Nick – You may be pleased to hear that the journey from Patra to Athens, all 130 miles of it, was uneventful. A scenic ride in 2 legs. The first took us southeast along the top of the Peloponnese, for 80 miles, then the second, northeast into Piraeus, Athens, for the boat at 3pm.
It was a glorious Tuesday morning, the sun was beaming and so were we. This was the last journey by bike before we caught the ferry to Symi and home. Three more hours sitting astride, what by now had become, our trusty steed, and that was it, done. We had decided the night before to hit the trail and catch breakfast on the way. With 5 hours to do a 3-hour journey, we took our time getting up and were still donning our helmets around 9, pure luxury.
Despite having a terrible night’s sleep in Patra, the last time we visited, we really liked the city. It is the third largest city in Greece and being a university city, it has a young population and thus a thriving nightlife with some really good restaurants and tavernas.
Nancy – Typical, all about food and drink. Patra is the place where St Andrew lived, and preached Christianity, and where he was horribly crucified by the Romans. He chose to be crucified on a diagonal cross because, as history has it, he thought he was not worthy to be crucified on the same shape cross as Jesus.
Nick – I would have gotten onto that. Apart from being Scotland’s patron saint, I bet you haven’t made the link between that and the flag of Scotland.
Nancy – St Andrew wore a nice blue cloak?
Nick – No, the diagonal cross on the flag silly.
Nancy – I know that dear. I was just winding you up.
Nick – Oh, for goodness’ sake!
Nancy – I think we also like Patras because, in Symi, over the summer, we got to know a lovely young woman who comes from there. She is attending university in Patras and wanted to chat in English to improve her language. She is such a beautiful woman, her sunny attitude seemed to rub off on us and on the idea of Patras itself. Isn’t it odd how these things work!
Nick – As we left the city, we had a wonderful view across the gulf to the mainland and the imposing bridge that spans the gap. Opened in 2004 and, at nearly 2 miles long, it is the longest bridge of its type in the world. We stopped and had a good look. It is pure white and quite breathtaking in the morning light, but the need for breakfast dragged us away.
It was the first of October, sunny and beautiful at 19C (about 67F). Over coffee and croissants, we soaked up the warmth and watched the poor Greeks going about their work, but eventually we forced ourselves to get a move on and found the motorway.
It was Motorway 8, brand new at a cost of 2 billion euros. When it was inaugurated, only 6 months earlier by Alexi Tsipras the Prime Minister, he said, ‘It stands as a symbol of Greece’s ability to stand on its own 2 feet’ (that is, despite being bled dry by the European banks).
It is a struggle for Greece to pull towards sovereignty again after the crash and Europe’s subsequent financial stranglehold. The long-term contracts brought about by the forced sale of Greece’s airports, railways, water and energy, for example, means that for decades, money will be flowing out of Greece instead of staying at home to stimulate the domestic economy. Even the port of Piraeus has been privatised and sold off to China!
In Tsipras’ speech, if you change the words ‘Greece’s ability to stand on its own 2 feet’ to ‘the ordinary Greek’s ability to stand on their own 2 feet’, a different picture emerges. In 2013, 60% of young workers were jobless but at least that is down to 35% as we speak. That is only one in 3, only! About 30% of the Greek people are close to the poverty line with over 20%, in 2017, living in extreme poverty which means they cannot pay their bills or warm their houses or regularly eat a meal with meat or fish, or even afford a television, according to European statistics.
Nancy – I don’t think this is the place for politics, Nick.
Nick – I think that is one of the problems in Britain. Very few of us want to talk about politics for fear of offending!
Nancy – Well you can get off your high horse now.
Nick – But…
Nancy – Nick!
Nick – Okay. Let’s get back to the nitty-gritty of our journey.
We made the usual stops for the 2 “Ps”, petrol and piddles but then, all of a sudden, we had to add another “P” stop – “the putrefaction stop”. My nose was dissolving into a mucus mess. By now I had succumbed to Nancy’s sneezes, which would not have been a problem had I not been riding the scooter with my visor down. If you have seen the movie ‘Dumb and Dumber’, where they go over the mountain on a moped and come down with their runny noses frozen all over their faces, you will know what I mean. The warm wind was drying the…well you get the picture. Suffice it to say, we also had to stop regularly to wash my visor down with water from our drinks bottle. Oh, ignominy!
Nancy – What is the matter with you this morning? First you are off on one about politics now you have become obnoxious about bodily functions!
Nick – I’m ill and it’s all your fault.
Nancy – It’s your nephew’s fault. Anyway, I’ve had my cold for days now and you haven’t heard me complaining?
Nick – No, but my cold is very bad. And I have to do all the driving as well.
Nancy – You poor old thing.
Nick – Less of the old!
Nancy – Oh dear, grumpy groops!
So, once more, there we were, 2 odd English people, driving down a motorway in Greece, in beautiful sunshine, sneezing and coughing and moaning!
But the journey could have been worse, it could have been raining. In fact, the opposite was true. At one of the stops, we were so hot that we removed our coats and tied them round our waist.
Nick – I still had to keep my visor on.
Nancy – Patience Nancy.
It was a fantastic drive and the new motorway almost halved our journey time. What I find interesting about this motorway is that they gave the tunnels names. I don’t mean they named them after the area it cuts through, like ‘The Dartford Tunnel’ for example, but after people. One of the tunnels on this stretch was named after a socialist leader and another after a teacher and left-wing activist who was killed in a demonstration about educational reform. Isn’t that amazing and quite controversial, even for Greece.
Nick – So you are onto politics now?
Nancy – It’s your fault.
I usually leave the factual bits to Nick but seeing he is dying from his debilitating cold I will take over.
Nick – Hmph!
Nancy – In the mountains, across the Gulf of Corinth to our left, was the Oracle of Delphi. It is brilliant because, in a dominantly male society, the oracle was a woman, the high priestess of the temple to Apollo, at Delphi. Through her, Apollo spoke to give advice and prophecies. We are talking 800 years before Christ here. She was clever because she would rarely give a straight answer…
Nick – A woman, who would rarely give a straight answer? Gosh!
Nancy – Watch it!
What I am trying to say is the advice she gave was often deliberately ambiguous. For example, she told Nero that the number 73 marked the hour of his downfall and, while he was thinking he was going to live to the ripe old age of 73, he was abruptly murdered by a man, aged 73.
Nick – So if we consulted her today she would say something like, ‘Unless you stop sneezing Nick, Piraeus will arrive in a fog!’
Nancy – She might, indeed, but your visor is clean now, isn’t it?
Nick – Snot bad.
Nancy – Ah, I see you’re feeling a little better?
Nick – No!
Nancy – The Gulf of Patra slowly morphed into the Gulf of Corinth and soon we were about to cross the Corinthian Canal which links this gulf with the Saronic Gulf on the Athens side. 130 years ago, if we were travelling up the Gulf of Corinth towards Athens in a boat, we would have bumped slap bang into the city of Corinth. To continue by boat, we would have had to turn around and sail another 430 miles around the Peloponnese. Today, in the same boat, we would simply sail straight through the Corinthian Canal, a mere 4 miles, and out the other side. Essentially the Peloponnese is now an island!
Nick – If we were in the same boat as the one from 130 years ago we would probably sink.
Nancy – I will continue! The Corinthian Canal is one of my absolute favourite pieces of engineering. When I crossed it for the first time, I was amazed. Seeing the sheer 300 feet drop of the walls and the boats dwarfed at the bottom, fair took my breath away.
Nick – Okay, you’ve got me going again, darling, thank you. There is a town at the other end of the canal called Isthmia which, although small, is fascinating in itself.
Nancy – For those of you who aren’t interested in the more arcane elements of history, drop a paragraph.
Nick – For thousands of years, before the canal was dug, they actually hauled the boats out here and physically dragged them over land to Corinth, saving them days sailing all the way round The Peloponnese. Isthmia itself dates back hundreds of years before the birth of Christ. Alexander the Great, Emperor Nero and even Saint Paul visited Isthmia because here was the temple to Poseidon, Greek god of the sea, and every 2 years, from 600BC onwards, it held the PanHellenic games, one of the precursors of the modern Olympic games. Apparently, Poseidon the sea god won Isthmia after a battle with Helios, the Greek god of the sun.
Another spectacular thing about Isthmia is that it is at the end of a massive Roman wall, The Hexamilion, that ran across the whole of the isthmus to keep out the barbarian hoards. With a fortress and 153 towers along its length it is the largest archaeological structure in the whole of Greece. Of course, only parts of it can be seen today.
For those of you interested, I can recommend a brilliant book by David Stuttard that links the characters in Greek mythology to actual places and archaeological sites on the map.
Even today the town is not without its marvels. Isthmia sports a very unusual bridge. You can drive a car across it from one side of the Corinthian canal to the other but, if a boat is coming, it sinks beneath the waves and disappears.
I wonder if the word ‘isthmus’ comes from the name of the ancient town, or the name of the ancient town comes from the word ‘isthmus’?
Nancy – Sigh! After an hour, we were driving through the crumbling waterfront buildings of Piraeus. We have had problems in the past, finding our ship in the port, nearly missing a boat to the islands once. (Gosh how surprising, I can hear you say!) But this time Nick was obviously back on form. He remembered leaving the port from a back entrance, the last time we were there, and, before you could say Blue Star Ferry, we pulled up alongside it.
On an enormous computerised sign, the words “Welcome Aboard” appeared in Greek and English, followed by the itinerary. The names of the islands moved across the screen as we read them aloud, ‘Patmos, Lipsi, Leros, Kalymnos, Kos and…’ neither of us could help it, we both shouted ‘Symi’, before giving ourselves a congratulatory cheer followed by hugs and kisses. We had made it. Even if the bike collapsed onto the ground in a heap now, we could drag it onto the boat, this end, and off the boat at the other. Unless the boat sank, we were home and dry.
What am I saying!