free download here - Michael Llewellyn-Smith

The Great Island
We did not actually visit Khora Sphakia (the town) on that trip,
though we had been inside the eparchy of Sphakia in the gorge. A
month later we were back.
The road to Sphakia cuts across Crete from the north, over another
upland plateau, through grey, denuded mountains. By this road the
British forces, depleted and exhausted in the Battle of Crete, crossed
the island in 1941 to await evacuation from Sphakia. The town is a
half-ruined, half-deserted place: a cluster of pretty houses on the shore,
dominated by a pine-clad hill with the crumbling ruins of Castel
Sfacchia on the top. In July the sea is a sinister sheet of glass and the
hint of a warm breeze rustles in from Africa. At night, by a startling
change, this breeze turns into a violent offshore wind. In the morning
the island of Gavdos (St Paul’s island) appears, floating out of a sea
of hazej separated from the water by a band of light.
But it is not really the acropolis with its slender aromatic pines which
dominates Sphakia; it is the wall of mountains inland, which twist and
tumble down to the sea in gigantic folds of rock. Looking along the
coastline you can see the cliffs superimposed one on the other, each
with a different tone of shade. All bare.
The town is a shell. The Daskaloyiannis revolt ended a period of
peace which had lasted two hundred years, a peace originally bought
by the Venetians at the cost of certain concessions to the Sphakians,
who worried both Venetians and Turks by their natural bellicosity.
After the rebellion of 1866 many of the already depicted population
left Crete to avoid Turkish reprisals and by now, instead of several
thousands, the town supports a few hundred. Pasturage is minimal.
There are fish, but not many. One may be sad, but not surprised, at
the movement away from the countryside towards the towns, and West
Germany.
Julie du Boulay joined us in Sphakia with Aleko. In order to save
time she and my sister Elizabeth brought him over from Canea by
lorry. Julie had been understandably nervous about this trip but the
Greeks assured her all would be well. (I can imagine the scene. When
Greeks answer questions they have a wonderful knack of making you
feel a fool for asking. Whether the answer is yes or no, the implication
is that no one but an imbecile could have conceived that any other
answer was possible.) In the event her fears were entirely justified, and
not only by the callous way in which Aleko was hoisted on and off the
lorry. Passengers were officially not allowed, so that whenever they
passed through a village Julie and Elizabeth had to hide. At the same
time they had to tend and comfort the donkey, whose moorings gave
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