Holy Baptism

I was baptised on 14th November 1954. Being only five months old at the time I don’t recall a great deal about the occasion but I do remember attending a christening on the island of Ios in Greece in September 2009.

We had walked to a tiny beach we like and on the way back as we passed a church some preparations being made for a baptism and the building and all around it were being decorated in pink and white in readiness.  We enquired about the event and the lady in charge invited us to return at eight o’clock that night to see the ceremony and we agreed that we would.

We put on our best clothes and later we returned to the church to see the baptism ceremony of the little girl into the Christian Orthodox Church.  This is a major event in the life of any Greek family because of the numerous rites which accompany it, many of which go back to the earliest centuries of Christianity.

It was a lovely experience and now this holiday we had seen a funeral on Serifos, a wedding on Sifnos and a baptism on Ios.  A Greek baptism is a sacred and religious rite that is performed on a baby to cleanse the soul and renounce Satan.  It is a complex initiation that starts with an exorcism and officially ends forty days later when the baby is presented to the congregation to receive Holy Communion.

We weren’t able to stop for the full forty days and we began to feel a bit like intruders on a private family event so before it was all over we left the church and selected a taverna where we enjoyed another satisfying meal and a jug of red wine before returning to Homer’s Inn Hotel for a final drink on the balcony.

The Island of Ios, Farming and Tourism

On the Greek island of Ios the walk from the busy harbour to little Valmas beach is interesting because of the derelict terraces and dry stonewalls that separate the bony hillside into individual plots of land.  Ios is just one large inhospitable rock that has been baked hard in the sun but as recently as only fifty years ago people here were scraping away at the thin soil and the stones here to try and make a living or to feed the family by growing fruit and vegetables.

There is very little useful land on Ios so this must have been almost unimaginatively difficult and the owner of the hotel, Homer’s Inn, Antonia told us of her memories of life before tourism.  She told us how each islander, including her father, had a personal plot and would attend each day to manage and tend the land.  This must have been incredibly hard.  They had to carry all of the water to the side of this cliff and the only way to achieve this was by using a donkey. Then in the 1960s visitors started to arrive and the enterprising islanders realised that there was more money to be made renting out the back room and this was also a lot easier than a twelve-hour day toiling under a hot sun.

The terraces are all abandoned now to giant thistles growing like candelabras and what other few plants can survive in a hostile environment and they are unlikely ever to be cultivated again.  There is no one to look after them or protect the heritage, each year parts of the walls collapse and disappear and soon they will be gone altogether and that will be a sad day.  Although no one will ever see it again I like to imagine what this hillside might have looked like fifty years ago with farmers scratching away at the ground, donkeys patiently waiting to return to the town and fishing boats slipping in and out of the harbour below.

Island Hopping in Greece and my Gladiator Sandals

 Much have I travell’d in the realms of gold,
 And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
 Round many western islands have I been
 Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
 Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
 That deep-browed Homer ruled as his demesne; 
 Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
 Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
 Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
 When a new planet swims into his ken;
 Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
 He star’d at the Pacific — and all his men
 Look’d at each other with a wild surmise —
 Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

John Keats – On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer

Island hopping with a backpack was an immediately brilliant idea when Sally mentioned it in May 2006 and invited me to bring my credit cards along and join her for a week or two in the Greek islands starting on 27^th August.

Sun drenched beaches, friendly tavernas, Mythos, Metaxa and Ouzo, I knew immediately that I would take up the offer but at first I was slightly wary of committing to a holiday with two girls addicted to the internet and who sleep with their mobile phones but I have always wanted to be more imaginative about my holidays, to take control and make my own arrangements rather than rely upon a holiday rep from Thomsons or Airtours and those tedious welcome meetings that seem to go on forever in a dingy hotel lounge when all you want to do is get outside in the sun.

So the chance to do things my way was a real opportunity and I signed up.

Preparation involved booking the flights and finding suitable hotels on line. This, I later had to concede,  turned out to be a bit of a cheat because proper back-packers, I’m told, take their lodgings chances when arriving in port, but I just wanted to be certain of a basic level of accommodation. I was fifty-two years old and had certain standards to maintain! I wanted Olympic size swimming pools, air conditioning as fresh as mountain air and at the very least a minimum standard of bathroom facility!

Packing the rucksack was quite a challenge! There wasn’t a lot of room in there and it took a number of  trial runs before I achieved the perfect combination of items. I needed my snorkel and essential bathroom items and some books of course and after that I had room for some clothes. It was like doing the hokey-cokey, in, out, in, out and shake it all about until I got it right. Like most people I always take too many clothes on holiday, that extra pair of shorts, another shirt just in case, and usually some items just go for the ride there and back, this time I was sure I had got it about right but for some unexplained reason I took some socks along for the trip. I didn’t wear them of course because all I had for foot attire was two pairs of sandals including my famous gladiators.

I had had the gladiator sandals since 1999 when I went to Rhodes and they had accompanied me abroad on every single beach holiday since. They were showing signs of wear and were not expected to see through this adventure but I had made it my mission to see how long I could make them last.

Footnote (no pun intended) – the sandals lasted until 2008 when the straps gave way. I tried to repair them but it was impossible so I had to admit defeat and throw them away!

Greek Island of Thassos

Thassos is the most northerly of the Greek islands, twenty kilometres from the mainland and the city of Kavala, in that part of Greece known as Macedonia, which is where we flew into before transferring to a ferry boat for the short crossing over Kavala Bay and arriving in Liménas, the main town on the island.  Thassos is a medium sized island and we were staying at Liménaria which was just about as far away from the port as it was possible to be on the island so we had to stay on the transfer coach for another hour before we reached our destination.

It was only a budget hotel and we had been allocated a family room which seemed to be at sub basement level and not very thrilling or welcoming.  I was sure I could have persuaded the others to ‘make do’ but then we discovered a corner full of insects and with everyone refusing to unpack their bags I had to negotiate with the Italian owner revised accommodation arrangements which for a few extra drachmas moved us to much more acceptable rooms on the first floor with a nice balcony overlooking the beach and the sea.  This was easy to do because it was early in the season and there were only one or two rooms occupied anyway.

If the hotel wasn’t the best on the island there was compensation by way of the location because it stood at the back of a wide spacious beach that faced south over a perfectly blue North Aegean Sea.  It was an excellent beach that was made up of large grains of marble white sand and lots and lots of tiny sea shells and calcium deposits that was perfect for sitting on without it getting everywhere and good too for beach tennis and frisbee.  There wasn’t a lot to do on the beach so after beach olympics we devised a competition to make food sculptures from the tiny shells and we became so good at it we began to consider turning it into a business.

The sea was deliciously warm but we had to share it with lots of small jelly fish, I don’t think they were the stinging variety and Sally and Jonathan amused themselves by catching them through the strings of a tennis racket and collecting them up in plastic beach buckets.

In the evenings we would make the short trip into Liménaria, the second largest town on the island, for our evening meal.  It was a functional little place with Italianate style houses with iron balconies painted in pastel shades of lemon, lime, cream and rose.  There were a few tavernas with lots of empty tables and grateful for what little business there was and we found a couple that we liked best and alternated between them.  Many places were still closed so the town was quiet in the evenings with just a few bars still open for business so most nights we would have a final drink and then go back to the rooms to sit on the balconies and enjoy the view of the moon over the sea.

Liménaria is a relatively recent development that started to grow at the beginning of the twentieth century based on the mining industry. Mining companies dug for calamine and iron ore and in 1905 a metallurgical plant was erected for processing and iron ore mining became especially important during the years 1954-1964.  Since 1964 there has been no mining activity on the island and the only useful product left now is a low grade marble. Dominating the town were the dilapidated headquarters of the mining company Speidel called the Palataki, which I think is being restored now but was in a sorry state in 1998.  One night a local man found a piece of discarded marble and drew a picture of the Palataki on it in charcoal.  He gave it to us as a souvenir and it still sits on a book case amongst other holiday souvenirs.

There was only very little to do in and around Liménaria so in the middle of the week we hired a red jeep so that we could get around the island and see what else there was.  We did quite well on this deal because we hired it for three days but due to staff shortages they delivered it to us the evening prior and explained that they couldn’t take it back until a day later.  They apologised for that and asked if that was ok and naturally this arrangement was quite acceptable to us.

On the first day with the car we drove around the east coast of the island and visited the villages and the best beaches stopping off at Pefkari, Potos, Alyki (our favourite) and Skála Potamiás, reputed to have the best beach on the island.  On the second day we went west along a more rugged coastline along a road that clung to the edge of the mountains as they tumbled down to the sea through Tripiti, Skála Sotira, Pachýs and finally Liménas, Thassos town, where we stopped for lunch and explored the bustling streets and the busy harbour.

On the last day with our own transport we drove inland through once great pine forests that had been devastated by the big forest fires in the 1980s, which had destroyed the largest part of the forests resulting in the sad extinction on the island of the wolf and the jackal.  After the forests we drove through fields and prosperous looking farms because Thassos has some of the richest soils in the Aegean islands and produces large quantities of fruit, honey, olives, olive oil and a famous white wine.

When the week was over we returned by coach to Liménas and then once more by ferry to Kavala and on the way back we declared the holiday a success and Thassos a place that we would definitely return to one day.  I have now visited twenty-five Greek Islands but this one remains securely in my favourite top five, which are: Sifnos, Amorgos, Folegandros, Thassos and Ios, in that order.

A Life in a Year – 14th November, Holy Baptism

I was baptised on 14th November 1954. Being only five months old at the time I don’t recall a great deal about the occasion but I do remember attending a christening on the island of Ios in Greece in September 2009.

We had walked to a tiny beach we like and on the way back as we passed a church some preparations being made for a baptism and the building and all around it were being decorated in pink and white in readiness.  We enquired about the event and the lady in charge invited us to return at eight o’clock that night to see the ceremony and we agreed that we would.

We put on our best clothes and later we returned to the church to see the baptism ceremony of the little girl into the Christian Orthodox Church.  This is a major event in the life of any Greek family because of the numerous rites which accompany it, many of which go back to the earliest centuries of Christianity. It was a lovely experience and now this holiday we had seen a funeral on Serifos, a wedding on Sifnos and a baptism on Ios.  A Greek baptism is a sacred and religious rite that is performed on a baby to cleanse the soul and renounce Satan.  It is a complex initiation that starts with an exorcism and officially ends forty days later when the baby is presented to the congregation to receive Holy Communion.

We weren’t able to stop for the full forty days and we began to feel a bit like intruders on a private family event so before it was all over we left the church and selected a taverna where we enjoyed another satisfying meal and a jug of red wine before returning to Homer’s Inn Hotel for a final drink on the balcony.

 

A Life in a Year – 13th September, The Island of Ios, Farming and Tourism

On the Greek island of Ios the walk from the harbour to Valmas beach is interesting because of the derelict terraces and dry stonewalls that separate the hillside into individual plots of land.  Ios is just one large inhospitable rock that has been baked hard in the sun but as recently as only fifty years ago people here were scraping away at the thin soil and the stones here to try and make a living or to feed the family by growing fruit and vegetables. 

There is very little useful land on Ios so this must have been almost unimaginatively difficult and the owner of the hotel, Homer’s Inn, Antonia told us of her memories of life before tourism.  She told us how each islander, including her father, had a personal plot and would attend each day to manage and tend the land.  They had to carry all of the water to the side of this cliff and the only way to achieve this was by using a donkey. Then in the 1960s visitors started to arrive and the enterprising islanders realised that there was more money to be made renting out the back room and this was also a lot easier than a twelve-hour day toiling under a hot sun. 

The terraces are all abandoned now to thistles and what other few plants can survive in a hostile environment and they are unlikely ever to be cultivated again.  There is no one to look after them or protect the heritage, each year parts of the walls collapse and disappear and soon they will be gone altogether and that will be a sad day.  Although no one will ever see it again I like to imagine what this hillside might have looked like fifty years ago with farmers scratching away at the ground, donkeys patiently waiting to return to the town and fishing boats slipping in and out of the harbour below.

A Life in a Year – 27th August, Island Hopping in Greece

Island hopping with a backpack was an immediately brilliant idea when Sally mentioned it in May 2006 and invited me to bring my credit cards along and join her for a week or two in the Greek islands starting on 27^th August.  

Sun drenched beaches, friendly tavernas, Mythos, Metaxa and Ouzo, I knew immediately that I would take up the offer but at first I was slightly wary of committing to a holiday with two girls addicted to the internet and who sleep with their mobile phones but I have always wanted to be more imaginative about my holidays, to take control and make my own arrangements rather than rely upon a holiday rep from Thomsons or Airtours and those tedious welcome meetings that seem to go on forever in a dingy hotel lounge when all you want to do is get outside in the sun.

So the chance to do things my way was a real opportunity and I signed up.

Preparation involved booking the flights and finding suitable hotels on line. This, I later had to concede,  turned out to be a bit of a cheat because proper back-packers, I’m told, take their lodgings chances when arriving in port, but I just wanted to be certain of a basic level of accommodation. I was fifty-two years old and had certain standards to maintain! I wanted Olympic size swimming pools, air conditioning as fresh as mountain air and at the very least a minimum standard of bathroom facility!

Packing the rucksack was quite a challenge! There wasn’t a lot of room in there and it took a number of  trial runs before I achieved the perfect combination of items. I needed my snorkel and essential bathroom items and some books of course and after that I had room for some clothes. It was like doing the hokey-cokey, in, out, in, out and shake it all about until I got it right. Like most people I always take too many clothes on holiday, that extra pair of shorts, another shirt just in case, and usually some items just go for the ride there and back, this time I was sure I had got it about right but for some unexplained reason I took some socks along for the trip. I didn’t wear them of course because all I had for foot attire was two pairs of sandals including my famous gladiators. 

I had had the gladiator sandals since 1999 when we went to Rhodes and they had accompanied me abroad on every single beach holiday since. They were showing signs of wear and were not expected to see through this adventure but I had made it my mission to see how long I could make them last.

 

Footnote – the sandals lasted until 2008 when the straps gave way. I tried to repair them but it was impossible so I had to admit defeat and throw them away!

A Life in a Year – 19th June, The Greek Island of Thassos

Thassos is the most northerly of the Greek islands, twenty kilometres from the mainland and the city of Kavala, in that part of Greece known as Macedonia, which is where we flew into before transferring to a ferry boat for the short crossing over Kavala Bay and arriving in Liménas, the main town on the island.  Thassos is a medium sized island and we were staying at Liménaria which was just about as far away from the port as it was possible to be on the island so we had to stay on the transfer coach for another hour before we reached our destination.

It was only a budget hotel and we had been allocated a family room which seemed to be at sub basement level and not very thrilling or welcoming.  I was sure I could have persuaded the others to ‘make do’ but then we discovered a corner full of insects and with everyone refusing to unpack their bags I had to negotiate with the Italian owner revised accommodation arrangements which for a few extra drachmas moved us to much more acceptable rooms on the first floor with a nice balcony overlooking the beach and the sea.  This was easy to do because it was early in the season and there were only one or two rooms occupied anyway.

If the hotel wasn’t the best on the island there was compensation by way of the location because it stood at the back of a wide spacious beach that faced south over a perfectly blue North Aegean Sea.  It was an excellent beach that was made up of large grains of marble white sand and lots and lots of tiny sea shells and calcium deposits that was perfect for sitting on without it getting everywhere and good too for beach tennis and frisbee.  There wasn’t a lot to do on the beach so after beach olympics we devised a competition to make food sculptures from the tiny shells and we became so good at it we began to consider turning it into a business.

The sea was deliciously warm but we had to share it with lots of small jelly fish, I don’t think they were the stinging variety and Sally and Jonathan amused themselves by catching them through the strings of a tennis racket and collecting them up in plastic beach buckets.

In the evenings we would make the short trip into Liménaria, the second largest town on the island, for our evening meal.  It was a functional little place with Italianate style houses with iron balconies painted in pastel shades of lemon, lime, cream and rose.  There were a few tavernas with lots of empty tables and grateful for what little business there was and we found a couple that we liked best and alternated between them.  Many places were still closed so the town was quiet in the evenings with just a few bars still open for business so most nights we would have a final drink and then go back to the rooms to sit on the balconies and enjoy the view of the moon over the sea. 

Liménaria is a relatively recent development that started to grow at the beginning of the twentieth century based on the mining industry. Mining companies dug for calamine and iron ore and in 1905 a metallurgical plant was erected for processing and iron ore mining became especially important during the years 1954-1964.  Since 1964 there has been no mining activity on the island and the only useful product left now is a low grade marble. Dominating the town were the dilapidated headquarters of the mining company Speidel called the Palataki, which I think is being restored now but was in a sorry state in 1998.  One night a local man found a piece of discarded marble and drew a picture of the Palataki on it in charcoal.  He gave it to us as a souvenir and it still sits on a book case amongst other holiday souvenirs.

There was only very little to do in and around Liménaria so in the middle of the week we hired a red jeep so that we could get around the island and see what else there was.  We did quite well on this deal because we hired it for three days but due to staff shortages they delivered it to us the evening prior and explained that they couldn’t take it back until a day later.  They apologised for that and asked if that was ok and naturally this arrangement was quite acceptable to us.

On the first day with the car we drove around the east coast of the island and visited the villages and the best beaches stopping off at Pefkari, Potos, Alyki (our favourite) and Skála Potamiás, reputed to have the best beach on the island.  On the second day we went west along a more rugged coastline along a road that clung to the edge of the mountains as they tumbled down to the sea through Tripiti, Skála Sotira, Pachýs and finally Liménas, Thassos town, where we stopped for lunch and explored the bustling streets and the busy harbour.

On the last day with our own transport we drove inland through once great pine forests that had been devastated by the big forest fires in the 1980s, which had destroyed the largest part of the forests resulting in the sad extinction on the island of the wolf and the jackal.  After the forests we drove through fields and prosperous looking farms because Thassos has some of the richest soils in the Aegean islands and produces large quantities of fruit, honey, olives, olive oil and a famous white wine.

When the week was over we returned by coach to Liménas and then once more by ferry to Kavala and on the way back we declared the holiday a success and Thassos a place that we would definitely return to one day.  I have now visited twenty-five Greek Islands but this one remains securely in my favourite top five, which are: Sifnos, Amorgos, Folegandros, Thassos and Ios, in that order.