Single Travel to Western Crete - but not alone

There were 29 of us winding in a crocodile line round the steep rocks of the Sirikari Gorge in western Crete. Some had walking sticks and prodded the flinty ground uncertainly; most had sun hats; all had walking boots. We were 29 “single” people ranging in age from our late twenties to early fifties, who wanted to holiday, but not alone.

Each day, we took a coach up into the foothills to begin our morning trek. In Greek mythology, the ruler of the gods, Zeus, was born in a Cretan cave, reared on milk from a mountain goat-nymph and buried somewhere under a Cretan hill. If he could have looked down on us during our hikes, he would have seen tiny people, dwarfed by mountains and vast, cloud-strewn skies, making an ant road into the hilly unknown, jabbering about ex’s and mothers and the shortcomings of the Greek plumbing system.

Our walks took us up and down rugged slopes, through villages, along coastal pathways and into caves. We identified oleander, bougainvillaea, yellowhorned poppy as well as countless orange, lemon and apricot trees. But the two most significant gifts of nature, contributing more than any other to Cretan culture over the millennia, must be the goat and the olive.

We encountered goats on every walk – we, clumsy and breathless; they, clambering swiftly up the mountainside, sending down showers of rocks and stones as if to prove a point. When we had finished our walks and sat down, al fresco, for a scrumptious lunch laid out on a long trestle table, goat would feature somewhere among the salads and kebabs – usually as goat yoghurt, or as a tasty goat’s cheese or maybe in an omelette (made with goat’s milk). Wherever you went – coast or acropolis – a goat was never very far away. The olive was also a constant feature of the table, though as an oil rather than as a fruit. When the Greek husband of our tour guide took us round the hilltop village of Polyrinia (the name means “many sheep”) we were left in no doubt of its importance: olive groves account for 70% of the cultivated land in Crete and olive oil is one of the main exports. We were shown the old stone olive presses where donkeys used to turn the mill stones that crushed the fruit, the oil running down the gullies to basins where it was collected and bottled. Workers were paid with olive oil, and inside the Greek Orthodox chapels that decorate the landscape (and which are always open) olive oil is pooled in the candle holders.

Goats and olive apart, the holiday rolled by in a comfortably pleasing pattern: when we were not walking, we were eating and when we were not eating, we were swimming or dancing.

One memorable evening, we celebrated two birthdays. By now, we all felt fairly comfortable with each other and dinner table conversations were taking a confessional turn, discussing life problems such as the difficulties of work and of being single as well as strategies for dealing with ageing. After our meal, we went on to a bar and danced outlandishly on the terrace, causing such a stir among the local youth that they besieged us and photographed us with their mobile phones. It was the nearest thing I have ever had to a press call.

Looking back on it all now, it seems that in negotiating the rugged landscape and rocky terrain of Crete each of us had unknowingly stumbled on a metaphor for life – of taking the rough with the smooth – and perhaps too we had discovered that there is no better way of dealing with life’s ups and downs than in the maxim “Keep walking”.
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18 January 2007