Looking for Agia Pelagia: Halki October Adventure Part I

The sea was dark blue and glittering, the land bare grey and brown as we rounded the south of Tilos. I love seeing my island afresh as soon as I get on a boat. There’s a different perspective from the sea. It’s good to get away, too, from the laptop and all the little jobs that I could always be doing around the house and garden, and just GO.

There’s something committing about taking a journey from an island – you can’t just go back. And there would be no boats to or from Tilos over the weekend. It was either this Friday lunchtime one or the late one if I wanted to go somewhere, and travelling in daytime is much more pleasant.

So I had decided to go to Halki with the Stavros, a big old ferry that currently plies a very useful route up and down the Dodecanese. It’s often late and puffs out evil-looking black smoke, but it’s a nice boat with plenty of space, my dog doesn’t have to wear a muzzle, and all for the very attractive price of nothing but the ticket office handling charge: 2 euros.

‘I’m thinking about taking the car,’ I had mused to Stelios Stefanakis as he processed my ticket.

‘Why? It’s only a little island!’ he scoffed.

‘But I’m thinking of going to the other side…’ I started to explain, but decided not to bother anyway. I wanted a bit of a walking adventure. This late October weather, sunny and warm but not too hot, is perfect for walking and I had a place in mind.

As we neared Halki, all the details of its north shore started coming into focus, the ridge and cliffs and gullies, some of which I’d walked before. It looked very empty and rugged. We passed the impressive new solar farm and then an hour or so after we’d left, the Stavros arrived at the splendid harbour of Nimborio with all its lovely painted villas, and Lisa and I felt like royalty as the only foot passengers to disembark. I walked straight to the bakery for a hortopita and a loaf of bread, then to Ftenagia beach to swim and relax for a couple of hours.

Because it had been a last-minute decision to go, I’d only sent a tentative email about a place to stay that morning. I checked on my phone and there was no email back yet, hardly surprising; this gave me an excuse to try my cheeky plan B, which was really a plan A. I had my new, lightweight tent cached in my bag, after all.

I stopped at a minimarket to buy two large bottles of water to supplement the supply I’d brought. There were three people sitting outside, two men and an older lady. I asked if there was water at Ai Yianni Alarga, the monastery of St John the Far-Away, towards the other end of the island.

‘Not at this time of year,’ said the older of the two men. Springs need to be fed over the course of the winter.

‘There is, but I don’t know if they have it open or closed,’ said the lady.

I told them I was thinking of walking there the next day. The lady advised I leave some of my stuff behind, indicating my heavy-looking rucksack. The man said it was OK to carry everything, but I should go slowly. I decided to take another bottle of water with me, just in case, and thanked them for their help.

In my book Wild Abandon about my journeys to deserted places in the Dodecanese, the short chapter on Halki is called ‘Road to Nowhere’. Once you leave the harbour village, there are hardly any houses or people. In some ways, taking the road to nowhere was going against my other aim, to meet locals and speak more Greek. But I also had a hankering to get away to nowhere for a while, as I sometimes do.

Soon after we set off, Lisa tried to convince me that the pine trees around the bay of Podamos would be a good place to stop. But even if it was tempting, I wasn’t carrying five or six litres of water, camping gear and food and everything else just to camp in a place with a catamaran moored in the bay and tourists on the beach. We continued up the road slowly, past scrappy fences with barking dogs, past the rubbish dump, past a young man making cement who said yeia sou (and I was so tired already that I weirdly replied yeia sas), up the slope and then the zigzagging ascent among olive groves. I noticed a little inhabited house I hadn’t seen last time. There were enough sheep and goats meandering about to convince me that camping in a field wasn’t an option – we’d never get any sleep.

Leaving the road at the start of the abandoned Old Village or Paleo Horio, we passed a few restored but uninhabited houses and continued more steeply, passing layer upon layer of ruined houses and chapels, to about 300 metres, where I happened upon a few French tourists heading down. We all mumbled surprised hellos.

What joy to enter the opening in the medieval walls of the castle and pass through the ancient gate with its huge masonry blocks. The sun was still a little way above the sea, and the light was glorious. I’m not sure camping is really encouraged, but there was no discouragement either and it was unlikely anyone would come here now, so I hurried to choose a sheltered spot and set up before night began to fall. To the east was Rhodes, but to the south an expanse of calm, pale blue sea, with the narrow-necked peninsula of Tracheia below. I watched the sun go down, and at twilight a couple of birds flitted about calling clackety-clack and then peep-peep-peep.

Lisa made a very good camping companion on her own camping mat in the tent. Still, it’s a long night when it’s dark from about seven in the evening until seven in the morning. I read for a while by the light of a torch, then lay drifting off, enveloped in the gorgeous silence, the only sound the gentle breathing of my dog lying next to me. Waking at one point to the sound of fishing boats, I unzipped the tent to bright moonlight and stars.