The Northern Sporades
The Sporades, the ’scattered islands’ of the Archipelago, fall into two main groups, the northern Sporades lying a little to the north-east of Euboea and the eastern Sporades off the western shores of Asia Minor. The name of ’southern Sporades’ is confusingly given sometimes to the northern Kyklades and sometimes to the Dode¬canese.
The northern group comprises the four main islands of Skiathos, Skopelos, Alonnisos and Skyros, with a number of small islets which are hardly inhabited, if at all. The group has become popular with Greek holidaymakers now that Skiathos is connected by air with Athens - a flight of little more than half an hour. These islands have one thing in common which distinguishes them from most of the Kyklades - they are well wooded. Coming upon them after a visit to the sun-tawny ‘dry’ islands further south, one’s first feeling may be one of relief, if not of amazement, at the sight of the wooded slopes, dark green even in summer.
The main part of the group, with the extension of a few islets, runs out like a sickle from the long peninsula below Mount Pelion. It curves towards the north, so that the outermost Islet is less than thirty miles from the southern peninsula of Chalkidiki. Mount Athos is less than forty miles away, due north across one of the windiest stretches of sea in the Aegean. If the weather is clear, and you come down by sea from the north, the views are magnificent. Pelion and Ossa (those mountains piled one on the other by rebellious Titans in an attempt to dislodge Zeus from Olympus) thrust their shoulders against the west-em skyline, with craggy Euboea to the south and the islands march¬ing out in shadows of green and blue towards the open sea. Further up the coast, in the waters between Olympus and Chalkidiki, the humidity and the airlessness can be oppressive, but in the Sporades the air is fresher, cooled by the meltemi in summer; at all times the violence of sudden storms is notorious.
The modern town of Skiathos - the only one on the island - lies towards the eastern end of an undramatic south coast, and its large harbour is one of the safest in the northern sea. The town straddles a low headland at the entrance to a deep inlet which extends northwards almost to the end of the airport runway, and the two arms of the harbour are divided by a curious wooded promontory. The ferries berth at a big new quay in the eastern section, where the waterfront is disappointing, backed by a line of undistinguished buildings concerned mainly with tourist interests. Round the corner to the west is another series of quays facing south, where you will find more of the traditional features of a Greek fishing port - the fishing boats themselves, with their nets spread out to dry on the quay or unloading their catch in the early morning, and at the far end a splendid old fish market. The rocky Bourtzi peninsula which di¬vides the two parts of the harbour is softened by pine trees; at the end of its connecting causeway you come first to the town’s Gymnasion, or High School, on the site of a mediaeval fortress, and then to a secluded restaurant overlooking the harbour.
The ship-building trade, once as busy here as anywhere in the islands, was based on a lagoon at the northern end of the bay. Now it has almost disappeared, faced with the competition from the nearby mainland, and the airport has cut off the lagoon from the life of the town. Instead, Skiathos harbour has become a base for the flotilla boat hirers, whose one-design yachts line a hundred yards of the eastern quay.
The town of Skiathos was built in the early and mid-nineteenth century, when increasing trade and the liberation of Greece had coaxed islanders all over the Aegean to come down from their hilltop kastros and to build again at the water’s edge where the classical capitals had always been. They were there not only because the inhabitants were inveterate seafarers, but because a certain security obtained in classical times. In the Middle Ages, however, the Italian-bom nobles lording it in their castles were unable to control the seas around them, and the pirates of the Aegean became a byword in
Europe. Life in the islands retreated from the shores and went up inland to fortified places in the hills. The ancient harhours decayed and silted up, becoming no more than havens for coastal fishermen, or even bases for pirates. In the case of Skiathos they held out by the sea until the sixteenth century, when the arrival of the Turks finally drove them inland. When they returned in 1829 they built their town on the two low hills which overlook the harbour.
Not all the Skiathot families are native to the island, many having come as refugees from Asia Minor after the Greco-Turkish war of 1921. The convention which ended the war arranged for the compul¬sory exchange of Moslem and Greek minorities, and something like a million and a half Greeks from Asia Minor were settled in the islands and on the mainland of Greece.
Of the two higher points of the town, the eastern one is crowned by a rocky outcrop and the little church of Agios Nikolaos — modern, but in a quiet shady setting with a view over the harbour. The other and larger hill has many quiet alleyways, and much of the peaceful atmosphere of an island Chora. It would be unfair to blame the Skiathots for the dullness of the building round the harbour, for in 1944 the Germans burned down the whole area before retiring. The Chora has much more character. A feature of its alleyways is the central couloir of stones laid in herringbone pattern, making a natural duct for surplus water. There is peace and quiet here, and you can see the old ladies of Skiathos walking abroad with their distinctive long twists of hair hanging over their shoulders below black headscarves.
Kastro, the place to which the islanders retreated before the Turk¬ish corsairs and invaders, is far away on the mountainous north coast. It is still virtually inaccessible by any overland route except on foot. During the summer, however (but only in calm weather), small boats leave the fishing harbour for a day trip round the coast to Kastro and back. Below the now deserted site, tourists will find a place for swimming and for lunch, and are promised ten minutes in a ‘Cyclops cave’. The main objective is the ruined town on a rocky promontory, once joined to the island only by a drawbridge. It includes the church of Christos Sotiros, still reasonably well preserved, with a late seven¬teenth-century templo and some frescos of about the same date. Once there were three hundred houses and twenty-two churches, but the only other recognizable churches are an Agio Marina and an Agios Nikolaos - though there is an abandoned monastery overlooking the bay to the east of the promontory. It is an eerie and spectacular place, where it would be rewarding to be able to spend time on one’s own.
It must have been here or not far away that the Greeks had a lookout post to keep watch on the Persian fleet advancing down the opposite coast in 480 BC. It was keeping pace with the army of Xerxes, which was making its way south along the traditional inva¬sion route between the mountains and the sea. The Persian ships had to negotiate the unfriendly coast of Magnesia between Mt Pelion and Cape Sepias - the point immediately opposite Skiathos - while the outnumbered Greek squadron was stationed off Cape Artemision in the north of Euboea to bar the way through the Euripos narrows. The lookouts in Skiathos had a grandstand view of what Herodotus tells us happened to the Persians:
The vessels of the fleet, after their arrival on the coast of Magne¬sia, betwixt the town of Castanea and the shores of Sepias, there stationed themselves, the foremost drawing close to land, the oth¬ers lying on their anchors behind. As the shore was of no great extent, the fleet was ranged in eight regular divisions, with their heads towards the main sea, in which situation they passed the night. On the approach of day, the sky and the sea, which had before been serene, were violently disturbed; a furious storm arose, attended by a violent squall of wind from the east, which the inhabitants of these parts call an Hellespontian wind. They who foresaw that the tempest would still increase, and whose situation was favourable, prevented the effects of the storm by drawing their vessels ashore; of those whom the hurricane surprised farther out at sea, some were dashed against the promontory of Sepias,
were dashed against the promontory of Sepias, others were carried to Meliboca and Castanea, so severe was the tempest.*
Four hundred enemy ships were destroyed in this way, with the loss of their stores and most of the soldiers on board. This disaster, fol¬lowed by another to a squadron wrecked on the coast of Euboea, probably prevented the Persians from outflanking the three hundred Spartans under Leonidas who held up the invaders for a crucial week.
Kastro found a place in history again during the last war, when Skiathos was a staging post for Allied troops cut off by the German advance through Greece, which of necessity followed the same route as the army of Xerxes. Again, it has been argued, the brief but determined defence put up by the rearguard delayed the enemy ad¬vance for a crucial few days. Survivors of this action were secretly ferried across to Skiathos to wait for boats to take them to Turkey, from where most of them were able to rejoin their units in Egypt. Leonidas and his men had not heen so lucky.
More New Zealanders than any others seem to have used the Skiathos escape route and it was in Kastro that they were often concealed. A key figure in the escape system was a woman in her forties called Kaliarina, who arranged their hiding places till a ka’iki was ready to take them off. When the Italians finally ran her to ground she wounded one of their soldiers before being forced to surrender. To their credit they did not shoot her but sent her to Italy as a prisoner-of-war, with fifteen New Zealanders she had been sheltering in her cottage. In the town hall of Skiathos there is a framed letter of thanks from General Freyberg to the people of the island, who had in the end to suffer the revengeful burning of their capital by the retreating Germans - though Kaliarina returned in triumph.
An easier expedition than to Kastro is to the monastery of the Evangelistria - an hours walk or a short taxi drive into the hills to the north of the town. It enjoys the usual lovely situation on a tree-clad hillside, but as usual it shows signs of dilapidation, and those who serve it have dwindled to three. The church is tucked away behind the high walls of the monastery, but it proves to be a charming building of a much earlier date than its eighteenth-century surroundings. It has a grey slate hat to its little round tower, and it is
approached (once you are inside the main gates) through a garden courtyard with welcoming seats. It seems now an unlikely scene for dramatic events, but here as early as 1807 the Greek flag was hoisted when Theodore Kolokotronis and other leaders of the national revolt took the oath to liberate Greece.
The map of Skiathos reveals a remarkable contrast. Most of the island is impenetrable mountain terrain, yet along the south-eastern coastline are strung out some of the finest beaches in Greece, and the modern road with its regular bus service connects them all with the capital. You can take your pick of a fresh one every day by getting off the bus at the right stop, or you can spend all your holiday at one of the big hotels which dominate the most popular beaches. Most popu¬lar of all is the one at Koukounaries, which must be illustrated in every travel brochure for the Sporades, with its long sweep of sand and sheltering pine trees close behind. It does however pay the pen¬alty for its popularity by overcrowding in summer, and many will find a quieter scene and just as good swimming at the beach of Agia Eleni, only ten minutes’ walk from a bus stop a mile before
Koukounaries. One simple cafe-bar provides refreshments at the nearer end, and the rocks beyond allow more privacy if the beach fills up with more bodies.
The shortest crossing from Skiathos to Skopelos is to the harbour of Loutraki on the north-west coast. It takes only an hour, and the regular ferries have a bus connection which brings the main town of Skopelos within half an hours drive. This is a saving in time and money over the all-sea route, which involves rounding the northern cape and following the long rugged north-east coast down to Ormos Skopelou.
Whichever way you come, you will find Skopelos a brighter and more natural island than Skiathos. It is even more attractively wooded, mostly with pines, though there are plenty of olives, figs and some deciduous fruit trees in the valleys. The road which follows the south-west coast is exceptionally beautiful, and it passes beaches - in particular those at Milia, Limnonari and Agnodas - hardly inferior to those on Skiathos, though there are not so many of them.
If you come from the sea, the first thing to catch the eye on entering the harbour is the town itself. This is a true Chora, which climbs steeply up round an amphitheatre of rock, and it is one of the most beautiful and unspoilt towns in the islands. Some of the houses are whitewashed (and much though one loves the stark cleanliness of the Kyklades, it can be monotonous) but more often they are washed in pinks and blues and even rich terracotta, reminiscent of some of the eastern Sicilian villages. The woodwork is left a stained dark oak. The narrow alleys and stepped streets are clean and flowery, and you will have a friendly answer to your greeting or request for direction.
What distinguishes Skopelos Chora from any other is that a large proportion of the houses are roofed in heavy irregular blue-grey slates, and a further refinement is that the coping on the ridges is picked out in white. This is true too of many of the churches - said to number over a hundred - and the effect is cool and graceful even in the hottest sunshine.
These heavy slates are not unlike the massive ones which come from the Horsham area of west Sussex. Like them they come straight from the quarries and are impossible to cut into rectangles, but their place of origin is very different. These come from the craggy sides of Mount Pelion above the Magnesian coast, and there was a time when you could find them in Skiathos too. Already in Skopelos these roofs are becoming fewer as the cost of quarrying and ferrying them across
from the mainland grows heavier. What may save them for a time is their indestructible strength and resistance to weather, but factory-made tiles will inevitably take over, as they did on Skiathos when post-war building had to be done as cheaply as possible. It is said that a new slate roof costs as much as the rest of the house.
The town avoids the formal shape of an amphitheatre, as it rises to three separate points with two slight dips in between. The southern district is the least interesting, but it contains the cathedral church of the Koimisis tou Theotokou (the Dormition of the Mother of God), with the Italianate semi-detached campanile you see a lot of in these northern islands.
On the northern summit, overlooking the harbour entrance, are the remains of the mediaeval Kastro. To call the site mediaeval would be misleading, for although the centre is occupied by the church of Agios Athanasios, probably Byzantine in origin in spite of a templo dated 1669, local historians say that it replaced a temple of Athena such as is often found on a classical acropolis. From a small plateia outside you look down on an enchanting little whitewashed church with a dumpy octagonal tower, all roofed in crazy patterns of weath¬ered grey slate. Framed by trees it perches above the deep blue bay with all the grace of a living creature. Its dedication to the Evangelis-mos makes one think of the angel of the Annunciation. As you wind slowly down to the harbour there seems to be an ancient church round every corner, ranging from the very early single nave of Agios Georgios to the handsome basilica of Christos Sotiros.
The long harbour front you will find more attractive than the one at Skiathos. Inevitably some of the bars and restaurants whose tables spill out over the quay grow rather tatty during the summer, and the food and its service varies in quality. The northern end, where the ferries berth, is cleaner and better than the rest. Also at this end is the distinguished and recently restored building which houses the Li-menarcheion, or Port Police. In the proper tradition of Skopelos it has dark oak door and window frames set off by whitewashed walls, with a long roof of blue-grey tiles.
As you sit at your table on the quayside in the thick shade of the carefully trimmed mulberry trees, you look across the lovely bay at a steep green hillside on which you can make out the lighter outlines of one or two buildings. Almost at the top is the monastery of the Evangelistria, which is a convent for nuns. There is a good road up to it, though you could walk up in little more than an hour. The position is beautiful, but it is a sad place and the few remaining
sisters are very poor, and desperately anxious to sell you something from their little shop counter. The church is dull, except for some good seventeenth-century woodwork, but they keep the garden round it bright and flowery. The best feature of the convent buildings is the kitchen, with scrubbed wooden tables and a huge bread oven. One fears that little food finds its way up here to be cooked, and the only refreshment they can offer to the visitor is a glass of water - but it is very good water.
Just before you reach the Evangelistria a sign points the way up a rocky path to your left which leads to another convent, the Moni tou Prodromou, dedicated to John the Baptist. After half an hour’s not difficult scrambling you come out on to an open plateau with lovely views over fresh parts of the island. The first building you see as you turn to your left is a monastery in miniature - a little grey-slated church surrounded by white walls which look welcoming. The gate, however, is rustily padlocked and the courtyard overgrown, and it is the now deserted ‘Moni’ of Agio Varvara.
The Prodromou monastery is a far grander place built into the hillside further on. At once it appears to be a more prosperous place than the Evangelistria, and several cheerful and well-nourished nuns can be seen scurrying about. It is difficult to say whether it is the choice of the sisters to live poorly or comfortably, or whether it is a question of a richer foundation or a better patron. The garden is well kept, and the nuns’ quarters look attractive in an arcaded terrace above the church, mantled in vines. The church too is more interest¬ing, though it carries the same date of 1640, and it has a richly carved templo with the gilded figures of stags, horses and hounds running along over the ritual doorways. Perhaps this gives a hint of the tastes of some powerful patron? One ikon, which looks earlier than the seventeenth century, shows the twelve apostles grouped round a win¬dow whose two shutters actually open to show a Virgin and Child -just like a popular form of Christmas card.
Skopelos teems with churches. Apart from the hundred or so in the Chora, there must be nearly two hundred scattered about in the mountainous hinterland, including several more monasteries. As they all appear to date in their present form from the sixteenth or seven¬teenth centuries, it would seem that if the people built far enough away from the harbours which were the administrative centres their Turkish masters never interfered. Few of them are accessible except by rough ways on foot or donkey, but with such a varied company of saints to protect it Skopelos seems naturally an island of the blest.
At the end of the ferry line through the northern Sporades from Volos or Agios Konstantinos lies Alonnisos. This attractive island can also be visited before the others by taking ship direct from Kymi in Euboea, after which you can travel back to the mainland in the reverse direction. There is also a daily sailing in the summer by small boat from Skopelos, which leaves the quay opposite the bus stop in the early morning and returns in the afternoon. This gives you about five hours to look around the only immediately accessible part, which consists of the harbour of Patatiri and the inland Chora which now carries the name of the island.
There are two confusing things about the name Alonnisos. One is that few sources agree on how to spell it. Different versions appear
even in the official tourist brochures, but the Greek word clearly has two ‘n’s and one ’s’ (as in Peloponnisos) so that must be the one to follow. What is certain is that the stress accent in both cases falls on the last syllable but two.
The other difficulty is to know whether the name belongs to this island at all, or whether it should still be Ikos, as Strabo called it, or Chelidromi, as it was known in the last century. An eighteenth-century map (printed in London and ‘Designed for the Use of Schools and of Gentlemen who make the Antient Writers their De¬light or Study’), for all the fanciful shapes and position it gives these islands, clearly marks one of the larger ones ‘Alonesus’ and places it next to ‘Skopelus’.
Furthermore it is the central and almost the largest island of the group (with its attendant island of Peristera it covers the largest area), and it was the subject of a wrangle about ownership between Athens and Philip of Macedon in 344 BC. A speech before the Athenian assembly called ‘On the subject of Alonnisos’ may have been wrongly attributed to Demosthenes, but it was obviously about a place important enough to be used as a bargaining counter after Philip’s forces had cleared the harbour of a nest of pirates.
Whatever the truth is, the modern harbour is properly called Pata¬tiri. Here all visiting ships berth, yet it is still a genuine fishing harbour, with boats being repaired along the foreshore and a line of bars and restaurants behind. The small town which has grown up in the background has little character, simply because it hardly existed before 1970. In 1965 the Chora above was badly damaged by an earthquake, and the Athens military government (as it was in the time of the Colonels) not only discouraged any attempt to rebuild it but pulled down any building which looked at all unsafe. The people whose home it had been for centuries at first refused to move, but when in 1973 the government moved the school to new buildings in Patatiri they had to give in. The houses built for them there proved shabbily designed and constructed, far worse than the ones they could have reoccupied or rebuilt for themselves in the Chora, where the damage was far from universal.
To reach the old Chora from the harbour is a long and dusty walk, and if there is a taxi it is habitually elusive. However, the enterprising manager of the Ikos Travel Agency at the harbour runs a small bus between there and the Chora which takes on board the morning crop of arrivals for an hour’s conducted visit. Born in the island, Mr Athanassios is very well educated and knows its history thoroughly,
so this is an opportunity not to miss. His must be the only bus in Greece which has Vivaldi on tape instead of bouzouki.
There is an elusive beauty up there. Perhaps the process of deser¬tion leaves something intangible behind, but Alonnisos has not only regained its name but enjoys new life. Those Greeks who can afford it have joined with a handful of visitors - mostly from Germany - in a project to rebuild the village in its original style. This has meant whenever possible bringing in the blue-grey slates of Pelion to roof some modest cottages of one or two storeys. Gardens are difficult, because the water supply is so meagre that it can only be used for drinking. But they have preserved all the trees they can, and with all the wild flowers and the glorious views in all directions you hardly need gardens.
So far they have not managed to reconstitute any of the old churches, which are now locked and deserted. Another sad result of the enforced evacuation was that some precious ikons were stolen during the confusion. As one inhabitant ruefully said, nobody real¬ized they were precious until they were stolen. The waterless Chora
is not a place to stay, though a simple taverna and general store open during the summer.
The long bony spine of Alonnisos runs on for another ten miles to the north, but no road yet reaches much further than the two miles to the beach of Megali Ammos. Yet there are dozens of unspoilt beaches on both the west and the east coasts, as well as on its close neighbour, Peristera. There are ancient sites at Kokkinokastro (Red-castle), said to be the original acropolis of Ikos, and further up the east coast at Poli Nero (Much Water) and Agios Dimitrios. All these places can be reached during the summer by day boat trips from Patatiri, so just five hours in the island can never do it justice. Off the north-eastern tip of Alonnisos there are three little islands which are home to the largest known colony of the Mediterranean Monk Seal.
A holiday on Alonnisos could be fascinating, but you would have to accept that there is practically no road transport and little village life. One of the simplest of Greek islands, it seems to have survived fairly unscathed on fishing and on the tending of sheep and goats, though there are two modern hotels at Marpounda on the south¬eastern promontory and a daily influx of tourists on excursions from neighbouring islands.
Skyros differs from the other northern Sporades in being a bare and classical island. Geographically too it is the odd one out, for it lies a good forty miles south-east of Skopelos across a windswept sea. This may be why the only ferry line which serves it sails the much shorter distance from Kymi in Euboea. It can be tiresome not to have direct communication with the other islands, but the new airfield up in the north puts it within about the same flying time from Athens as Skiathos.
The port of arrival, Linaria, lies at the head of a deep bay on the west coast. It is still only a fishing village, though there are probably rooms to let if you arrive late by boat. The capital, which is officially called Skyros, though locally often known as Chorio or just ‘the Chora’, is on the opposite coast. A bus runs between there and Linaria, a journey of about half an hour which takes you right through the narrow waist of the island (sometimes with detours to reach villages which lie off the route) and across to the east coast. The Chora is built on a high terrace which faces inland, but is itself dominated by the steeply rising hill which was the site of the now ruined Kastro. It was also the acropolis of the ancient city, and was probably the site of the palace of King Lykomedes.
For this is the island of Achilles, and here ‘what song the Sirens sang, or what name Achilles assumed when he hid among women, though puzzling questions, are not beyond all conjecture’. At the plea of his mother Thetis, the future Greek hero was hidden by the king in the palace, disguised as a girl. Thetis had learned from the fates that her son was destined never to return from Troy if he went on the expedition, but that if he could be induced to stay at home he would enjoy a long life; the choice was between a short life, with eternal fame, or a long but inglorious existence. Thetis, being rational and life-loving, like all women, decided that the latter would be better for her son.
Unfortunately her concealment of Achilles was foiled by Odys¬seus, another reluctant hero who had himself tried a rather similar ploy without success in Ithaka. Arriving in Skyros, Odysseus was given permission by the king to search his palace for the supposedly hidden young man. The wily Odysseus had brought armfuls of gifts for the ladies of the court, including jewellery and dresses (he reck¬oned perhaps that even if he did not find Achilles he might profit from his generosity). At a given moment Odysseus retired from the palace and ordered his trumpeter to sound the alarm. The inevitable happened. While the ladies rushed to make sure of their clothes and gems, Achilles stripped himself to the waist and seized a sword and buckler which Odysseus had thoughtfully placed among the gifts. He re-entered the palace in the midst of the panic, and Achilles was forced to accept the glories of war and a short life.
Although the supposed dates hardly tally, this was the same Lyk-omedes (or was it his grandfather?) who is reputed to have killed Theseus by hurling him ‘headlong from the top of the rocks’, accord¬ing to Plutarch. It is easy to imagine that Theseus may have become a bit of a bore by then, endlessly relating all his exploits to the court. After the battle of Marathon, when Theseus was seen to appear in the Athenian ranks, they sent to Skyros and had his bones removed for burial in Attic earth. This was done by Cimon in 469 BC, and his festival the Theseia was celebrated annually in Athens on 21 October.
The encircling walls of the Kastro are Venetian, though traces of earlier ones can be seen in the foundations. The principal gateway remains, with a lion of St Mark lording it above. Inside the walls and linking these two periods are the crumbling remains of a convent dedicated to Agios Georgios Skirianos (a St George who was said to have Arab origins), founded in AD 962.
The town itself follows the architectural pattern of the Kyklades,
wilh geometric houses, flat-roofed and brilliant with whitewash, built up on varying levels of the hillsides. Once inside any of the houses One finds the evidence of a native tradition of craftsmanship in wood which is rare in the Aegean. Some element of Byzantium perhaps lingered on here through all the centuries. It is to be seen in the embroidered textiles, the carved wooden coffers and in the furniture Itself. The folklore section of the town’s museum confirms that the people of Skyros have for many centuries been artists and craftsmen. Il is a tradition that has not died.
At the same time it may be the only place in the Aegean where one finds woodcarving in the Victorian-Swiss style. The interiors of the houses are often quite un-Aegean, with rounded and arched fire¬places, plates hanging on the walls or supported on special plate ledges, and even chairs with barley-twist legs. The thing that hits you as really incongruous - so distant in time and taste from the nature of the island - is the memorial statue to Rupert Brooke, who died of fever not on Skyros but in a hospital ship on the way to Gallipoli. It is a bronze figure of a naked youth in the Greco-German manner, which stands on a bastion overlooking the sea, symbolizing ‘Immor¬tal Poetry’. Brooke, as is clear from his letters and poems, had a sense of humour. The man who reverenced Webster and whose own favourite poet was Donne would have been delighted to hear that in the words of a Mayor of Skyros ‘it is popularly considered rather indecent’.
The beach here is of fine golden sand, and stretches for about half a mile between Magazia and Molos, with a few fishermen’s cottages at the far end. There are other good beaches at different points around the island, but it is wise to consult the most recent source of informa¬tion about how to get there. The state of island roads can alter radically within a few months, so powerful an instrument for change is the modern bulldozer.
You can swim too in the bay of Tris Boukes, or Trebuki, far down on the south coast, a large but uninspiring anchorage with its mouth half sealed by two islands - hence the name Tris Boukes, meaning ‘three mouths’. This is where Rupert Brooke’s hospital ship put in when he died in April 1915. He is buried in an olive grove about a mile from the shore. A white cross surmounts the grave, and a small plot of ground is fenced off by iron railings. A road of sorts from Linaria by way of Kalamitsa prompts some to make the journey by taxi, but the more appropriately romantic way is by kaiki from Li¬naria. A visit just after the last war found the railings bent and broken,