Patrick Leigh Fermor - that intrepid traveller who walked 2,500 miles across Europe in the 1930s when he was 18, then wrote about it 40 years later in several highly acclaimed books, he whose footsteps I vaguely, oh so vaguely, traced in Athos last year - lived his last years in Greece's Mani Peninsula, that middle tentacle hanging off the end of the Peloponnese.
Wild, stark, craggy, Mani was for centuries the inaccessible domain of reputed latter-day Spartans who held off both Byzantines and Ottomans - when they weren't finishing each other off in generations-long blood feuds, that is - true heirs of the ancients known for their harsh life style, brutality and propensity to cast infants deemed not up to snuff out on the stark Taygetus Mountain range to die.
What a ball of fun they must have been.
The inhabitants of Mani are known as Maniots, according to Lonely Planet from the Greek word mania, which even way back when in classical times meant madness or frenzy, so according to my calculations this should make them Maniacs, not Maniots. Others say the word Mani originally meant dry or barren, as the land indeed is.
Be that as it may, they developed this predilection for slaughtering each other over the little fertile land available in Mani and other sundry casus belli - and that's plural, see, not casuses belli, because it's the Latin fourth declension in which the nominative singular and plural are the same. I have to get some mileage out of the 11 years Latin I did at school and university...
OK, where were we? Yes, the Maniacs, I mean the Maniots, and their homes. Given such a belligerent environment they tended to live from the 17th century on in villages of stone tower houses on inaccessible and impregnable hilltops - now the delight of tourists visiting the area.
But first I have to get there from Kalavrita at the other end of the Peloponnese. There's a bus leaving for Clitoria (Hmmm?) at 1 p.m., and another thence for Tripoli at 3 p.m., which may or may not arrive in time for an onward connection Kalamata.
Averse to getting stranded in Tripoli, I hit on the brilliant strategy of leaving at 9 a.m., and going half way round the world by various buses to Patra and Corinth for a connection to Kalamata.
So imagine my delight on finally reaching Tripoli, having ridden through Arcadia, that oh-so-evocative bucolic region of emerald meadows, deep green trees, sparkling springs and chattering streams, forested hills, fold after fold of blue-hazed mountains, domain of frolicking nymphs and the horned satyr Pan playing on his pipes and on a damn sight more, if you ask me, as the frolicsome nymphs lasciviously...
OK, as I was saying, imagine my delight on reaching Tripoli to find the 3 p.m. bus from Clitoria (I'm obsessed) already there.
From Kalamata there's a huge stuffed tiger sitting in the middle of the bus for Kardamyli in Outer or Messinian Mani, where Patrick Leigh Fermor (PLF) had his final abode.
But not to worry; at least it's not the Nemean lion, near whose home town of Nemea we passed in Arcadia - that monstrous beast with the impervious gold fur whom Hercules had to kill as the first of his 12 labours, clubbing it and strangling it and...
OK, now where was I? Oh yes, we're now driving on a little ledge of land between the azure blue Gulf of Messenia and Taygetus's very stark and barren ramparts, and the ancient white-haired driver has just gone stark staring mad. He's shouting and waving his hands all over the place as a French group shows him a piece of paper.
Get a grip on yourself, Demosthenes! Wow, he seems to be delivering all four Philippics at once. He's in full meltdown mode. Clearly he should have been cast out on Taygetus in early infancy.
The French are showing him a Google map of their hotel. In the end a passenger points up a hill, they get off, and Mt. Vesuvius - alright, then, Mt. Thera (Santorini) since he's Greek - subsides.
The setting sun glints on golden gorse along the narrow twisting road beneath wooded hillsides and soaring crags, ripe oranges and lemons glow against dark green leaves, purple flowers and lavender grow ever more iridescent, even an occasional red puts in a brilliant appearance - thus does the now sullen driver deliver us to Kardamyli, above a rocky cove with those stone tower houses for which Mani is famous.
Now to find PLF's residence, where he lived until just before his death in 2011, aged 96. You have to write off to Benaki National Museum in Athens to get written permission to enter the holy of holies since there've been 'incidents.' What incidents? Do they think I'll wank in the living room?
Anyway there's nothing to stop me wanking outside, as it's in nearby Kalamitsi, only a 15-minute walk, so says the innkeeper.
Well, to cut a long story short, it takes me over three hours, along many mistaken paths, many mistaken directions, redirections from an English lady residing way beyond ('And watch that step there! Mind you don't... Oh dear.' I stumble up again), and several visits to an ancient Brit burning grass at the bottom of a hill, before I finally walk through some undergrowth and make out some red tiles over a tall wall through a thick camouflage of leaves and branches. Eureka!
Back on the road, the grass burner drives past, offering me a lift up the steep hill. 'Of course,' quoths he, depositing me at the top, 'you get the best view from the beach just yards beyond where I was burning grass.'
Well why the fuck didn't you tell me that back there, you old fart!
I wait till he turns a corner - I don't want him to think I'm totally demented - then nip back down again, through a nice little mud bath just beyond where he was burning his grass, to a boulder and pebble strewn beach. From here you get a better view of the outlay of the house.
And now the Greek air force is practicing loud roaring strafing runs overhead in a cloudless blue sky. Oy vey!
Kardamyli has a ruined old town of dilapidated tower and church on a hillock by a ravine above the newer seaside section. They're not so much towers - they're only three or so storeys high, resembling small castle keeps, sturdily made of large well-fitted stones with only a few smallish windows.
South of Kardamyli, trees are dropping oranges and lemons everywhere as we approach Stoupa - and no, that is not pronounced Shtup her - which has its own literary connections. Nikos Kazantzakis lived here for a while and based his Zorba the Greek on a local coalminer.
To see the peninsula at its most rugged, you need to go to and around Areopolis, City of Ares, god of war, the little hilltop town that is capital of Inner, Deeper or Laconian Mani.
Narrow cobbled lanes and alleys twist between sturdy stone buildings and tower houses in various stages of decrepitude and restoration. The centuries-old Byzantine churches are tiny, except for the central Church of Taxiarhes with its strangely shaped ten-tiered bell tower.
Athanaton square in the new sector is dominated by a statue of Petrobey Mavromichalis, resplendent in what looks like a pasha's gear. He waved the flag of Greek independence in Areopolis on March 17, 1821, so if flag waving is the symbol of the official start of the War of Independence against the Turks, then dear old Petrobey beat Kalavrita and Bishop Germanos to the flag, if not the gun, by four days.
Three people have now pointed out three different semi-ruined tower houses as being the former Mavromichalis abode.
PLF published a book about the area in 1958 - Mani: Travels in the Southern Peloponnese. I don't do the corny thing of reading it while travelling round as I did with his diaries on Athos last year. I'll peruse it when I get back home. That way I can kick myself for not having read it earlier and missing out on his sites, sights and insights.
But I do travel round. Of course, I don't walk it like PLF. I get a taxi for 100 euros. The countryside is harsh indeed, no forested mountains here. Stark grey crags saw at the sky above wild green scrub, rocky coves, grey-green olive groves separated by stone walls, hardy terraced cultivation.
But at lower levels a golden carpet glitters - gorse and yellow flowers are in full spring bloom. Lemon trees add to the colour, violet and purple blooms too. Mini-church accident memorials crowd the roadside. The sea is a dazzling blue. Tower villages crown hilltops and ridges.
Among the most dramatic is Vathia with its abandoned towers and little chapels, many containing broken toilets, showers, sinks and electric connections from an abortive attempt to restore it into a tourist village years ago.
A 19th century tower house on a nearby peak with stunning views down to the rock-girt sandy cove of Marmara has been turned into an up-market hostelry, with flat-screen TVs, air conditioning, minibar. A night at the Tainaron Blue Retreat starts from about $250.
In Flomohori, another hilltop town, people still live in restored towers. Elsewhere modern builders imitate the art.
Everywhere the panoramic views from the twisting roads are superb, taking in the azure sea, the innumerable rocky coves, the stark crags, and lower down the varying shades of green.
And everywhere that spring carpet of exuberant flowers. Splendid!
[Upcoming next Sunday: The Mediaeval Greek Fortress Town of Monemvasia]
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By the same author: Bussing The Amazon: On The Road With The Accidental Journalist, available with free excerpts on Kindle and in print version on Amazon.