Today I walked along the golden road to Pelekas,or golden was how it felt, even if at each side of the road there was mostly a variety of shades of green, pale green on the just-coming-into-leaf trees, grey-green of the olive trees, the dark green of the cypresses. But there were some golden flowers, as well as blue and palest pinky cream and there was some deep pink blossom on trees and I don't know any of their names but I greet them all the same. And all that blue above, and even a glimpse once I reached Pelekas, of the blue of sea.
I didn't reach the sea because it was a long way down from the village, and I needed refreshment, which I found in a tiny cafe which wasn't really a cafe at all, but a small shop only they had a sign outside saying coffee, so I went inside and asked for coffee, actually for Greek coffee, and I sat with 3 or 4 other old men, and watched the parade on the TV, taking place in Athens. There were marching people in uniform, there was music, there were fly pasts, fly overs really, of helicopters or perhaps they were small planes, it was hard to tell.
This is a special day in Greece, it is Independence Day, celebrating the victory of the Greeks in 1821, finally being liberated from the centuries-long rule of the Ottoman Empire. The cafe (shop) owner is delighted and welcoming and pulls me out a chair so I can squeeze in among the old men, though I am unable to join in their conversation. But I practice my few words of Greek which are mainly to do with how I do not understand Greek, and how are you, but the cafe owner is very tolerant and smiles, and I have to point out on this special day, how one of my compatriots, Lord Byron, helped the Greek struggle for independence at Messolonghi, though sadly did not live to see their eventual success.
After this, I follow the twisting road through the village and climb up to the topmost point, where the Kaiser's Throne is located (there are lots of signposts pointing the way) a viewpoint looking out across the valley, and right to the sea beyond Kerkyra town.
Apparently it got its name from the fact that Kaiser Wilhelm used to spend summers in the early years of the twentieth century, up to that dread year of 1914, at the Achilleion (that extraordinary palace built by Sissi, Empress of Austria-Hungary, or commissioned rather, by her, but she loved Corfu, and Achilles). He liked apparently, to watch the sunset from there, always spectacular, and so this spot came to have his name, a bit like the way a viewpoint in the Scottish borders, looking out over the valley of the Tweed river and over to the Eildon Hills, is known as Scott's View as Walter Scott, the renowned novelist, who lived nearby, often stopped his carriage there, to gaze at the view of valley, river and hills.
It was hazy today, and I don't think the sea over beyond Corfu town and the port, is visible in the photographs but it was there, most definitely, in fact at almost any high point in Corfu you can see the sea in at least one direction and often in more than one.
Comments
Rxx