Greece on My Wheels by Edward Enfield

Author:Edward Enfield
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Summerdale
Published: 2011-08-02T00:00:00+00:00

Picturesque and strange I certainly found my castle to be, but different from Lear’s – not so big, not approached by stairs, not looking like the picture in his book. I think perhaps his castle has disappeared from the peak of some neighbouring mountain. After parting from my taxi-driver friend I went spinning back along the Acheron Valley, managed the first climb without difficulty, plunged down the first descent, struggled up to the top of a long hill and had an encounter with a dog. A line of black goats was crossing the road. Between them and me, on the verge, was a dog which at first barked; then crouched, snarling, like a lion about to spring, with hair standing up along its back; and finally rushed at me gnashing its teeth. The goats made a solid phalanx across the road ahead but I was on a downhill slope so I pedalled at full speed straight for the goats, cursing the dog at the top of my voice. The goats divided to left and right, I shot through the gap, and after 30 yards or so the dog gave up, not liking to carry on the chase at about 25 miles per hour. These things happen. Near here Bowen says he was ‘attacked, with more than even their usual ferocity, by a pack of the descendants of the far-famed Molossian dogs, huge hairy brutes, looking like a cross between an English Mastiff and a sheepdog.’ The Molossi were the main tribe of Epirus, so I expect mine was also a Molossian descendent.

Bedbugs, which were the bane of early travellers, have been eradicated from Greece but mosquitoes have not. My room at Agia Kiriaki, at the top of the hill from Parga, had a lovely view but was infested with these whining creatures, and my so-called repellent was altogether useless.

Byron, before he reached Greece, reported that he had ‘got a diarrhoea and bites from the mosquitoes but what of that? Comfort must not be expected by folks that go a-pleasuring’, but I am not so easygoing. Mosquitoes seem to me to be the most malevolent, useless and unnecessary creatures that nature has ever dreamt up. On a general principle of live and let live I might not grudge a drop or two of blood if all they did was bite me now and again. If mosquitoes fed on me, and the swallows fed on them, that would all be part of the general merry-go-round of life. The mosquito, though, feels obliged to inject me with a poison which leaves me with an itching toe or arm or face, and this I regard as an act of mere ill-nature. Luckily I had with me, because I always keep it in my bicycle bag, a tube of Anthisan, so that if any bee, wasp, hornet, midge, mosquito or other insect bit me I could slap it on at once. Never be parted from your Anthisan is my advice to travellers everywhere.

Mosquitoes apart, staying

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