Samothraki – Day 19

Inexorably the island got larger as we approached. Only 17km long and mountainous. Samothraki or Samothrace. It was from here that Poseidon had looked down at the mortals fighting the Trojan War. I tried to remember what Mustapha Askin had said about the significance of that.

In my pocket the phone vibrated, an email flooded in. I hadn’t had many. My clients had either respected my out of office message or had abandoned me altogether.  It was from the allotments association warning  of an invasion of badgers. I saw my shed listing low at the back of my plot,  slowly sinking into a badger’s sett.

Down on the car deck they’d opened the door to the engine room. Heat was pumping out like the sauna I’d experienced the other day. I stood to one side and looked out through the wide open cargo doors. The land was very close and moving at a sickening speed as we came up to the hard. It was like a panning shot in the cinema when you’re too close to the screen. A very strange feeling when you are in a massive three storey volume but the real world is fleeting by outside. Worlds colliding with precision. I imagined it must be close to experiencing space travel.

Next day on the bathroom’s chequerboard tiling the gecko had moved from King’s Rook Three to Queen’s Bishop Five. Was that even a legal move? I had never actually seen this tiny apricot coloured chap budge. Perhaps he just thought himself from square to square?

It had been blowing a hoolie all night  and I’d slept with the doors open knowing that I was safe from 633 Squadron. 

Outside a bright sunny day. But a heck of a racket going on. I looked out into the street. Across at the same height, two men were stripping the roof and throwing the rubbish into a truck below. They narrowly missed a man using a leaf blower but he didn’t notice because he was wearing ear defenders against the dreadful noise he was making. Up the road another man mounted his two stroke and revved it to maximum sending a big cloud of charcoal smoke into the open doorway of a house where a woman was hanging her washing. Hmmm…I had heard this was a sleepy little port. Give me sanctuary!

Six clicks up the road I found it. The Sanctuary of the Great Gods. 

Nice segue huh?

One of Greece’s most mysterious archaeologil sites – said the guidebook. A temple complex, built by the Thracians around 1000 BC. Secret rites and initiations had been held here up until the 4th century AD. A fine museum, designed tastefully by  Stuart M Shaw, NYC.

And a statue of Winged Nike. An exact copy of the original which had been 3D scanned and cut from a single block of marble. The archaeologist who found the original had carted it off to Paris where  it had since resided, gathering dust in the Louvre.

I walked round the site trying to make out how it might of looked. Not easy. Hardly any reconstruuction had been made and the blocks lay around in ranks like tombstones. There was a lot of doubling back and retracing of steps because the modern bridges that had been placed over the torrent that ran through the site had been washed out. Modern builders!

But it was all lovely in the early morning light.

I drove up and through Hora to the highest point possible by car. I was taking it easy because the road was very rough. I must have missed a jutting rock because something went bang underneath. ‘Ouch!’ cried Pedro. 

I saw with some relief that it was four fighter jets, buzzing the mountain.  

We drove onwards to a fine sandy beach on the other side of the island. I was the only person there. I walked over and met Nicolas the bar owner. A wiry old goat of a man with a wild beard and sun blackened skin. It was his last day of the season. He said ‘You are in luck my friend. The beers are on me.’

He said that everyday in August he had over two thousand paying customers. It had been his busiest year and he had been packing up. I rested my beer on a giant speaker – thankfully quiet now – and he brought across some spicy flat breads and sausages. 

I asked what he did in the winter. ‘I like Scotland,’ he said. ‘Not too cold for you?’ I asked. ‘No, nothing compared to here. Thick snow here on the beach every wintertime.’ I gazed out at the glittering sea. Hard to imagine.

He’d put up welcoming flags of every nation, and I told hm that he had the Union Flag upside down. He was fascinated when I drew how it should be and said he’d change that next year. ‘In all these years, you are the only Englishman to tell me that.’

By and by a couple of German women came over and asked if they could rent a boat. ‘Thirty Euro.’ he told them. They didn’t like that. ‘Wanna drink?’ they shook their heads. ‘Have you got a toilet?’ one of them asked. ‘No sorry. You want pissy? Go behind rocks!’ They sauntered off.

Then a Romanian dentist from Bucharest joined the party. His name was Vlad. I immediately thought of Vlad the Impaler. What a name for a denti.He said he was taking a break from work. He felt burnt out. He was very worried about the war in Ukraine. The Black Sea only two hours drive from where he lived. 

There we sat. Drifting in and out of conversation for the entire afternoon and trying to cope with overpowering perfection of it all.