The Squiggly Bits

Today, we went looking for the squiggly bits. Kirkyra is a mountainous island, the northern end forming a roughly conical shape with steep cliffs on its Eastern and Western coasts, with a more gentle slope to the North. Between lie a series of mountain ridges and steep sided valleys; where progress along their length is reasonable, travel across their width near impossible.

The main road describes a rough circle around perimeter of this northern end, with only one major route directly north/south, from Roda on the north coast back through Skripero and Tzavros back to Kirkyra town itself. To reach any of the many popular beaches and resorts, you must branch off this major circuit, and descend the steep sides of the cone. Some of these roads are spectacular and challenging in all but the most agile car. Goodness alone knows how they get the tourist buses down…

However, it is in he interior where the real fun is to be found. In less peaceful times, villages were almost always built at the top of cliffs and ridges rather than at the bottom, for protection against the ravages of marauding pirates or other unsavoury characters. Height afforded excellent vision, tiring access and easy flight down the other side. To this day, many of Greece’s prettiest villages owe their remarkable preservation to this simple fact, and still cling to their precipitous eiries. No car will ever navigate those narrow lanes and steps.

(Coastal villages adopted a different defence, building their streets in narrow and deliberately confusing layouts to make life difficult for anyone but a resident of the town. You only have to wander around present day Mykonos to judge how effective a strategy that could be.)

So, the original footpath along the crown of the ridge has become the main road through each village, but you can’t move the houses back. As a result, these main streets are often little wider than a car, and leave no room for such niceties as pavements or pedestrian access. Rather, it is the car that is the alien, and walking, donkey or moped the norm. As a small concession to modernity, access to many of these villages is now traffic light controlled, allowing a sort of tidal flow, with passage in one direction only at a time.

The particular squiggly bit we were seeking is the climb from the main Skripero/Kiryaki road to Ano and then Sokraki. On our small tourist map it resembles the sort of line an anatomy teacher might use to describe your small intestine, convoluted in the extreme. However, our map lacks any form of contour, so we have no way to judge the height or severity of the climb, only the cartographer’s contortions to serve as our guide.

Up we went. To say that I am increasingly impressed with our little Fiat is a considerable understatement – small tin box though it is, it has also coped with every single challenge we have thrown at it (thrown it at?). And this was a doozy. I lost count of how many 180-degree hairpins we scrabbled round, because there wasn’t enough time before reaching the next. Probably thirty or more. Each with what seemed like less than 50 yards from one corner to the next. We were rarely out of first gear, occasionally in second, and never third. At times, we could see the apparent track of the road as a line through the trees impossibly far above our heads, only to find ourselves gazing slack-jawed back down from that very terrace a few minutes later. Back and forth we zigged and zagged, the weather growing wetter and windier with every meter we climbed. And then, right at the top, a village. Cold, bleak, but in summer blessed with uniquely impressive views and welcome coolness.