From Cairo to the Connemara: A Sojournal

 Pt2 - 14 INTERLUDE: IN THE SILVER SILENCE Delphi, 1977: At the youth hostel Ilene and I team up with four fellow travellers from England. We spend the night together eating, drinking and swapping travel stories at a small taverna perched on the side of the mountain. A full moon glows silver in the clear vaulted sky. It’s cool out on the deck but we barely notice, warmed as we are by the wine and good company. At some point late in the evening the others retire to the youth hostel while Ilene and I settle on a stroll around the village. I don’t know how we end up at the deserted archaeological site a few ks out of town but here we are at the low fence beside the entrance gate. Then in a crazy wordless minute we’re on the inside threading our way up to the stadium. Sitting in the royal seats we whisper to each other in the silver silence as though speech might rouse the spirits. Here in this place of myth and legend we are creating our own personal mythology, a moment only we two w...

 Pt2 - 13: ON THE MAINLAND Mycenae is famous as the seat of Agamemnon, the aggrieved king who led his troops on a ten year siege of Troy to avenge the kidnapping of his wife Helen by the Trojan warrior Paris, and we all know how that turned out. This morning Mycenae was under its own siege by busloads of chattering schoolchildren. I’ve decided when I get home I’ll invent a spray for this. We hacked our way through the hordes up to the Lion’s Gate which offered a spectacular view across the Peloponnesian Plains. It was a peerless day to be at any sort of altitude but, alas, the infestation of school kids and the growing invasion of German tourists destroyed any enjoyment of the moment. With the drive to Olympia on the western coast ahead of us we cut our losses and returned to the car. There were a hundred tour buses choking the carpark, and I’m not making that up! It took us longer to negotiate our way out to the road than we’d actually spent up at the site. The next few hours we...

 Pt2 - 12: TWENTY FOUR HOURS ON THE MOVE   The Ariadne was little more than a cattle barge. It was already so uncomfortably crowded when we pulled out of Naxos for the seven hour leg to Piraeus we were flat out finding a square meter of deck to camp on. It was impossible to stretch out so we assumed the foetal position to attempt some sleep. At first the vibrations were mildly amusing, like a therapeutic bed, but the novelty soon wore off. Apart from that first strung out night in Cairo we’d managed to avoid resorting to the Normison (Temazepam) in our little first aid kit, but it was obvious after nearly two hours of relentless juddering that if we were going to get any shuteye at all it would have to be assisted. About 1:30am we both swallowed a Normie. The next thing I knew it was 5:30, stirred to comatose consciousness by increasingly loud music playing over the PA to rouse us in preparation for Piraeus still two hours hence. Tess hadn’t slept a wink. We’d already de...

 Pt2 - 11: NAXOS The sleek new hydrofoil motored across Santorini’s sheltered harbour on course for Naxos like a yellow torpedo. I sank back into the aircraft seat with a copy of the Times bought yesterday in Thira for what I assumed would be two and a half hours of satin smooth sailing, but the moment we broached open water it was suddenly more like a Cessna in a washing machine. I folded the newspaper up and concentrated on not losing the bacon and two fried eggs I had for breakfast. It took a while, but I eventually attuned to the conditions and recovered some composure. The day was hot and clear, but out here the breeze whipped up enough chop to suck the fun out of the crossing. Even as we forged the last 200 meters to the town pier at Naxos the wind fairly howled across our bow. It wasn’t just the maelstrom that made Naxos seem our most charmless landfall in the islands. Apart from the classical arch on the low bluff to port, the waterfront and the promenade lacked the colo...