The Quiet Road
I was feeling slightly apprehensive about the plan. Ali had spotted something in the thirty-two year old guidebook she’d liberated from the local charity shop at a price that wouldn’t be enough to pay for a second class postage stamp. “There’s a monastery up in the hills here,” she pointed at the map. I looked doubtfully at the narrow winding road that led up to it from our sea level base. But we wanted to escape Alykanas, which had suddenly become decidedly bustling with the arrival of half term week, and so I agreed we’d try it. We got in the car and drove a few miles north, hugging the coast, a glittering blue sea filling the view to the right. To the left lay steep wooded hills, centuries old olive groves occupying the spaces between the pine scrub that rose up towards the sky. “Next left,” came the instruction and I sucked in a breath of panic as I wondered exactly how many large vehicles we’d meet coming towards us on bends so narrow that barely one of us could pass without incident.
I needn’t have worried though. The road was mostly wide enough for us to pass any oncoming traffic unhindered, but none came. Not once did I have to squeeze the car onto a tight gravel ledge at the edge of an abyss, as instead I was able to extravagantly employ the entire width of the tarmac, taking the middle of each hairpin, able to see far enough above to know that nothing was heading towards us. Tell tale green nets lay at the side of the road in places, a sign that the annual olive harvest was underway up here at least. Through the open windows of the car, a rush of warm air greeted us, carrying the heady scent of high pine forest mixed with the odd waft of mountain thyme. For a while we stopped and stood at the roadside, gazing out over the green landscape towards distant hills and the Ionian Sea beyond. In the distance we could see the resort we’d left only twenty minutes ago. Down there, noisy bars and all day fried English breakfasts, tourists wearing wristbands entitling them to the non stop beer supply that would almost chain them to their hotel complexes. Up here it was another world, where birds twittered and insects hummed. Two cars went past in the quarter of an hour we spent there. Why can’t all roads be like this?
We found the convent before the monastery, and got talking to one of the five nuns who lived there, working the farm, looking after the animals, making conserves, soaps and olive oil to sell to visitors, and showing those visitors around the small orthodox chapel. “I’ve been here five years,” she told us in a noticeably German accent. “I worked in Stuttgart for forty years and then retired to this place. I love it here,” she continued. We could understand why. Outside the convent wall, the sound of cowbells filled the air. Gentle sounds from soft eyed creatures that briefly stopped their grazing and gazed at us disinterestedly as we paused to listen. There was plenty to keep the nuns occupied here, and it was easy to see how someone would be seduced into a life like this. Well apart from the prayers and the 5am starts that is. You wouldn’t be shooting a sunrise over the Peloponnese here either - you’d be mucking out the chickens and collecting the eggs instead.
After lunch at an open air hilltop taverna we continued our journey to the west of the island. This was our nineteenth day here, and so far I’d bathed in the warm sea on every single one of the previous eighteen. Today I wanted to visit one of the very few places on the west coast where you can drive right down to the water instead of arriving at the edge of the sea and finding yourself hundreds of metres above it with nowhere to descend and dig the snorkel out of the bag. On the way we briefly stopped at the lonely monastery, where there was nobody to guide us through the space except for a dozen or more stray cats, most of whom looked to be fending off starvation in relative comfort. It seemed the monks were caring for their more permanent visitors well.
Finally, on the north side of Maries we found the twisting road down to the coast, again blissfully empty although much wider than the one we’d climbed earlier. I’d already been pixel peeping into the satellite map and worked out that although there wouldn’t be a sunset from the stony cove, a pull in along the first straight line of road above it might offer a pleasing enough view. And after that nineteenth dip, and time spent drinking in the soft yellow rays as they turned to orange while we waited for the remaining stragglers to leave, we pulled in at the scrape of earth where I set up the tripod to capture those glorious saturated Greek colours once again. The island positively shouts colour, screams contrast and yells out vibrance sliders in a joyous sensory overload.
The quiet road had been a wondrous experience - one we wished we’d taken earlier in the holiday rather than discovering it on the third to last day. It’s a road worth taking if you need to get away from the hordes for an afternoon and find a place to while away the hours in peace.
The Quiet Road
I was feeling slightly apprehensive about the plan. Ali had spotted something in the thirty-two year old guidebook she’d liberated from the local charity shop at a price that wouldn’t be enough to pay for a second class postage stamp. “There’s a monastery up in the hills here,” she pointed at the map. I looked doubtfully at the narrow winding road that led up to it from our sea level base. But we wanted to escape Alykanas, which had suddenly become decidedly bustling with the arrival of half term week, and so I agreed we’d try it. We got in the car and drove a few miles north, hugging the coast, a glittering blue sea filling the view to the right. To the left lay steep wooded hills, centuries old olive groves occupying the spaces between the pine scrub that rose up towards the sky. “Next left,” came the instruction and I sucked in a breath of panic as I wondered exactly how many large vehicles we’d meet coming towards us on bends so narrow that barely one of us could pass without incident.
I needn’t have worried though. The road was mostly wide enough for us to pass any oncoming traffic unhindered, but none came. Not once did I have to squeeze the car onto a tight gravel ledge at the edge of an abyss, as instead I was able to extravagantly employ the entire width of the tarmac, taking the middle of each hairpin, able to see far enough above to know that nothing was heading towards us. Tell tale green nets lay at the side of the road in places, a sign that the annual olive harvest was underway up here at least. Through the open windows of the car, a rush of warm air greeted us, carrying the heady scent of high pine forest mixed with the odd waft of mountain thyme. For a while we stopped and stood at the roadside, gazing out over the green landscape towards distant hills and the Ionian Sea beyond. In the distance we could see the resort we’d left only twenty minutes ago. Down there, noisy bars and all day fried English breakfasts, tourists wearing wristbands entitling them to the non stop beer supply that would almost chain them to their hotel complexes. Up here it was another world, where birds twittered and insects hummed. Two cars went past in the quarter of an hour we spent there. Why can’t all roads be like this?
We found the convent before the monastery, and got talking to one of the five nuns who lived there, working the farm, looking after the animals, making conserves, soaps and olive oil to sell to visitors, and showing those visitors around the small orthodox chapel. “I’ve been here five years,” she told us in a noticeably German accent. “I worked in Stuttgart for forty years and then retired to this place. I love it here,” she continued. We could understand why. Outside the convent wall, the sound of cowbells filled the air. Gentle sounds from soft eyed creatures that briefly stopped their grazing and gazed at us disinterestedly as we paused to listen. There was plenty to keep the nuns occupied here, and it was easy to see how someone would be seduced into a life like this. Well apart from the prayers and the 5am starts that is. You wouldn’t be shooting a sunrise over the Peloponnese here either - you’d be mucking out the chickens and collecting the eggs instead.
After lunch at an open air hilltop taverna we continued our journey to the west of the island. This was our nineteenth day here, and so far I’d bathed in the warm sea on every single one of the previous eighteen. Today I wanted to visit one of the very few places on the west coast where you can drive right down to the water instead of arriving at the edge of the sea and finding yourself hundreds of metres above it with nowhere to descend and dig the snorkel out of the bag. On the way we briefly stopped at the lonely monastery, where there was nobody to guide us through the space except for a dozen or more stray cats, most of whom looked to be fending off starvation in relative comfort. It seemed the monks were caring for their more permanent visitors well.
Finally, on the north side of Maries we found the twisting road down to the coast, again blissfully empty although much wider than the one we’d climbed earlier. I’d already been pixel peeping into the satellite map and worked out that although there wouldn’t be a sunset from the stony cove, a pull in along the first straight line of road above it might offer a pleasing enough view. And after that nineteenth dip, and time spent drinking in the soft yellow rays as they turned to orange while we waited for the remaining stragglers to leave, we pulled in at the scrape of earth where I set up the tripod to capture those glorious saturated Greek colours once again. The island positively shouts colour, screams contrast and yells out vibrance sliders in a joyous sensory overload.
The quiet road had been a wondrous experience - one we wished we’d taken earlier in the holiday rather than discovering it on the third to last day. It’s a road worth taking if you need to get away from the hordes for an afternoon and find a place to while away the hours in peace.