Thursday August 19, 2010
View from the top
Sometimes we all do silly things. I knew that climbing Mount Psiloritis, the highest mountain in Crete, alone, in July, was going to be pretty silly. And so it proved. But I didn’t realise quite how important it is to keep doing silly things till I got to the top.
The mountain, on paper, isn’t attractive: a barren expanse of rock, 8,000 feet at its peak, with scarcely a tree above 6,000 feet. There’s no shade to speak of, no sources of water, and no railway to get you to the top (eat your heart out, Snowdon). The most common walk up is an 8-hour return slog from the Nida plateau, which sounds horrible. I didn’t try it. I got a map, and found an alternative: a 15km dirt track that wound its way from the village of Kouroutes to a mountain shelter, cutting the walking distance almost in half. Reader, I drove.
What I wasn’t to know was that the drive would be the hairiest part of the trip. Greek mountain roads are narrow, strewn with rocks, unprotected by such novelties as crash barriers, and with more hairpins than Kate Moss. They aren’t designed for rented cars with low clearance, a dodgy gearbox and a driver who has only had a licence for two years. But hey ho. I made it. I might not have done, but I did.
Another surprise: when I got to the shelter, it was cold. Bitterly cold. This is Crete in July, remember: but I had to wear every scrap of clothing I had in my pack, including the waterproof anorak I’d bought the previous day from an amused shopkeeper by the coast. I then took my first steps up the hill – and was blown almost off my feet. Honestly. The wind was so gusty that for the first half-hour, I had to wait for a lull every time I wanted to take a step up.
But there were pleasant surprises. The route, part of the E4 long-distance trail, was well marked. For the first hour, it was shaded by the mountain itself: there were times when the whole valley around me was bathed in sunshine, and I was in the shadow of the ridge. But slowly it got hotter and the sun got higher and progress became harder, and my ration of one muesli bar every half-hour suddenly didn’t quite seem enough.
But I made it to the top. And oh: you have to know about the top. There are views to the sea to the north and south. There are clouds, below you – and below that, the entire Amari valley, famous heartland of the Cretan resistance, laid out like a map. There are birds of prey that swoop up and down the currents on the clifftop. There is a chapel, and a little rickety ladder which you can climb up to stand on the roof (this was probably the silliest thing of all) – and a little handbell resting on top. And as you stand taking it in, there is a feeling of peace with the world: whatever I do in the future, whatever mistakes I make, nothing can quite beat this.
And then my phone rang, and I took a work call. But as I say, we all do silly things.
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