Wales

Today our hostess took us on a little tour SW of Hereford and into Wales (land of my fathers...). We set off towards Abergavenny but she suddenly remembered Kilpeck and asked if we would like to see it. WOULD WE LIKE TO SEE IT????? This has the most famous sheela-na-gigh in England. (Look it up). The church is set in an egg-shaped church yard, a sign of great antiquity. Usually circular.... 'They' say the Devil couldn't hide in the corners of a squared off church yard, but somehow, this seems a poor explanation and any aerial photo will show you that this plot is definitely not circular, and not accidental. I think the 'egg' shape is something else, but I am probably obsessed. There's a whole lost village here, never excavated, but clearly visible. Also the sad remains of a Norman motte and bailey castle, now overgrown with trees and rather pulled about. English Heritage might be doing something about it, but so far their work amounts to a pictorial sign bolted onto a gate. Trying to walk up to see was too treacherous for me in my slidy boots. I called out for a stick to help me back down again and retreated. Back to the church - WOW!!!!! Outside, holding up the eaves, are dozens of corbels - animals, angels, peasants, faces, wheels, my sheela-na-gigh, musicians.... wonderful. Its VERY reminiscent of Barfreston church on the way to Dover, but with less weathering, and so more definition. Also bigger. Red stone. Luverly. Inside, apart from the font, there is a stoup which looks like a pregnant tummy with hands held across it, and that may be older than the church. This has carved elements below, which look like a lady's bum and thighs, or like a phallus with balls. Hmmmn. A wondrous place. But what really excited me was one of those corbels outside, on the very eastern-most point of the apse. Here there is a corbel said to be the Devil with the Lamb of God. No sign of Devil, and the Lamb is now identified as an Equus Dei, a sort of Christian horse. As some of you will know I have a very special interest in any early representations of horses in or on early churches. They are always associated with the Devil. This particular horse has a marvellous spear-like Cross over it, which rests on one hoof. To me, the connection with the stories of St Eloi and St Dunstan are unmistakable. I will have to explore all this further. Anyone with any information and willing to share it, would be very welcome. We called into the local gastropub to use the loo, and had a nice coffee, till the muzak drove us out. Then we went on to Dore Abbey - a massive Cistercian foundation now lacking its entire nave, but still enormous and beautiful, with ancient stained glass, carvings, an apse, and so much... very French in flavour, not surprisingly, and an odd survivor of Henry VIII's raids, as this truncated end has served as a parish church since the mid-16th century. Hooorah. All Cistercian churches were dedicated to St Mary. The outside of this old priory has a prominent window with the same pointy egg-shaped design, which I have seen in Greek Orthodox icons, often as the border for a Christ in Majesty. It also appears on the pretty and mysterious sarcophagus in Minster church on the isle of Sheppey and it always makes me think of a particular and intimate female shape. (Remember the sheela-na-gigh). Around and outside in the fields, there were some long-legged horses, and lambs and ewes, and daffodils. A sign on the lych gate commemorates an officer who died in the first World War, 'killed in action, by his friends....'. or so it says. V amusing (now). Then to Abergavenney for lunch in a cafe called Cwtch, meaning 'cuddle', and all very nice. The owner gave us a taste of her new pickle made of beetroots and fresh oranges, with cumin and coriander. Yummy. Her shop must once have been an apothercarys' but was also a grocery and she said the old fittings are now on display in the Castle Museum. So, after I had bought some walking boots, we went to see all this. The Castle was blasted to bits during the Civil War, and remains a spacious rather elegant ruin, with muddy grass between the eloquent stone relics which once formed stout walls and corridors. The Museum shows that Herman Hess was imprisoned in Abergavenny, surprisingly, but that due to the remoteness of the place no-one in the area suffered from bombing during the war, except one random fire-fighter who was blown over a hedge when he tackled a loose explosive. Then we went for a walk on the Sugar Loaf Mountain (so I could try out my new walking boots), and our hostess could get a good walk. She was disappointed as I was too puffed out after 20 minutes steep climb and yet another huge rainstorm threatened. I did feel a bit weedy about this, but a) my socks kept slipping down inside my boots, and b) the rain when it arrived shortly after our return to the car was absolutely torrential. Ha! Back home, through the blinding storm. Reading Pigsties and Paradise (an account of lady diarists visiting Wales in the 18th and 19th centuries. Then supper, a bit of blogging and now time for bed. I did hear, during the evening, that one young man readint my reports so far, has much enjoyed my account of Plymouthe which he knows. He had not thought of that city in that way. Our host, who plays the organ, is building his own, and beside the dining table has a huge loom of wires and connections, which he has taken two years so far to create, and which he will install in his own little organ loft upstairs within a month or two. Various parts have been acquired from dealers over the last year or so - stops, pipes, pedals etc. It is a labour of love. The whole thing will be dismantle-able, when he comes to sell the house. He disdains installing an automatice transposing mechanism (which he could easily do), as all proper organists should be able to transpose pieces at sight, up or down. I hope my reports will be of at least as much interest as the diaries of the lady travellers to Wales in the 1790s and 1820s, whose works I have been reading this afternoon. They mostly complain about the dirty inns, and admire the sublime and picturesque effects of architecture and landscape. I am not sure what I am missing.

Comparison

Yesterday we drove from Plymouth to Hereford. We decided to go over Dartmoor, despite, or maybe because of the threatening weather. Having been to see the Turner & the Elements exhibition at Margate (for the second time) last week, my eye was tuned in to mists and lowering clouds, and we certainly had a dynamic atmosphere to explore. I may have been a bit harsh in my comments yesterday about the grief-stricken or crazy tone of Plymouth, and I would not want to be seen to be condemning it - it is a hard-working, active, dedicated place with stunning views and impressive topography. I was just very aware that it's not an easy place to move around in. You cannot go directly to your objective. You must go around, up, down, behind, askance. A very mental place. Leaving, out through the increasingly leafy suburbs we found road-works and a coach which had blundered into the middle of the entrapments and barricades. There may have been an edge torn off a building, not sure. Resulting hold-ups were short-lived and merely amusing. I have never been across Dartmoor before. Climbing away from the sea, one is rapidly aware of the climatic differences brewing from altitude, as the glistening vivid green buds of the low lands shrink and shrivel, and the landscape turns brown and bleak. The skies did not let us down, with huge swathes of dark and soggy threat sweeping along. We kept seeing patches of sunlight on neighbouring hills - always somewhere else. These stabs of theatrical illumination served to make our own position all the more dark and bitter. Only two little Dartmoor ponies to be seen, sheltering against a belt of foreign-looking trees. Solitary corvids swept past, with wing tips turned up, floating past almost like hawks. I longed for these to be ravens, but I think they were crows. Rookeries were not to be seen. Up to Princetown, and the great prison like a Gothic warning, with the rain drenching down over it, and the water running down the roads in inch-deep streams, and the light struggling to get in under the clouds. The ground is all heathery and brown, quite desolate. If any inmate were to escape (would they? could they? how long since that happened?), it would be frightening to be living in one of the solitary houses around, so easy to be held hostage..... The strong Celtic quality to the architecture - stone cottages, slate roofs, small windows, low stone walls, lots of pebbledash rendering, all dark and wet... some of this has been mitigated by cheerful modern paints, and occasional enticing signs offering Tea or Pottery etc. but not very effectively on a cold spring morning. We had the whole of the moor to ourselves, it seemed, seeing fewer than eight vehicles altogether as we crossed to the north. Getting down into Moretonhampstead we found some of the most constructive bad parking ever to be seen: farmers' wives double- or triple-parking, huge delivery lorries unloading wares, through traffic entirely trapped, people backing in long lines to make space, and all done in a carefree manner implying this is a daily practice. Very instructive. Skirting round Exeter we started on what became a marvellous Comparison - hence the title of this blog. The Exe Valley is one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen, and yet I have never heard of it. Its wide meadows and wandering river are scenes of the utmost tranquility and fruitfulness, unspoiled, calm, inspiring. We stopped at Stoke Canon for a coffee. There they have a Community Pub - brilliantly conceived and executed as a piece of social engineering - filled with happy people (playing dominoes), advertising the next Film Night (The Blues Brothers), talking about the last one (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest), serving coffee by a very roundabout way.... When we asked, the barman looked a bit wild and said it would take ten minutes as the chef hadn't arrive yet. We agreed to wait, and eventually he came in with two mugs of fragrant coffee which he had collected from a shop over the road! While we drank it, he chatted with us and then the chef himself arrived, shouldering a big bag of chopped vegetables or something. We saw the village has also gained funding from the National Lottery for their church, so they are obviously very well organised in Stoke Canon. Eventually we made it to Watchet - or Williton to be precise - to visit the Bakelite Museum. The mill it's housed in is at least as interesting as the collection, which is a not-quite experiece. It's the personal and slightly weird collection of an artist (whose marvellous self-portrait hangs on display), taking in not just Bakelite but all sorts of 19th and 20th plastics: radios, toys, TVs, eggcups, clocks, puzzles, electric fires, hairdryers, plates, picnic sets, hoovers, golf clubs, ornaments, chairs, caravans, bikes, more and more stuff, some of which I have myself bought years ago, and so slightly dispiriting because one's OWN LIFE is here part of a museum display. Very idiosyncratic, and we can only hope that in future some august institution will buy all this and set it out in a more spacious hall, with better labelling and lighting. Actually, the present building is full of holes (no glass in some of the windows), so it was cold and bleak in there, and the pouring rain and dark skies did not do much to help. Going to the loo there was rather like getting to the garden of Polhawn Fort, by way of a wet path beside towering cliff or quarry face, creeping round the back of the building. The M5 gave us more Turneresque experiences, with wild spray pushing up in front of us as we sped over rivers and past ranges of hills barely visible in the rain. Still, England is lovely. We pressed on to the Severn Crossing and then up into the Wye Valley - something I have longed to see since my Damascene discovery of Dorothy Wordsworth's Journals three years ago... I was mortified to find the road to Tintern is in fact high above the river, up on the shoulders of the valley. You only get that view of the meadow flats as you get to Tintern itself. This was not what I had anticipated, and I was aware of being ill-prepared for my visit to this hallowed place: Turner and Wordsworth having presented it to us so powerfully at about the same time, a Sublime, Picturesque landscape, offering an inner view of ones own life. Anyway - we paid up and went in, mooching round the huge ruins, stepping over vast puddles, wondering at the height of the structure, reading the rather good signs... Then Cream Tea in The White Monk Tea Room (all tips going during 2011 to charity, no mention of tips in 2012. The River Wye is a sinister looking creature, tidal at this point and always rather frightening with steep muddy banks and no quarter. I don't like it. The contrast with the Exe earlier this morning was very striking. This is how I would like you to remember it. The River Exe and the River Wye. Is there a River Zed?

Plymouth and Cornwall

With my 'would-be novelist''s hat on, I would definitely chose Plymouth as a location and metaphor for confusion, madness and grief. It is a vast city, sprawling out over a complex of steep hills and complex harbours - a series of drowned valleys, with such a history of war and preparation for war that the whole layout and architecture is pressed to extremes. How many wives have waved goodbye to their young officer husbands? How many mothers pressed their twisty young sons to their sobbing bosoms as the lads went off to the Navy's stern clutches? The whole centre of the city was bombed and burned to ashes during WWII, and the archaic was replaced with the brutalities of mid-twentieth century concrete and traffic management flow. Being an Atlantic seaboard, they are used to rain there, as we found, and they use granite in copious quantities for their walls and steps, so that the tone is really dark and grim, at least at this time of year. However I should also mention the wonderful red stone pavements we saw, either marble or granite - of superb quality and fit for a palace... these areas just roughly arranged around the Barbican. This ancient area remains as a sort-of quaint fishing port, surrounded by rip-off restos in the pretty old warehouses, and the Citadel up beside the Hoe is a wonderful masculine fortress - rather plain compared to its French equivalents created by the great Vauban, but still impressive. I think I mentioned the squads of young men doing their physical training all around the town, running, straggling, being urged on by the demi-gods who are in charge of them, these latter being older, shining with vigour and health, making it all look easy. Training in the hilly streets of Plymouth is still easier than being shot at in Afghanistan. Our hotel - being a concrete slab from the 60s - was alright, but exasperating somehow, as it was run down where it need not have been. In writing my blog yesterday morning, the machine was taken over by some anti-virus routine sweep, and my precious paid-for-in-advance minutes were gobbled up by its activities - but the staff could not have cared less. An old lady hoovered round me. In our room, the carpet was truly threadbare and ever so slightly sticky.... (yuk). But the view from the window was magnificent, worth every penny of the extra £20 they charged us. The waterways were laid out in front of us like a smaller version of the Bosphorus in Istanbul. Warships manoeuvred around the ways, sometimes with tugs or pilot boats in charge. Lights gleamed and flashed in the darkness. Under the onslaught of the might depression sweeping over Britain, the waters were slate grey and ominous. The Eddystone lighthouse, removed from its rock and rebuilt, stood sentinel on the Hoe to our left. Marvellous. We had a small outing in the car - found our way into interminable council-type estates - thousands and thousands of houses and apartments, piling up the hills. Here and there, little areas reminiscent of Bristol (Clifton), and in fact in one such we saw a sign to BBC Plymouth. We picknicked our lunch back in our room, showered and put our gladrags on, and then headed off to find the wedding which had summoned us. This meant crossing on the Torpoint Chain Ferry - and HOORAH! for this marvellous, efficient, quaint, historic, funny gadget. A short wait, then onto the broad open deck, preceded by an ambulance with its light flashing. Not much traffic. With a clanking of the chains and barely any shudder, we were off! The quarter mile took less than 10 minutes and there we were, in Cornwall. This saves 29 miles by road! We tootled out onto the peninsular towards Rame point - along a narrow cliff road with huts built by the citizens of Plymouth during the Blitz and now much sought after, and down down down, with the Atlantic on our right... down a narrow private track, tight into the cliff, with water rushing down and a huge storm gathering on the far horizon out at sea. Parking, crossing a little bridge, along a paved flat roof, down a fantastic steep granite spiral staircase, into a red-brick vaulted spacious bedroom! What???! Is this Polhawn Fort? Yes! Through another huge red-brick ceiling bedroom, and a sitting room, and then into a series of gun-rooms, now decorated with fairy lights and wedding-feast tables, but once clearly a gunnery platform, with a series of wide chamfered window embrasures backed with huge granite window sills. The wedding party was in the garden - a windswept grass terrace on the sea side - having photos taken before the storm struck. There was barely time for hallos. As the hail and sleet arrived, we all rushed back inside, to hugs and greetings. Slowly the party gathered, with beautiful babies and children, glamorous girls, swoony-looking tall American and Canadians, glowing grandparents, helpers doing final adjustments to the tables and decorations, photographers with massive cameras snapping away at everything.... Someone explained, the guns here were never fired in anger. By the time the building was finished, that particular war was over. The amazing vaulted rooms (reminiscent of the old Parson Woodford restaurant in Norwich if you knew that) became a hospital. Whoever owns it now is on to a good thing. It's booked up forever as a wedding venue, romantic, wild, hard to find, and very memorable. Well, a wedding is a wedding and this was loving, funny, a bit rude, very informal, very international, generous, laid-back, very pretty, well fed, well supplied with every kind of drink, and a joy to attend. Dinner was actually fish and chips! All delicious and brilliantly managed. Funny speeches, honest and amusing. Such love, from all generations of the families. After the dancing started, we crept away, the first to leave, and somewhat reluctantly, but Andrew had toothache and we had a way to go back.... .along the cliff, back to the ferry (clank clank), through the city to the hotel, and to crash out like old people. Sigh. Another howling night as the storms swept across. We tried to feed a clever young seagull which eyed us up from a tiny ledge below our windown. We watched a German frigate gently make its way out of the huge harbour. We ate a private and utterly delicious breakfast of fruit salad and croissants (courtesy of Marks and Spencer) at a cost of £3 or something, compared to £11.99 a head in the admittedly pretty but grotesquely overpriced hotel dining room. I gave my lovely white rose (from the wedding) to the maid who was going to clean our room, along with a tip. On the TV there was a programme about climate change knocking out the Egyptian civilisation.. I fell asleep during the last 10 minutes, but I think I got the main gist of it. At this moment we are in Hereford after a magnificent day's drive, which I will describe tomorrow. For now, talk with friennds is waiting.

Crossing England.... Roman city abandoned, Marines train in Plymouth

England really is the most beautiful country. We had all the benefit of sunshine, sloe blossom, primroses, buzzards, baby lambs, empty roads, early bluebells and distant views to heal us after leaving the damned motorways and the spiritual insults of Fleet Services on the M3. Why do we not complain about these plastic hell-holes? The noise levels are nearly as bad as being in the car at 60 or 70mph - muzak, air-driers for your hands, gambling machines, the general acoustics, and the sound of cash registers on every side. Fleet actually has a tiny Waitrose shop, with FLOWERS for sale, which was the only natural thing to be seen in the place. I was grateful for a clean and relatively spacious toilet, but the rest made me want to turn and flee..... Out into the lanes, heading towards Ramsbury for lunch with an old BBC friend, but calling first to Silchester to see the Roman remains. This is an extraordinary place. If a Roman were to reincarnate here, he would be astonished. A thriving city of 40 hectares (roughly the size of Canterbury), which was the capital of the Atrebates, and was going full pelt for about 500 years, with Forum, baths, theatre etc. - well the whole thing has just completely vanished, apart from its banks and walls. Anyone who's interested in what Canterbury may have looked like before the Saxons rebuilt it (on completely different alignments, as we know), could come and look at this lost city. How are the might fallen...... Ramsbury is another feast for those interested in how our country works. A village which had a bell-foundry and a big parish church presumably built on wool, edging on some of the finest and richest estate lands in England, and once had 14? pubs, now has two. It also has two extremely wealthy inhabitants: Mr Hyams who built Centrepoint, and a Norwegian who owns H&M. One is a recluse, the other has helped to rescue the big pub (The Bell), from decline. We had our lunch in the Bell, and very good it was, stylishly done out and with friendly service. The pub is rather surprisingly owned by a clerical lady who lives in the cloister of Salisbury Cathedral. She has no need to sell it as it produces a fine annual rent of £40,000 so they say, and she has very little to do for that. However, the villagers are lucky that the Norwegian decided to repair it (I hope I have been told the right story here), because it is now the focus of the whole place. He also set up a brewery, and I am told Ramsbury Ale is excellent. Our friend owns a pretty cottage in one of the main streets. It is a b&b, and has a little millstream at the end of the garden, with crayfish in it. He would need a licence to fish them out. He has in his garden a nest of a goldcrest and of a green woodpecker. All very tranquil and he was very jolly and full of stories of our old acquaintances and friends. The sun shone. We had a lovely time. Then off again through the lanes, through Marlborough (last visited for the funeral party for my lovely uncle Laurie), over the Wiltshire downs. We missed Stonehenge but passed by those mysterious beckoning barrows at West Kennet, and the astonishing Silbury Hill. I used to drive past all that on a regular basis when I worked at BBC Bristol. The military sections of the downs heading south from Avebury are all marked with flag poles - red flags unmistakable, and rather quaint-looking in these days of drones and computer-targetted long-range missiles. We had a long way to go to get to Plymouth, but the A303 proved to be a totally delightful experience with hardly any traffic or hold-ups. We arrived at the hotel at about 7. This is the Quality Inn. Quality is one of those words, isn't it......? Can mean anything. To change to a room with a sea view is an extra £10 a night. Breakfast not included, an extra £11 each. Business like approach from all the staff, but a rather faded and tacky feel to everything. Bedroom carpet thoroughly worn out. Things feeling a bit sticky. This computer has to be paid for £1 for 10 mins, but an anti-virus pops up and eats your time and no-one cares or suggests a reimbursement. We walked out for supper - down along to the Barbican, and disdaining the swanky, found a Greek/Italian resto and had superb fresh crab and scallops. Then back up to walk round the Citadel, and back along the Promenade, where two young men were skate-boarding with a kite in the darkness. We walked under a line of cherry trees with fantastic massive pink blossoms - magic. They may all blow away in the night, with this great storm coming. We had wild winds in the night, the whole building and the windows and outside doors all howling their protest. We went out for breakfast in a cafe by the sea - Andrew had the full veggie works, I had 2 poached eggs and left the toast. But I bought some repro posters with maritime stories - wreck sales, tars needed, slaves for sale, news of Nelson's victories, etc. Then we explored the West Hoe, with its tiny little harbour which is about to be restored. We saw squads of marines out training - running, running, up and down these steep hills, some carrying might backpacks. Young men, gathered up into life in a 16th century fortress, the base for the 29 Commandos... Now we are going to get ourselves ready for Alyson's daughter Judith's wedding, over in Cornwall this afternoon. We will cross by the ferry. I am happy to tell you the cherry blossom mostly survived the storm. I will post pictures of it later.

Westward...

We're off to the west tomorrow morning. First calling in to see our friend Watty at his bed and breakfast place at Ramsbury, then to Plymouth for a couple of nights. On Tuesday we're going to a wedding. The bride is Judith Elliman, the only daughter of my schoolfriend Alyson. Alyson and I were in the British Museum a few months ago, when she told me about this lovely news and she said she wondered what she might read to the guests. I asked if I should write something for her, and not long later sent her something, which I am pleased to tell you moved her very much - she cried. I knew her mother very well, and was thinking about this 'chain' of mothers and daughters, and music and time. Anyway, not long ago she rang and said she'd realised she could have 'the horse's mouth' at the wedding (me!) and would I like to go? Of course I am thrilled we are going, even though I haven't really seen Judith since she was a little girl, and although the weather forecast is not terribly brilliant I am really looking forward to it. We'll be heading up the Wye Valley afterwards, to Hereford and then to Shropshire, to stay with other friends, of which more anon. I am not AT ALL ready for this trip, nothing packed, haven't even decided what to wear for the great day. This is because work has been totally overwhelming and the weather has been so variable (hot, cold, wet, dry, windy, calm.....). Now it's nearly 10pm and I shall have to get up early and pack and do all that stuff. Oh for a Jeeves. 'Your cases are all in the car, madame. I put a flask into the car for you, and some fruit, for your journey....' Nothing so elegant for me. It'll be a bit of a rush! Heigh ho! Westward ho!

Last day, in Athens

End of our last day, back in Marinos taverna in Old Korinthos after a day in Athens (reached by train). Very sati. I wanted to see if I could find some reproduction figurines to buy, for an exhibition I would like to put together about the Great Goddess in her various incarnations. This has been in fact, one of the main purposes of this whole visit.

We had researched the journey into Athens last night. Corinth station is on what they call the RR Railway, which mostly runs between the two carriageways of the new motorway running straight into the capital. The whole thing is rather smart but sort-of unfinished, and with only one train an hour into the city, and that via a connection in the outer suburbs. However, we caught the 8.39 without difficulty and got into Athens – well, a sort of peripheral grubby suburb which they optimistically label 'Athens' – about an hour later. Waiting for a bus was frustrating. It turned out they were on strike, but the metro proved swift and clean and took us into the centre. We walked up past the parliament building and some evrones on parade, and into the very excellent Cyclades Museum. Here I feasted my eyes on the beautiful neolithic figurines – some in clay, some in marble, one almost life-size. This was the last great fling for the Goddess, because not long afterwards, the discovery of metal (copper and then bronze) co-incided with the discovery of agriculture and and end to the mysteries of growing food and making babies. However, in the Cycladic Islands of the Aegean, artists and devotees spent hundreds of years perfecting their statues and figurines, and they are totally marvellous. I bought two and will have to send for more when I get home. These will be enough to kick-start some interest, I hope!

Unfortunately the Cypriot section was closed for refurbishment, and I particularly wanted to track down any plank figurines they might have had there. I have seen some in Cyprus a few years ago, before I had this idea of an exhibition – I was hoping the Cycladic Museum could help, but maybe we will have to go back to Nicosia or somewhere to track down some photos or replicas. Of course, replicas are always going to be inadequate, but seen in series, along side explanatory notes and photos of 'the real thing', I think people will be amazed and amused by the whole project.

We headed out into the open air, and had a coffee, and then into my favourite museum – the Benaki – the staggeringly rich collection of a Greek cotton merchant of the early 20th century who aggregated anything to do with Hellenistic history and then gave it all to the people of Greece. It is simply stupendous. Again, I bought some replicas – a little Boetian priestess, and a dove, thought to be an aspecat of Aphrodite. Actually in that museum is a mass of tiny, very very ancient fat-bellied neolithic figurines, utterly pregnant and round, about the size of small pebbles, in all sorts of colours and textures of clay. Sadly their appearance in repro is very disappointing, poorly moulded and all the same colour and texture. I am wondering if I have the nerve to write to the museum's exalted directors and ask if they would consider upgrading this artefact (you get a row of 6 on one little plinth) for 62 euros.

Then we walked in the cool of the National Gardens having admired an evzone practicing his extraordinary cockatoo walk, with its stamping and pacing, under the watchful eye of his sergeant who was in ordinary military dress, while the young sentry was in that famous (slightly hilarious) rig of short white skirt, thick cream tights, and pompoms on his nail-studded clogs.

Next we met up with my friend Daphne, who I was hoping to take out to lunch, but she resolutely, absolutely, utterly refused, and instead took us out, to the glorious Dionysos restaurant which under-looks the Acropolis. We sat in the balmy shade, gazing up at the glories of the Parthenon, and ate a simple but fantastically well prepared feast of salads, lamb, veal, then ice-cream, chocolate souffle and crisp brandy-snaps. She says there are at least 365 strikes a year now in Athens, a website called strike.gr so that people can find out what's not going on, and she says she has huge admiration for the people of Athens because life is almost completely impossible. She talked about Patrick Leigh Fermor who she knew when she was young and was interested to hear about our adventures in the Mani.

She dropped us off from her snazzy Mini Cooper near the garden of Zeus, absolutely horrified that we intended to get into a trolleybus to head back to the station. 'No, no!' she said, but I explained they hadn't been running earlier and Andrew dearly wanted to go on one.... So, she sped off into the traffic and we clambered onto a very smelly armpitty crowded carriage and lumped along back towards the centre. In fact, once honour was satisfied, I asked if we could get off and perhaps walk for a way, and that is what we did. Past the beautiful Academy building, past the scary druggy Omonia quarter where a gaggle of ladyboys were out cruising amongst the litter-strewn alleys, past the stalls selling rather snazzy reading glasses in all colours (bought two), through the Metaxourgia area filled with Albanians queuing to get onto buses to go home, clasping their babies and carrying cardboard parcels wrapped up in thick plastic tape, and finally up to Larissa station where we gingerly crossed the local lines and waited for our connection up to the Corinth express.

Now it's about 10pm, we are still too full to think about eating (though our plan had been to eat our last supper here at the taverna, where, just as the guidebook says, the food is delicious, made according to mama Elisabet's recipes. But it is not to be. Tomorrow we have to somehow get all these figurines into our suitcases which are already crammed with too many clothes (the climate being so unpredictable – after all, there has been a heatwave in London while we've been here, the temperatures soaring to 28!!!!! In October!!!!!!!)

There are so many things I meant to mention and have not. In fact, I think I have been pretty tired this week, and I have the slightly uneasy feeling that the blog has been more incoherent than usual.... It has been written without much chance to sit and think before setting everything down, not an ideal pattern. One thing I really enjoyed was spotting the very decorative chimney cowls which adorn the tops of houses. They swing round very freely in the wind, and they are made of bent metal, formed into the shapes of various birds – most often an eagle, or a peacock, or a cormorant. It seems a simple design, but without having seen one at close quarters I am not sure exactly how they are made or how they work. But they are very very attractive, and I should think quite effective.

Someone commenting via email about this blog asked if I would do a summary of the visit – a slightly daunting task as we have seen so much, there are so many things I know I have left un-described, and there has not been enough time to think about it. I have loved reading th guide books we had at our disposal – especially PLFermor, of course, and Peter Greenhalgh, both of whom I have mentioned extensively this week. To that I will add the marvellous Cadogan guide, which I think may be out of print but which is a mine of information and explanation. If there is anything I have said here which makes you think you should come and see for yourself, that would be marvellous. For me, coming and looking has had the effect of changing a 2-D view of history and myth into a 3-D view. Names of places, gods, heroes, heroines and events which were just names are now vivid to me. I can see why and how and where these things happened and these are not remote disconnected stories for us. Greece is where our alphabet and a lot of our vocabulary coalesced into existence, and it is where democracy and medicine and mathematics and science and astronomy and poetry and drama all took on their modern forms, such as we know them today, every day. The present difficulties this beautiful, wild, fascinating, hospitable country face today may seem impossible to overcome, but they have gone through worse than this. I should say, I also found it heady to be reading a completely different book during this trip: The Rational Optimist, by Matt Ridley, available through Amazon of course. That offered a counterpoint and a set of options which we could all do with in these turbulent times.

Enough! I am going to bed. Flying home tomorrow, and that means no more blogging till our next travels.

Back to Corinth

Back in Old Corinth again, a week after our arrival. Time has zipped past. We're back in the same taverna, different room, enjoying the bonhomie of our host who is pleased to see us back. I remember that time in my life when as a young person I took such familiarity as genuine friendship. Sigh.
We checked out the rail arrangements from here into Athens – with some difficulty, I may say, as the hotel staff knew nothing and the signage on the roads is poor, but we eventually found the brand new station at Eximila with its hourly service (one change) into the capital, free parking and very efficient English-speaking ticketsales girl.
Our day was spent retracing our path across this spectacular part of the world, from the west coast of the Mani up to the isthmus. We used a different route, via Gethio (supposedly the place where Paris and Helen spent their honeymoon night..... very unlikely, considering the distance from Menelaos' palace in the central Peloponnese). A footnote in the excellent Cadogan guide alerts us to the complexities of the character 'Helen'. Far from the simplistic persona described in the Iliad – a young queen of great beauty abducted and stolen away to a far land, causing a whole decade of war between the people.... no, it seems her origins lie much further back, as a tree goddess from pre-Bronze Age times, a fertility deity, who (along with others such as Persephone and Euridyce) disappear for part of the year, causing barren-ness in the land. There is a concept, an idea, of 'the stolen woman' which resonates throughout the history of this region.
The subsequent history of the Peloponnese is that the recovery of Helen required great acts of male bravery and valour, so she became a kind of passive object, something to be redeemed, rather than a powerful life-giver in her own right. Modern archaeology and historical study has shifted things along. In fact, one of our visits this afternoon was to an area which it is now thought could be Menelaos' Palace, near the tiny quiet vilage of Pellana. Just outside Pellana is another interesting archaeological site, with so-called bee-hive tholos tombs, from the Mycenaen age, carefully carved out of a sandstone ridge. Apparently, this small area has produced more gold and other grave goods from its excavations than Mycenae itself, and people are very excited about it.
It had been a bit of a shock to get into Sparti itself.... not that there is anything ancient left there. But I had always imagined it to be bit of a citadel, a high point. Instead, it's in a pleasant, easy, low-lying district, with rich rivers, and then with the shocking and towering range of the Mani mountains right up against it. The approach is through mile after mile of lush, well cultivated, rich farmland...backed in by this colossal mountain range with Taygetes as its peak. The mountains can be seen much more clearly from this eastern side. Where we were in the Mani, we were always too close to see the range as a whole.
You can easily see how, once Sparta was finally beaten, her scorpion-like people would have just turned and fled into the mountains. No-one could ever have got them, there.
One of the things which has settled more clearly in my head is how completely the Hellenistic and Classical ages have been obliterated. I somehow imagined there would be actual temples and pillars and so on, as I saw at Delphi when I went there as a schoolgirl.... but no. It was all plundered, razed to the ground, used as a convenient source of cut stone. Apart from the utility of all this, of course, the subsequent ages were keen to obliterate the pagan places, so all you see now are the churches with odd names, and sometimes incorporating bits of marble in their walls.
The changes in the landscape as we came north were heartening. Whereas in the Mani even the olive groves and terraces look pretty rough, here we saw citrus orchards and dairies and fields of tomatoes and beans. It just looks more civilised. Also, up in the mountains on this side, we drove through real woodland – oaks, and plane trees, with ivy and old man's beard draped through it. We saw pigeons, doves, jackdaws, magpies, little brown jobs. We heard cicadas again, though not in large number. In some of the cottage gardens and in village streets we saw roses and hydrangeas, and cosmos and other decorative flowers, as well as the marvellous wild cyclamen clinging to the dry stone walls and cliffs.
Nowhere, anywhere during this week, have we seen many children. We asked about this during our supper with the nearly-fulltime German residents who said the only children around the Mani now are Albanian. Their parents are Muslim but they have had the children baptised (presumably into the Orthodox church), to fit in. A lot of the Albanians have started or taken over businesses and changed their names accordingly, to look and sound Greek.
Now, tonight, back at Marinos Taverna, we are both very tired. Tomorrow we'll go into Athens on the train and meet my friend Daphne and go to a couple of Museums to see if I can get authenticated copies of ancient female deities for the exhibition I want to put on in Faversham in a year or so. We have a lot to do in a very short space of time, so I will end now and put out the light.