Journal

Tilos is generally seen as the greenest of the Dodecanese Islands, having switched entirely to renewable energy and, even more remarkably, having banned bird hunting. Would love to more about the politics that led to this outcome.

While on Tilos, we found our way to the precipitous heights occupied by the Monastery of St Panteleimon, with vertiginous views on the way up and down. We also learned more about the pygmy elephants found on the island, an example of so-called insular dwarfism, but not much to see on that front as yet, given that a museum is still under development. Would love to come back here.

This was another mind-bending visit, from our mooring in Mandraki. En route, we stopped off in the cove of Giali for a swim. Then passed a giant quarry on the island of Yali, that apparently extracts volcanic materials like pumice and perlite. long ago it was a key source of obsidian, too.

A sense of the history of mining in the region can be gained here. From the Internet, I learned that the miners are committed to sustainable development. Let’s see what that means when the site is worked out.

A good deal of quarrying must have gone into building the astonishing castle at Paliokastro, though the real astonishment lay in the close-cut, irregular masonry used to build the walls. Probably to ward off earthquakes, but strongly reminiscent of Inca stonework.

Going down into the crater that lurks at the heart of Nisyros was a special treat, though I wondered whether Elaine would manage with the smell of hydrogen sulphide – given that she had such problems at Larderello, Italy, when I was researching my book Sun Traps back in the 1980s. The reality turned out to be rather glorious, with the group drinking a local nut milk concoction under giant eucalyptus trees, whose prolific blossoms were thrumming with aerial legions of bees.

In the evening we headed up into a hilltop village that looks down on the crater, for a stunning meal in a little family-owned restaurant. Pretty sure that this was the Emporeiou taverna. Would love to go again if I happened to be passing.

Kos was a bit of a shock when we arrived and docked within the shadow of Nerantzia castle, originally built by the Knights of St John. It is described here. Somewhat raucous by contrast with other islands we have visited. But once we got inside the castle and then out into the hinterland, to visit the Asklepieion, things settled down. The island was once famed for its wine – and for this huge shrine to Asklepios, the god of healing.

Also struck by the modern, floating shrines to Captain Jack Sparrow, of Pirates of the Caribbean fame, given that our own captain – Captain Ergun Malatyali – has much of the pirate to him. He is great company, excellent at engaging his passengers, but you only need to squint a bit to be reminded of the pirates who were such a feature of these waters for so long – and one of the key reasons that there were so many hilltop castles and fortifications.

Probably the best-known story of a pirate captive was that of Julius Caesar. As John Leonard recalled:

Julius Caesar, a prominent investor in the region, once endured an infamous kidnapping by pirates (74 BC), records the biographer Plutarch (Jul. Caes. 1,2), near the Dodecanese island of Pharmakoussa (Farmakonisi). Ultimately ransomed after thirty-eight days, during which he calmly wrote poetry and speeches, Caesar promptly hired a ship, tracked down his former captors and had them crucified. 

This, for me at least, was one of the real highlights of this remarkable series of islands. For me a real joy was our visit to the Castle of Pantelli, in fact three castles built one around the other, reviewing the history of fortification from the early works of the Knights of St John through to the arrival of gunpowder. And bastions.

While we were there, Michael did a tour de force presentation on the battles that raged across the island in October-November 1943, as the British were outwitted and Leros passed from Italian to German hands. Strong elements of Louis de Bernières’ Captain Correlli’s Mandolin lay in wait for some of the captured Italians.

The Greek curator of the castle, not a happy camper for other reasons, mentioned that the father of Ginger Baker, drummer with Cream, was among the British and Commonwealth forces killed. Their last signal: “Situation desperate.” Later, we visited a Commonwealth cemetery: hugely poignant.

Earlier, we had walked around Lakki Town, into which we had sailed that morning, once called Porto Lago, and a major Italian military town in the 1930s. The architecture is eerie. As Peter Sommers’ brochure put it: “built in the style of ‘Razionalismo’, an odd combination of fascist aesthetics, Bauhaus modernism and Art Deco eclecticism.”

One link to the books that I have been devouring as we sailed was that the Italians used seaplanes as a key means of scouting and communications at the time – and we saw the crane that used to list the seaplanes into and out of the water. On the flight across to Bodrum I had finished Graham Hoyland’s powerful Merlin.

One link here was the speech that my father, Tim, did at the Rolls-Royce factory in Derby back in 2015, to thank them for all their engines he had flown behind.

After the castle and cemetery, we had a glorious lunch at a small winery, the Hatzidakis Winery, in Smalou. I thought their dry white wine exquisite – indeed bought a couple of bottles to take home. Fell in love with the co-owner, Haridimos, and we said goodbye with an embrace.

Then we set sail for a cove off Kalymnos, en route to Kos.

We arrived in Pythagoreio yesterday, a port village built on the ruins of the ancient capital of Samos. Named after the island’s most famous son, Pythagoras. And make a mistake in interpreting a navigational structure on the harbour mole as an Antony Gormley statue in honour of the ancient mathematician. Even knowing I was wrong, I can’t help but still see the linkage. Here’s the structure closer to:

In any event, one high point of the visit to Samos was the Heraion, said to be the birthplace of the goddess Hera. I was fascinated to hear that because the massive shrine was originally built on a wetland, a marsh, liminal land, the buildings kept subsiding. The scale of the ritual slaughter that was practised here back in the day beggars the imagination. I wonder if there were animal liberation activists here back in the sixth century BC.

Afterwards, we visit the museum in the island’s modern capital of Vathi, which contains many fascinating finds from the Heraion site. Among them, a colossal kouros, or male nude figure. Then, the next day, 2 June, we visit the Tunnel of Eupalinos, on a hill overlooking the port. Dug in the sixth century BC, it is an engineering marvel, cut through solid rock for over a kilometre, and designed to be invisible to attackers and besiegers.

When it came to it, though, I chickened out. I put on a safety helmet and started down the rock-cut steps into the tunnel, but my age-old claustrophobia returned with a vengeance – and I decided to sit out this one with some older members of the party. The story of how the tunnel was cut from both ends simultaneously, and how they managed to meet in the middle, was some sort of ancient miracle.

One story that stuck in my mind was the, perhaps deservedly, grisly end of the tyrant Polycrates of Samos. He made the mistake of trusting another tyrant and went to the wonderfully named Magnesia. His fate is thought to have involved some combination of impaling and crucifixion, with one account suggesting that he may have been able to see Samos in the distance as he died. Perhaps wishful thinking on the part of his enemies?

Later in the day we set sail for Leros.