began the most unusual, and challenging, of friendships, which I described in the books.
Sweet and lovely Voula from the village, giving Marjory a hug
Foteini was not the only villager, however, who we came to love during our time in the Mani, which stretched to three years. There were other Greeks who became an indelible part of our lives, especially dark-haired, gregarious Voula, whom I have already mentioned, and her lovely mother, Nikoletta. When the pair sat side by side, they were like “two voluptuous bookends”. I wrote about them both in my first two books, where I had called them Eftihia and Pelagia, though sadly, Nikoletta passed away in 2012, which was a great loss to the village. There were also many other characters: Voula’s brother Yiorgos, locals who ran the kafeneio and tavernas, the farmer with the Paul Newman eyes, the ever gracious Leonidas. Yet still people contact me about Foteini (not her real name, by the way).
Giving Foteini a copy of Feta
When I first gave her a copy of the book on a visit in 2014, she grabbed it in her big meaty hands, turning it this way and that, with a look of wonder. Having anything published is an incomparable experience, but watching Foteini gripping her copy of Feta, a book she inspired in so many ways, ranks as one of the most satisfying moments of my life.
* * * * *
Riding Riko
When I had the mad urge to ride Foteini’s donkey Riko along the village road from her ktima, it took a bit of persuasion. Jim also needed a bit of prompting too, as I described in this extract from my third memoir, A Scorpion In The Lemon Tree:
“Foteini stared at me hard. ‘You want to ride Riko, on the road? Out there?’
‘Yes, just for 10 minutes. You know I won’t let anything happen to him.’
She scratched at her face, worrying a curly grey hair hanging from her chin.
‘You’d be careful wouldn’t you, koritsara mou? (My girl).’
‘Yes, of course, I will,’ I said, wondering if she felt this nervous when she took him out on the road, or did I just seem like a total rookie.
Jim was watching me with narrowed eyes. ‘What’s going on? I’m having a Greek breakthrough moment. I’m making out words and I’m not well pleased.’
‘I’ve asked Foteini if I can take Riko along the road for a ride.’
‘Oh, no way! You know how people drive in the Mani. A car will hit you both.’
‘Shhh! Stop fussing. Can a woman not have a moment of madness in her life?’ I said, remembering Zorba the Greek’s famous appeal for getting in touch with your inner rebel.
Jim shook his head. ‘Margarita, you have not been a woman bereft of mad moments, I seem to recall.’
‘I won’t be long, I promise.’
‘Okay. Margarita mou,’ Foteini said at last as she led the donkey through the main gate. She handed me the lead rope, which was all I had for reins, and for a crop, she gave me a thin piece of whittled olive wood.
‘Take him,’ she said. ‘You’re always giving me things. This is my gift to you. Enjoy it. And don’t be long.’
I brushed my legs over Riko’s sides to move him quickly down the road. As I went I could hear Foteini and Jim grumbling together, and Wallace whining. It was like a Greek chorus.”
My second memoir, Amazon best-seller Homer’s Where The Heart Is, which continues the story of our three years in the Mani, is currently on an Amazon Kindle promo for the rest of January at 99p (UK only). To buy, click the link: http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00WEC7YCY
For more information about this book and the two others in the series, including the latest, A Scorpion In The Lemon Tree, go to the books page on the website www.bigfatgreekodyssey.com or the books page on Facebook www.facebook.com/ThingsCanOnlyGetFeta
Bell-ringer Marjory at the Byzantine church of Ayioi Theodoroi
FOR our second long odyssey in Greece, my partner Jim and I spent 14 months in Koroni, Messinia, which became the basis for my third travel memoir, A Scorpion In The Lemon Tree. While the Mani had been our first choice, we ended up in Messinia, the left-hand peninsula in the southern Peloponnese. If you want to know how that happened, you’ll have to read the book. But this remote peninsula didn’t disappoint. It’s a laid-back corner of the country, with a great climate and some fascinating, often hard-to-find, corners, where we encountered some spooky sites and hidden places, most of which were mentioned in the book.
The strange ‘Hand of God Tree’ at the Homatero monastery, near Koroni
The Hand of God Tree.
This is one of the most curious things I’ve ever seen. It was Wallace, our dear Jack Russell, with his typical questing nature, who really discovered this strange tree, dragging us over to see it in the grounds of the small, deserted monastery of Ayioi Theodoroi, near the village of Homatero, west of Koroni. We had searched out the papas that day, who oversees the monastery, and were given the key to the church and instructions on how to find this fascinating place tucked into the side of a wooded ravine. Dating from the 12th century, much of its outer buildings lie in ruins but the Byzantine church, with its pantiled roof, is in good condition.
It was the tree, however, in the back garden that first captured our imagination with what appeared to be the shape of a huge closed hand on a large section of the trunk. From a distance, it looked man-made, sculpted, and yet on closer inspection we weren’t quite so sure because there was a large amount of bark left over the ‘knuckle’ of the hand.
Marjory beside the strange shape on the carob tree
Or was it something else entirely? As I wrote in Chapter 16 of the book:
“(The hand) was over a foot high and two feet wide and too smooth for a human carving, but with all the signs of being something natural, fashioned by the wind and the rain perhaps over many decades. We called it the Hand of God Tree, given its surroundings and found it curiously appealing.”
Later on, when we met up with Papa Theodoros at his village house and showed him our photos of the tree, he smiled at the title we’d given it and I asked him what the story was behind it. He told me the tree was very old, a carob tree, but if you what to know what his explanation was, and what he thought about many other fascinating subjects you can read about them in A Scorpion In The Lemon Tree. You can also read about the history of this monastery in past centuries, which was brutal at times, and probably accounts for the slightly chilly and forlorn atmosphere we encountered there.
If you’ve read Scorpion, let me know your opinion of the strange Hand of God Tree.
Old pantiles on the roof of the Byzantine church
Two of the frescos inside the church
The rest of the monastery did not disappoint and inside the old church was a fascinating collection of frescos dating back to the 16th century, including some typically bizarre frescos depicting the fate of non-believers. If you look carefully at the example above you’ll see a bizarre half owl/fish creature on the mast of the boat.
The front of the atmospheric taverna, the Ayia Playia in Falanthi
Icon of Saint Pelagia, taken on her feast day in May
Brigadoon meets rural Messinia
There are many villages on the outskirts of Koroni that are charming, but one of its secret places is the sweet village of Falanthi on a road that leads west to the Homatero monastery and some other smaller villages. Falanthi was once a thriving settlement, with a successful mining operation, but now supports a small rural population, an olive press and several lovely churches, including the small white chapel dedicated to Saint Pelagia which, curiously, has a spring rising up from under its altar and its outlet is in the courtyard of the taverna next door, called the Ayia Playia ( or Agia Plagia). If you happen to find yourself there on the feast day of Saint Pelagia in early May, when the church is open, you might be lucky to see the spring flowing under the altar, as we did.
This was one of our favourite tavernas outside Koroni (which also has many fine establishments some of which I mentioned in my book). Set by the main road and beside a small stream with a stone bridge over it, it has a retro/timewarp magic about it, with a nod to Brigadoon, the mythical Scottish village that was supposed to appear for one day, every 100 years. Except that this fine establishment is open all year, apart from October. What makes this place such a find is not just the quality of the food but the convivial owner Yiorgos (George) Bossinakis, who is a popular local character, and the place attracts a great number of people from Koroni. For more information www.agia-plagia.gr and bookings: tel 27250 41565.
The church of the Eleistria, looking down on Zaga beach, Koroni
The church of visions and miracles
The Eleistria church, dedicated to the Virgin Mary, nestles just below the southern flank of Koroni castle, with a stunning view of Zaga beach. This church was built in the late 19th century after a local woman, Maria Stathakis, saw several visions of the Virgin Mary, claiming there were sacred icons buried in the area where the church now sits. When Stathakis enlisted the help of locals to start excavating the site, sure enough three small icons were found in the fissure of rocks and a church was built. The icons have been incorporated into one large icon, which is on display in this church and is at the centre of an important feast day in Koroni every spring. The church has documented many healings that are claimed to be associated with the icon.
The icon which incorporates the three small icons found after the visions of a local woman
It’s a very atmospheric church, quite apart from its airy setting. The grotto where the icons were discovered has been preserved and forms part of a small chapel underneath the church and is worth a visit.
Tsapi beach
A beach at the end of the road
Tsapi beach is a place we discovered by accident. It isn’t well sign-posted on the road from Finicounda to Koroni and a couple of small signs say ‘Tsapi camping’ and ‘Maria’s taverna’. The road is good but winds down a hillside for 15 minutes to a secluded beach facing the Ionian Sea. On a stretch of coast with plenty of nice beaches, what’s great about this one? Despite the low-key camping site, two small tavernas, and a tiny white chapel overlooking the beach, there’s nothing here and it feels like the kind of place you discover on islands. It is enclosed on either side and has a long sandy beach, and the water quality here is dazzling. It’s a great place to swim safely, quite shallow, and great for snorkelling. It was one of the nicest places we ever found to swim and the tavernas are a real bonus. Laid-back and unfussy, they serve mostly fish dishes and you can sit all day over lunch and not feel any pressure to leave. There are several nearby beaches, which are totally deserted and you can only walk to them or visit by boat, like tiny Marathi.
Imposing battlements of Koroni Castle
What lies within – Koroni Castle
There is little left of Koroni castle now because it has been targeted down the centuries by a great slew of invaders to this southerly outpost, including the Turks, Franks and Venetians. And the Germans occupied much of it during the Second World War. Its walls remain and a scramble of ruined buildings but it has serious spooky cred and atmosphere and is worth rambling over, as it has set the scene for so much of Koroni’s history.
One of the tiny doorways at the monastery
Ayia Sophia beside the remains of an ancient temple
View up the Messinian Gulf to Kalamata, from the monastery
The castle itself is hardly a secret, dominating the whole town, but what is sometimes overlooked is the gorgeous monastery within it, of Timios Prodromos, which hasn’t changed much since the 19th century when it was built near the site of the ancient Temple of Apollo. It is set within some of the castle walls with walkways, turrets, tiny chapels and an orchard full of fruit trees. At harvest time the friendly nuns here will invite you to help yourself to fruit and offer you slices of loukoumi sweets and cool water. This monastery also played its part in protecting the citizens of Koroni during the German occupation, as I described in the book. The nearby ruined Temple of Apollo sits beside a Byzantine church. The temple was plundered in past centuries but the surrounding walls have been decorated with some of its remaining carved marbles slabs. See if you can spot them.
Palaiokastro near Pylos
Stunning Voidokoilia beach with Wallace in the left foreground
Snake Castle
Palaiokastro is an imposing castle on a high bluff overlooking Navarino Bay, on the west coast of the Peloponnese near the town of Pylos. It also overlooks the much- photographed, horseshoe-shaped Voidokoilia beach. Despite its sturdy walls, the 13th century castle, built by the Franks and later added to by the Venetians, is mostly in ruins and has a slightly creepy appeal to it, not to mention a degree of danger. Signs on the outer walls warn the structure inside is unstable but a friend in Kalamata warned us it has become a breeding ground inside for snakes, which will add to the appeal perhaps for some visitors … but we wouldn’t recommend walking inside.
Wallace at Palaiokastro
The castle was thought to be impregnable and had a strategic position on this part of the coast but was bombarded by cannon fire by interlopers, including the Turks and Venetians, which explains why it is now a ruin. The best part of visiting this castle is the walk up to its main entrance of sorts, along a narrow track from a small lower car park (beyond the bird-watching sanctuaries) near a sandy beach.
The path winds up over the sea cliffs of the Sykia Pass, and is a wild and exhilarating part of this coastline looking out towards the Ionian Sea. And when you reach the outer walls of the castle finally, they look rather appealing in this remote setting.
Another great find in this area is the nearby village of Gialova, on the edge of Navarino Bay, with a row of beachside tavernas and a nice laid-back vibe. Or if you want to push the boat out, there’s the nearby chic Costa Navarino golfing and spa resort.
Wherever you go in Messinia, there’s a sense that this region is not well-trodden and there are still many other hidden corners waiting for you to discover.
Our recent odyssey in Messinian, which was the inspiration for my third memoir A Scorpion In The Lemon Tree, was featured in a recent article in the Australian Neos Kosmos newspaper. To read click here
For a recent review of the book, see the popular WindyCity Greek site in Chicago.
For more information about this book and the two previous books in the series, charting our adventures in southern Greece during the crisis, go to the books page on the website www.bigfatgreekodyssey.com or the books page on Facebook www.facebook.com/ThingsCanOnlyGetFeta
Hello, blog readers. I am happy to announce that my third travel memoir, set in southern Greece, is now available for pre-order on Amazon.
Called A Scorpion In The Lemon Tree: Mad adventures on a Greek peninsula, the book charts my second long odyssey in the southern Peloponnese with my partner Jim and our crazy Jack Russell dog, Wallace.
While the first two books were set in the Mani, the central peninsula, this one takes place in and around Koroni at the tip of the Messinian Peninsula, where we stayed for 14 months from early 2014.
Marjory, Jim and Wallace in Koroni.
At the window of Palio Spiti (the old house), described in the new book.
Why we ended up in Koroni, when we had our heart set on living once more in the Mani, forms the basis of the book and reveals how you can plan your life down to the last detail but it will be derailed in the end, especially in the wonderfully spontaneous, and sometimes chaotic, place that Greece is. There are more perilous and funny adventures along the way as we try to find long-term rental accommodation and finally come to terms with living in a house that we didn’t expect we’d end up in. If you read the book, you’ll find out why.
A lemon tree at Villa Anemos overlooking the Gulf of Messinia.
You might be wondering about the title, A Scorpion In The Lemon Tree. There are specific reasons why I chose this title and apart from being unlucky enough to have these pesky critters calling on us quite a bit, the title is a kind of metaphor as well, and you can make your own mind up about what the scorpion represents in the context of the narrative. And in case you’ve missed it, there is a scorpion in the lemon tree on the cover illustration. Can you spot it? Wallace the dog should give you a clue.
View of Koroni from its old Venetian castle.
The artwork was produced by the talented London artist Anthony Hannaford, www.anthonyhannaford.co.uk, who created the fabulous covers for my first two books. Once again, he has managed to capture all the colour and vibrancy of Greece. And cheeky Wallace got a front-row seat this time. I also have to thank Jim Bruce for his great editing and formatting of this edition www.ebooklover.co.uk
In this memoir we will make friends with a new cast of heart-warming characters, while connecting again with old friends in the Mani, including our dear friend, goat farmer Foteini, with whom we have several humorous encounters, as always.
Long sandy beaches along the gulf side of Koroni.
While we may have started our latest odyssey disappointed at not being able to live once more in the Mani, we fell in love with Koroni in the end. What’s not to love? It is in a remote part of the (left-hand) Messinian peninsula and I was surprised that there had been so little written about it in the past, so I am thrilled to be able to highlight this region and I hope I will entice more of you to visit. It is a haven of peace and quiet where you won’t see the outward signs of economic crisis, or the effects of recent migration to Greece.
Koroni is set beside a lovely old harbour, with a castle on a high acropolis above and narrow winding streets ascending to it. It is atmospheric and unspoilt, with the Messinian gulf on one side and the Ionian Sea on the other. On either side of the promontory are wide sandy beaches, old churches, and thriving villages within easy reach.
Over the coming months on the blog, I will focus on other aspects of Messinia, as mentioned in the book including some of the hidden corners of this area, and a few curious and unexplained phenomena, like The Hand of God Tree. Watch this space!
I hope you enjoy this memoir, the third in my Peloponnese series. Like the other two books, the narrative is such that you can read it on its own and understand what our travels in Greece have been all about, but you will get a better understanding of how we connected with this region, and its people, if you read the other books as well, starting with Things Can Only Get Feta. The first two chart our adventures from 2010, when we first left our Scottish village to relocate to a remote hillside village for a year, despite the economic crisis. But the year became four in the end. Four of the most fascinating years of our lives.
Enjoy the new book, which is currently available as an ebook and a paperback on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and other outlets. I thank you all for your ongoing support of my work. I always appreciated comments on the blog and if you have liked the books, a small review on Amazon will also be most welcome. It is the lifeblood of authors.
“YOU can’t have moussaka for Christmas,” said one of our English expat friends in the Mani just before our second Christmas in the region, as we discussed festive menus.
“Why not? It seems perfectly reasonable for a Greek odyssey.”
“Okay,” he said with a shrug. “But you can get moussaka any time. Christmas calls for turkey, or at least a chicken. It’s tradition.”
Yes it was, but not necessarily here. Of course he thought we were mad opting for moussaka, but madder still was the whole British faff of trying to replicate Christmas in Greece, with turkeys and even Brussels sprouts. One genial expat who lived full-time in the Mani had bemoaned the fact he had not been able to grow a sprout yet in his garden. If there was one thing I didn’t miss about a British Christmas it was the metallic after-taste of a sprout.
It seemed bizarre to even think of a normal Christmas when some years you can swim until the end of the year ̶ in the southern Peloponnese at least. And if had been any hotter that particular December we may have plumped for a day at the beach, like some of my teenage Bondi Beach Christmases, when I was growing up in Sydney.
That was because the traditional Christmas in Australia is bizarre as well. I had plenty of those in my childhood from my Scottish family keen to stick to the rules of the ‘homeland’, with turkey or a fat chook (chicken) in 100-degree heat, watching the tree ignite from overheated festive lights, and all the oldies squabbling and then passing out in front of British Christmas reruns on the TV.
Christmas in Greece is a quiet time and revolves around family and the church
Christmas in Greece is refreshingly and sensibly low-key, no hysterics, no burn-out. It’s more about family, a time of reflection and religious observation. Greeks do buy presents but they are exchanged mainly on New Year’s Day, which is the feast day of Ayios Vassilis, the Greek version of Santa Claus, without the red suit and reindeer mates.
Villages still opt for the old tradition of a decorated boat like this one in the square at Koroni, Messinia
Some younger Greeks, particularly in towns, have slowly adopted elements of the western Christmas, and having a decorated tree is something of a status symbol now, despite the economic crisis. However, the old ways remain, especially in villages. You still see illuminated boats in a village plateia because this symbol is associated with Ayios Nikolaos, whose feast day is earlier in December, and he’s the patron saint of sailors. You will also hear kids shuffling about the streets on Christmas Eve singing the kalanda song, a kind of Greek carol which might earn them a coin or a sweet.
Christmas decorations with a rural Greek flavour
Our first Christmas in the Mani had been in 2010, the year we moved into the hillside village of Megali Mantineia. On Christmas Day there was a morning service, which was hard to ignore as the sound of the chanting rolled out over the entire village. After this, there were quiet preparations for the long family lunch.
In the morning some village friends had brought us gifts of olive oil and kourabiedes (shortbread) with a thick dusting of powdered sugar. We had visited our farming friend Foteini in the morning and took her a small gift. She was having her Christmas lunch with a neighbour Eftihia and her family but, as with most rural Greeks it would be a modest meal, probably roast goat, since everyone here kept goats.
Foteini insisted we come with her to Christmas lunch and it was tempting but we had already accepted lunch with an expat friend further down the Mani. She had recently retired to Greece and perhaps it was an attempt to summon up the familiar, but it was a proper British meal with all the trimmings and plenty of wine. It, too, seemed bizarre and slightly out of place, but at least we could work off the lipid overload by pacing round the nearby olive groves after lunch.
During the second Christmas we were living down the hill from Megali Mantineia in the seaside village of Paleohora. We were renting a house from a genial Greek couple, Andreas and Marina. On Christmas Day, while they stayed at their home in Kalamata for a family gathering, we planned to have a quiet lunch this time, and make the moussaka, for which we had bought all the ingredients. But it was such a gloriously sunny day, despite being cool, that even after all the fuss we had made about the moussaka, we changed our minds.
We drove instead up to Megali Mantineia to have lunch in one of our favourite tavernas, the Iliovasilema (Sunset taverna). The place was open though the whole family was gathered at one long table to eat their lunch of succulent oven-roasted goat and lemony potatoes. There were several other people dining, a few expats and Greek couple from Athens with a house in the village, but somehow we were all annexed to the family proceedings and it turned out to be one of our loveliest Christmases: traditional, with plenty of parea (company) and no fuss.
Our lovely Greek landlords in Paleohora, making Christmas wreaths
During our second Christmas in Paleohora, however, we did discover one surprising thing about our landlord Marina. She had a secret obsession for some of the rituals of Christmas and it all started way ahead of the festive season. It became one of the chapters in my sequel Homer’s Where The Heart Is, which, to end my Christmas blog, I would like to share in a small excerpt:
“One Saturday there was a knock at the front door. It was Marina and Andreas. Marina was loaded up with things in baskets and myriad plastic bags hooked over her wrist. I was very afraid though when I saw the big pointed red hat of what appeared to be a papier maché Santa Claus.
“Good morning, I’ve brought some Christmas things. I will just sort them out, yes?” she said.
With her usual proprietorial charm that we had fully accepted now, she barged passed us. I assumed she was taking them to the apothiki (store room) to leave until Christmas. Andreas stayed on the doorstep because his feet were muddy and handed us a bag of sweet oranges from his trees. We stood outside, talking and leaning on the wrought-iron railing on the top steps.
While we chatted outside we forgot all about Marina. Suddenly I became aware of furious scurrying and hammering going on behind us.
“What’s happening inside, Andreas?”
He rolled his eyes. “Marina has just decorated your place for Christmas.”
“What?”
We turned around and the living room, which had looked atmospheric and Greek, now resembled Santa’s Grotto at a John Lewis store. The big red Santa was on the dining table and tinsel was strung up over the fireplace, with Christmas lights, candle stands and a dozen statues of Santa Claus striking various festive poses.
“Here,” said Marina, pushing two festive woollen socks towards me. “For Christmas Day.”
“But Marina, it’s only November. Too early for Christmas, surely?” I pleaded.
Andreas shook his head. “I agree, Margarita, but Marina loves Christmas, you have no idea.”
Oh yes I did! The living room − lit up and pulsating, lacking only a sound system for Christmas carols − told me so.
“This old place looks better now, don’t you think?” said Marina, hands on hips like the presenter of a TV home makeover show.
One of the things we liked about being in Greece at Christmas was the lack of commercialism and houses lit up like Blackpool seafront. It was a quiet, reflective time instead. But now we had the whole Christmas fizz inside the house. We laughed over it all later and slowly began to dismantle the effects, leaving some of Marina’s festive tat in place and hiding the rest in the apothiki, hoping she wouldn’t notice….”
Wallace the lovable Jack Russell sends love and licks for Christmas
Well that’s it for the year. To all readers, I would like to thank you for your continuing interest and support of the blog and my Greek books. I wish you a very happy Christmas and a prosperous New Year. If you happen to find yourself in Greece at Christmas, go for the roast goat every time, or have an Aussie beach Christmas instead.
Marjory, Jim and Wallace the Jack Russell terrier in front of Koroni castle, Messinia
BEFORE Jim and I set off on our mid-life adventure to Greece in 2010, a friend commented on our plan with a yearning look in his eyes. “I can only wonder what it must be like to divest yourself of everything and take off into the wild blue yonder.”
As a successful professional with a lovely house and two young children, his comment was motivated mainly by a wish to be free of nine-to-five pressure for a while, nothing more complicated than that.
But many other people said very similar things as we moved closer to our departure date. One professional guy, stuck in a difficult job and with children to support, asked me rather sadly: “Where is our mid-life odyssey? When can we do what you’re doing?”
I felt for his predicament. “You can do it one day if you really want it badly enough” was all I could offer him. But it did become our kind of stock answer to these unexpected comments, because that statement had been true for us.
We had put in a huge amount of planning and time into the proposed odyssey, putting our personal possessions in storage, renting out our house in Scotland, as well as all the nagging issues involved in leaving the UK for a while. Our to-do list before we left was four A4 pages long. But not once did we doubt we were doing the right thing, even though Greece was moving into the first stages of its economic crisis.
Castle Campbell in the spectacular Ochil hills above our former village in Scotland
We wanted it badly enough, but we didn’t seek out the odyssey because we hated our lives, or where we were living, which was in fact a very picturesque village outside Stirling. We just wanted to live for a while under a “wandering star”. And who doesn’t?
Sadly, the subtext to a lot of the comments we heard over and over again were that many other Brits were desperate for an overseas odyssey, or in some cases a permanent move abroad, because they were innately unhappy and they believed life would be happier if only they were some place else.
But is this true? Can your life be happier just because you change location, particularly to a warm sunny country like Greece, for example? I don’t think so. It will be different, for sure, but not necessarily happier, or better.
The lovely harbour of Koroni where we spent the last year of our Greek odyssey
A taverna by the water at Limeni Bay, the Mani. The casual Greek lifestyle has a massive pull for foreigners
Our years in Greece brought us in contact with a lot of British, American and other expatriates, who told us they came to live in Greece to ‘escape’ their old, humdrum lives. Many of them obviously thrived in the gorgeous climate with a better lifestyle than they had back home, particularly the Brits, as if they were permanently on holiday, and no-one should blame them for wanting easier lives and sun and sea.
Many confessed to being happier in their new location, and said it was the best move they had ever made. However, those who sought Greece for a particular reason rather than the expectation of being happier, were probably the most successful resettlers, especially those who managed to assimilate well.
The American artist and writer Pamela Jane Rogers, who has written a fascinating memoir Greekscapes: Journeys With An Artist, left America after the break-up of her marriage and ended up settling on Poros island. She has been living there for 26 years. Mostly, she came to Greece for its beauty and as an inspiration for her painting. She has built up a great reputation for her work worldwide and is thriving in Greece. www.pamelajanerogers.com
The Scottish crime writer Paul Johnson has lived in Greece for some years, which has been the inspiration for many of his novels. Many other writers and artists also find that Greece provides a sunny muse and have no intention of leaving, despite the crisis.
Tsapi cove, Messinia. Who can resist the lure of enless sun and sea?
But a move to Greece is not always the answer to everything. Some British expats told us that although their lifestyle was easier, they weren’t as happy as they thought they’d be. The same problems that plagued them back home, plague them in Greece, as well as the fact that in Greece there is no financial safety net, a poorer health system, and their extended families are not around for support.
Many of those who escaped to Greece have ultimately returned home. One British expat I interviewed in 2010 for a freelance story about Greece had gone there with her husband where they built their ‘dream’ home near Kalamata, only it turned out to be anything but. It was planned as a retirement home, but after a heartbreaking series of bungles with builders, bureaucracy and other disasters, they sold up and moved back the UK, and have no further plans to pursue a dream life abroad.
Wallace our Jack Russell enjoying life as a Greek beach bum
Perhaps it shows that you can’t ramp up happiness just by changing location. It’s something deeper, more intrinsic. There’s a line in a poem by famous Greek poet Konstantinos Kavafis which sums it up. It loosely translates as: “You can change your skies but not your soul.”
To a great extent that’s true. The old life will follow you about wherever you go. A broken heart will be a broken heart wherever you are. A failure to relate with others, or to feel fulfilled on many levels, won’t change just because you go to Greece, or another sunny location.
The Greek/American travel writer Matt Barrett, who has an informative and popular Greek travel website www.greecetravel.com also had similar thoughts recently on his blog, written while on the island of Lesvos. In many ways he inspired me to write this piece.
Having lived for many years in Greece, he made this astute comment about those who want to leave their old life and move there: “The truth is that you only think you want to throw it all away and move to Greece because you are not taking the time to appreciate the things you have that you would absolutely miss if you did … If you are happy, with yourself then it does not matter if you are in Greece or Nebraska.”
The search for happiness is only part of it, of course. People are seeking different things when they go to Greece, and sometimes it’s not all that straightforward. It was one of the themes of my second travel memoir, Homer’s Where the Heart Is, after a Greek businessman had posed a question to me at a village celebration in the Mani. Apart from sun and sea, he asked, “what is it you (foreigners) seek to find in our country that you cannot find in your own?”
It’s not an easy question to answer and it is one of the things I thought about a great deal while in Greece, the illusive thing we are seeking there, and I am not sure I’ve really found it yet. Or that it can be found.
We went to the southern Peloponnese for a year and ended up staying for four. Although we never went seeking greater happiness and contentment I think we were unintentionally happier overall, despite the fact that not all our experiences were positive. We didn’t always get things right. We had tough times in the crisis, like everyone. We found it hard adjusting to another culture, and in our case a very traditional rural culture in the hillside village of Megali Mantineia. We found it tough renting abroad, without all the comforts and security we take for granted in Britain.
But in the end, we went without any illusions or expectations and we were constantly surprised and delighted by everything we found, helped in no small part by the wonderful Greeks we met (and occasionally expats, too), who shared their lives and their stories. Because we never sought happiness in a different location, I believe we found it and that may be the only thing I learnt after four years in Greece.
The place really isn’t the thing. It doesn’t set the agenda I believe.
The expat I mentioned earlier who built her dream home near Kalamata later told me that when she returned to the UK she realised perhaps for the first time what positive things the country had to offer her. So her story really did have a happy ending but not in the way she expected.
Of course, I’m not saying, don’t go abroad to search for the dream life, or have a long adventure – especially in warm and welcoming Greece, and even though it is still in crisis. But don’t go expecting it will change your life forever. As Kavafis indicated, it may only change your ‘sky’ and nothing more – unless that’s really all you want.
Travel Memoirs
TO read more about living in Greece during the crisis in the southern Peloponnese, read my travel memoirs, Things Can Only Get Feta, Homer’s Where The Heart Is and A Scorpion in the Lemon Tree.
The books are available on all Amazon’s international sites, Barnes and Noble and also on the Book Depository www.bookdepository.com (with free overseas postage). On the website www.bigfatgreekodyssey.com you will also find a books page with other information about the books.
New Book
Marjory has just published a debut 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 a recent reviewer as “entertaining, enthralling”. For more information, see the books page link, above.
