The Golden Step Read online

  Arriving in Iraklion with a few days to spare before the Easter celebrations, I made straight for the premises of SOHI, the Iraklion branch of the Greek Alpine Club. It was the Greek Alpine Club that had initially surveyed and way-marked European Hiking Route E4. A phone call to its secretary Kitsa had convinced me that among the members of the Club lay my only hope of finding someone to tell me at least something definite about the mountain path, already assuming a mythic or dream-like quality in my inner eye thanks to a complete absence of hard information on its terrain, its present state or even its actual whereabouts. ‘You’ll find us up the stairs at 53, Dikeosinis Street – but only between 8.30 and 10.30 on weekday evenings,’ Kitsa warned me over the phone. ‘We Cretans are proper mountaineers, you know, and during daylight … well, we like to be up in the mountains.’

  Seeds of my Cretan odyssey had been sown several years before by Charis Kakoulakis, erstwhile President of OYK, the Long Distance Club of Crete. Charis is a wide-screen dreamer, fingerer of many pies and passionate man of Crete. He had been my friend, educator and Mr Fixit in Crete for ages. His work as press officer for the island’s tourist organisation, fantastically haphazard in most respects, was the anchor that prevented Charis from floating clean away on a sea of wonderful schemes. But the great Minoa Kelefthos trans-Cretan running race was his very special baby from the start. ‘Christopher,’ he’d rhapsodised in his airless Iraklion office, ‘this is going to be a very bloody marvellous thing. Everyone will come to Crete and we will give them all hospitalities. Everything will be very nice,’ and he emphasised the point with a patent Charis gesture, forming a circle of completion with forefinger and thumb, then making a horizontal pass with it in the air that drew a definitive line under an invisible apex of perfection.

  A noble idea that briefly found its moment in the early 1990s, the Minoa Kelefthos super-marathon invited the world’s elite long-distance runners to compete in the most gruelling of mountain races from end to end of Crete. Their course, the reverse of mine, started with morning prayers at Hrissoskalitissas monastery out west, and finished twelve days and some 300 miles later with a sizzle of tortured feet in the sea at Kato Zakros in the east. On the steepest stages – the inhospitable White Mountains of the west, the ascent of the fearsome 6,000-ft deep Samaria Gorge, the slopes of Crete’s highest mountain, Psiloritis – participants were permitted to slow to a walk. Elsewhere it was all running. The terrain was consistently rubbly and breakneck, ankles always likely to be turned or broken. Vertical drops and fathomless sinkholes were often only a stumble away. Rest stages – typically a mat on the floor of a village hall – were few and far between. All the competitors gained at the end was honour, glory and a pair of battered feet.

  Remarkably, no-one died or was seriously hurt. Even more astonishingly, some of the pioneers and a handful of acolytes came back for more punishment over the same course a couple of years later. The whole splendid enterprise fell apart after that, a victim of lack of money and leadership. But the Minoa Kelefthos had left an intriguing legacy – the idea that the whole length of Crete could be travelled on one continuous footpath, and not necessarily at the double. Where runners had blazed the trail over mountains and down screes, through forest and up gorges, walkers might follow. I was powerfully drawn to the notion, and even more so when I discovered on looking more closely at the maps that the Minoa Kelefthos runners had in fact been mostly following a route that had already been surveyed, brought into being and waymarked as European Hiking Route E4.

  The European Hiking Routes, numbered 1 to 11, were the brainchildren of the European Ramblers’ Association, founded in Germany in 1969. It was another noble idea: Europe’s citizens in free flow across cultural and political borders, carrying with them the healthful spirit of internationalism as they strode from Sweden to Italy along E1’s string of high paths, or followed E3 from Santiago de Compostela on the stormy Atlantic coast to the shores of the Black Sea, or ventured the 3,230 miles from Lapland to the Aegean Sea along E6’s mighty southward course. The notion of Spaniard and Bulgarian meeting with broad smiles and hearty handshakes among the Carpathian mountains of the Czech Republic, or Finn and Greek slapping each other on the back in the Austrian Alps, is a great and inspiring one. The fact that, in a purely practical sense, no rambler would be likely to find the time, the money or the multiple languages to accomplish the European Hiking Routes is by the way. More to the point, standards of way-marking and of maintenance of the E-paths by volunteers have varied enormously from one country to the next. Those European nations with a deep-rooted history of long-distance leisure hiking, such as Germany and Austria, tend to keep their European Paths in good order. Those without such traditions are less enthusiastic, more neglectful and more strapped for cash, a manifestation that becomes more marked the further south one looks. Crete, as a glance at the map shows, is the most southerly place in Europe.

  Kitsa turned out to be a bird-like woman in her early 60s with a pair of very sharp eyes. With her in the little club room at the top of the stairs sat two younger men. Pantelis Kampaxis was a slim, athletic chap of twenty something, with plenty of charm and a nice girl by his side. The other man – ‘Pantatosakis, Iannis,’ he introduced himself formally, adding a bone-crusher handshake – a former hero of the Minoa Kelefthos race, looked most impressive, a low-slung and stocky Hercules with a black beard and close-cut hair flecked with silver. Together we spread out my two pathetic-looking maps with their unconvincing red threadworm of a path. Iannis Pantatosakis stabbed his strong forefinger at various points along the route and shot out terse descriptions of each successive section, while I scribbled frantically in my notebook. The phrases fell like tablets of stone from the mountain: ‘Good road … asphalt from here to here … good road … dirt road … water here … shelter there … little bit problem here … dirt road … good road …’ From what I could gather during this two-minute seminar, the whole trip would be a breeze, a gentle wander all the way on asphalt or dirt roads. Looking furtively at the mighty calves and barrel chest of Pantatosakis, his air of frighteningly hardy self-reliance, I wasn’t entirely convinced by the dismissive ‘No problem, it’s very easy’ with which he concluded his survey.

  Soon Pantatosakis, a man clearly ill at ease between four walls, was on his way down the stairs, three at a time. When he had gone, Kitsa and Pantelis Kampaxis filled me in on a few realities. I couldn’t quite make out how much of the route was actually visible as a path on the ground, but it was clear that the Cretan leg of E4 was in an unfinished state. The route was supposed to be way-marked with ‘E4’ signs in yellow and black, mounted as tin cut-outs on tall poles or painted onto prominent rocks along the way. But rain, sun, snow and itchy goats in search of a scratching place had worn away many of the painted signs, while most of the pole-mounted markers had been taken for souvenirs, snapped off for vandalistic fun, or shot full of holes by shepherds at target practice. One particular section, the seemingly straightforward run of coast between Agia Roumeli and Sougia towards the end of the walk, they wouldn’t recommend I touch with a barge-pole. ‘Very bad marking,’ said Kitsa, frowning, ‘very bad path – many cliffs. It’s easy to lose your way, and if you break your leg you can lie many days with no help.’ There seemed to be little formal accommodation along the route in terms of hotels or bed-and-breakfast places, though Kitsa and Pantelis both thought that hospitality towards the stranger still held good as a rule in the small hill villages and the scattered shepherds’ huts in the mountains. And there were a couple of sections where I was definitely going to need some help with wayfinding for a day or so – making my way across the tangled landscape of the Dhikti Mountains south-east of Iraklion, climbing a still snow-clad Mount Psiloritis in the centre of the island, and crossing the high inner fastnesses of the White Mountains in the west, where sudden fogs could descend at this time of year and late-lying snow bridges hid sink holes many hundreds of feet deep.

  ‘Would anyone be free to walk those parts with
me?’ I asked. Tough young Pantelis looked me over consideringly, plainly wondering if I was up to it. ‘I can come with you, depending on the weather,’ was his verdict. I walked back to my hotel delighted at the prospect of his company, but more apprehensive than ever about what I was letting myself in for.

  Swallows newly arrived from Africa were skimming across Platia Eleftherias, brushing through the trees with soft explosive sounds, and I thought of them winging onward to England. Another harbinger of spring, Charis Kakoulakis, eventually turned up at the hotel, late as usual, rushed as usual, as full as ever of enthusiasm, helpful advice and optimistic purpose. Flecks of lemon blossom still clung to his hair from an afternoon feast on some terrace somewhere. The tickle of his large moustache in my ear was a well-remembered keynote of his embrace. ‘I am one hundred percent sure that you will have no problem about finding the way or where to sleep. Just ask for the village priest or school teacher, and everything will be well.’ He drew his characteristic line through the air with O-shaped thumb and index finger to indicate something inexpressibly complete and good. ‘In Ziros ring this friend of mine, Mr Kharkiolakis – he’ll give you a room. In Papagianades you will sleep at the school for police officers – ask for skolí tis astinomías. Orino, that’s a rich village, three tavernas, you will have no problem. At Kritsa you will ask at the kafenion of the Aphordakos family …’ and so on and on, all the way across my maps, abolishing distance, time and difficulties with equal insouciance. It gave me confidence – greatly exaggerated, as things turned out, but a welcome boost at a time of low ebb.

  Now here I was in the bucketing old bus, grinding slowly east from Iraklion, feeling queasy, trying to ignore yet another attack of cold feet. It was a relief when we finally got to Sitia and I disembarked to find the whole town revved up for the holiday. No time for thinking or worrying now; best just to take a deep breath and plunge in.

  All Good Friday the amplified voices of priest and cantors, tremendously tinny and lugubrious, poured forth into every crevice of the town. In the late evening I followed the crowds up the hill to the Church of Ayia Aikaterini. The interior was a blaze of candlelight, out of which the deep, doleful chanting of the priests floated to mingle with the funereal donging of the church bell. Young girls and old men went along the line of icons in the porch, reverently touching their lips to each one.

  Soon a squad of boys in blue uniforms and berets appeared in the doorway, carrying the epitaphios – a model bier shaped like a miniature domed church, covered in a thick mantle of white flowers. They swayed it along the streets in procession, convoyed by lanterns on poles and a candle-bedecked cross, a brass band adding a background thump and blare. I joined the flow of the crowd that shuffled slowly after the funeral party, many thousands strong, a thin brown candle flickering in every hand. Answering twinkles came from the balconies of apartments along the road, where families leaned over to sprinkle us with rose-scented water or waft incense smoke across our heads from tiny brass braziers. The caged finches and linnets that spend all day singing their little jailbird hearts out so poignantly on the balconies had woken up, confused by the lights and noise, and the sweet trickling notes of their false dawn chorus rose momentarily here and there before sinking back under the bumpity-bump of the marching band.

  Our circuit of Sitia ended back in the square of Ayia Aikaterini, where the flower-decked epitaphios was positioned on its four legs in front of the door. The crowd jostled quietly in the outer dark as individuals waited their turn to stoop down and pass below the bier into the church. At this moment the left lens of my one and only pair of spectacles popped out of its frame and fell among the close-packed feet. I fully expected it to be shattered under someone’s boots, or kicked away and lost forever among the dark stones. But when I knelt and put out my hand it closed immediately on the hard little shell of plastic. With a thank-you to St Jude and St Mathurin, I bent down in my turn and passed in among the lights and singing.

  Later, down at the Ouzeri Mixos with a thimbleful of raki, I made friends with Andonis the pony-tailed owner and his chum Pericles. ‘Come and have Easter lunch with us,’ Andonis urged, sliding a pile of chopped apple onto the table between our glasses. ‘We are having a lamb roasted on a spit.’ I explained that I was on my way through to Zakros. ‘Ah, well,’ he said, ‘they won’t have a lamb like my lamb.’ When I tried to pay for the drinks, Andonis made to give me a slap. ‘No – from me. Kali anastasi; happy resurrection.’

  On Easter Saturday I took a taxi down to Ano Zakros, the upland ‘big brother’ village of Kato Zakros which lay a couple of miles off by the sea. There were plenty of stares for me in the bar of the Hotel Zakros, where the old men of Ano Zakros were thumping down greasy playing cards and yawning prodigiously when they were not hobbling to the street door in order to hawk and spit into the gutter. It wasn’t really a place for the stranger to hang out. I retreated to my room and got a handful of dirty clothes out of my backpack to wash them in the sink. No plug. Why hadn’t I thought to bring one? I looked up ‘plug’ in my word-book. Confusingly for English-speakers, it was tapa. My request for a tapa at the bar counter fluttered the hen-coop, but a basin plug materialised at last. Back in the room I got out my plastic bag of soap powder. It seemed curiously limp, and there was a hole in the bottom. I looked in the pack; a blue and white snowstorm. I washed the clothes in the residue, rinsing out the gritty suds. Now to hang the wet clothes up to dry on my balcony. Oh – no washing line. Ah – no clothes-pegs. And no shops open. Here was a lesson, the first of many: think ahead. And stop sulking – it’s really quite funny, isn’t it? No? Oh, come on, Mr Grumpy, hang them up behind the door and have a sleep and get over it.

  At nightfall the boys of Zakros ran through the streets throwing firecrackers, while their grandmothers rolled up and down the stepped alleys with bags of eggs and bread for the night’s feast. Mrs Daskalakis, the owner of the Hotel Zakros, invited me to come to her house after the midnight church service for the family’s Easter meal. Mr Daskalakis bought me a beer with a wordless smile. Towards midnight they escorted me up to the church where the bare-headed priest with his tightly rolled pigtail was performing hidden mysteries behind the painted wall of the iconostasis. Unlit candles were distributed among the congregation. Just before midnight the lights were extinguished, leaving the church in darkness. The face of the priest appeared in one of the portals, lit dramatically from below by the single taper he was holding. He turned and touched its flame to the nearest candle. Slowly the light passed from person to person, spreading ever more rapidly out from the centre until the whole church and the square outside were filled with soft radiance.

  ‘Christos anesti, Christ is risen,’ murmured Mrs Daskalakis to me, and I was able to dredge the proper response from the back of my memory: ‘Alethos anesti – risen indeed!’ I could have said anything, in fact, because at that moment the men and boys waiting outside lit the fuses of the firecrackers they had been saving and threw them in a deafening volley onto the forecourt of the church, where they spat and snapped like mad cats. It was the signal for an orgy of explosions. Whizzers fizzed across the sky, rockets went up with corkscrew trails of gold sparks, and out in the back country something was let off that boomed and reverberated in the hills behind the village like a naval gun. ‘There are some crazies with dynamite …’ sighed Mrs Daskalakis.

  Up at the house Mr Daskalakis marked a smoky cross on the front door lintel with his carefully warded candle flame. The family sat round the table with a few neighbours and we ate soup of rice, eggs, lemon and globs of stock fat, together with cold chicken legs and lamb cutlets. Mr Daskalakis’s wine was very cloudy and very strong. After the meal we grabbed red-stained boiled eggs and attempted to smash those of our neighbours while retaining our own intact. Three-year-old Athi, the melt-in-the-mouth granddaughter of my host, ran out the winner by a mile. The roosters of Ano Zakros were already crowing the day as I entered my room at the hotel, full of egg soup and cloudy wine, and walked face
first into my wet shirt. This time it did seem funny – bloody funny.

  Mr Daskalakis himself drove me the last few miles down to the sea on Easter Sunday afternoon. Beyond the road the ground opened immense rocky lips to form the easternmost of Crete’s many gorges. ‘The Valley of the Dead,’ Mr Daskalakis told me. ‘We call it this because of many old tombs high up in caves in the walls. You will see tomorrow.’

  Kato Zakros was a single strip of buildings – three or four tavernas, three or four rent rooms – on a curved beach of grey pebbles between headlands of rock. It was as muted and quiet as could be. I checked into a room and took final stock. It was pretty clear by now that I had planned the contents of my backpack badly. I could hardly lift it from the floor, and when it was up between my shoulders its weight crushed me forward into a kind of painful old man’s stoop. There was no way on God’s earth I was going to be able to carry it 300 miles up gorges and across mountains. A ruthless cull was the only solution.

  The rejected items made a small but expensive mountain in the corner of the room. Out went my spare and heavier sweater, my jeans and my leather shoes. Out went my only T-shirt, my travel pillow, one of my two sets of thermal underwear. I tore out the pages I needed from my guide books and added the mutilated volumes to the pile; my collapsible umbrella, too. I considered sacrificing sun cream and survival bag, but thought better of it. Harmonica? No – too good an ice-breaker. Books – were they a luxury I could do without? I had only brought two, after careful thought: a paperback volume of the Psalms for day-to-day inspiration (I was going to allow myself 3 a day), and a copy of the Odyssey because I’d never read it and would need a real proper Greek hero to look to in times of trial. No: Homer and the Psalmist had better come along.