Valerie White
reports

Crete is a wonderful place  for a spring holiday, by bicycle.   Food and wine are plentiful, and the cycling is challenging, especially if
you like twisty, hilly routes.

SPRING IN CRETE

The signs started on the road leading into Gortyn: 
"pottery this way." 

After viewing the ruins that had brought my husband and me to almost the center of Crete, south of the capital of Heraklion, we followed the signs twisting and turning through narrow deserted alleyways, certain that we were lost and that at any time the signs would end. 

They did end – at the hidden garden and pottery workshop of Nasim and her German husband, Bahais who had left Egypt to settle in this area.

She took the time to talk to us and show us her studio, which they had recently built, and into the new walls of which they had incorporated fragments of ancient pillars found on the site of their old house in the tiny village.

She explained that business was very good in the summer months with busloads of tourists stopping to buy her beautiful modern pottery, handcrafted to incorporate the smooth lines of ancient Grecian ware, such as urns, water jugs and amphoras, and covered with the signature blue glaze of Kriti.

This was the theme of Crete: the juxtaposition of the ancient with the not so old, and the brand new. The ruins at Gortyn were primarily Roman, although the town had been there much longer. The most spectacular building left standing was the basilica of Agios Titus from the 7^th century AD. The most interesting was the 6^th century BC Law Code of Gortyn, inscribed on stone tablets and mounted inside a restored building:  laws concerning all sorts of criminal and civil matters, such as divorce, inheritance and adoption. Punishment was usually by fines; no imprisonment or execution was mentioned.

Leaving Gortyn we cycled up another steep hill and then meandered up, down and up again to the town of Zaros where we had an impromptu concert given by the traditional music maker at his shop full of lutes, bazoukis, lyres, guitars, mandolins and flutes. A French woman who was also there gave a short solo on a guitar which she was contemplating buying. In Zaros, we stayed at a lovely "traditional Cretan Inn" where we were greeted by the matriarch with tiny cups of strong Greek coffee and cookies.

Later that evening we sat at a restaurant table that was literally in the street and had a great meal of trout and stuffed tomatoes and peppers accompanied by some harsh Cretan table wine. We reflected back on the morning part of the day’s ride, which had taken us from the seaside resort of Agia Galini on the south coast through the agricultural heartland of Crete where much of the tomato and cucumber for the ubiquitous Greek salad is grown in greenhouses located on a south facing plateau.

This was the part of Crete not pictured on postcards: flat, garbage strewn and full of small box-like houses, epitomized by the town of Timbaki.

 When we cycled through it was market day and the main street was strewn with tables piled high with piles of cheap clothes, sneakers, towels and plastic ware, none of the picturesque goods that one expects in a Greek market place.

 However, the scenery and the cleanliness gradually improved until we were back at the usual picturesque Greek town surrounded by hundreds of olive groves. And thus we ended another day on our bike tour through time and place in Crete.

That said, Crete is a mostly stunning island that gave us great cycling for 13 days and 520 kilometers in April 2001. It is like an uneven loaf of bread, about 60 km from north coast to south coast through three mountain ridges. 

The only flat land is along the coast, so we had some great workouts as we crossed the island several times from north to south and back again. The scenery was spectacular with snow-covered mountains in the distance (not the ones we had to cycle through!), millions of olive trees, thousands of orange trees, the blue sky and aquamarine sea.

Crete is a wonderful place to consider for a spring holiday, by bicycle, bus or rental car: the weather is good, but not too hot, there are lots of places to stay and rates are inexpensive until the end of May. 

Food and wine are plentiful, and the cycling is challenging, especially if you like twisty, hilly routes. 

There are lots of paved secondary roads so you could use a road bike, rather than the mountain bikes we rode. On the other hand, there are lots of very steep dirt roads and trails all over the place, so you could just as easily mountain bike, but you would probably want to stay in one place and do day rides rather than packing panniers as we did. There are numerous beaches, and hiking trails, too.

We reached Crete by taking the 12-hour overnight ferry from Piraeus, just south of Athens, which arrived at Souda 6 kilometers east of Hania, the second largest city. Hania is situated around a Venetian harbor, so called because of the promenade and well preserved boathouses left from the period of Venetian rule in the 13^th to 17^th centuries. An interesting phenomenon which occurred the first day we were there was a gradual and distinct yellowing of the sky due to a warm wind coming from Africa which brought dust from the Sahara in big raindrops!

Leaving Hania, we crossed the island to the south coast town of Paleochora from where we hoped to take a ferry to Agia Roumeli at the foot of the Samaria Gorge and on to Hora Sfakion at the foot of the Imbros Gorge. But the weather, although sunny and warm, was very windy, and all ferries were cancelled for several days, so after a day of waiting we decided to cycle back across the island by a different route to Hania. When we left Hania again we had one of the most perfect cycling days ever.

We gradually climbed about 30 kilometers through the olive covered hills to the town of Imbros followed by a thrilling descent along the walls of its gorge. 

Unlike the more famous Samaria Gorge, which was not open until May and can only be traversed by foot, the Imbros has a road along its edge as well as the hiking trail in its valley, so we were able to bike it! 
We cruised along the scenic twisting and turning road banked on one side by a rock wall, but the best part was the final descent of about 26 switchbacks to the turquoise Mediterranean. We could hear the bike tires squeal on the tight inside turns and the wheel rims were too hot to touch! The Imbros Gorge became known during the second world war Battle of Crete when several thousand Allied soldiers avoided German bombing, escaping to the south coast and rescue via this route.

Cyclists should avoid the main north coast highway from Hania through Rethimno to Heraklion as the traffic is fast and furious and there is nothing to see but thousands of beachfront developments and tacky stores.

 We stayed in Heraklion long enough to visit the amazingly restored monastery which houses the Archeological Museum, and Knossos, the excavated Minoan palace dating from about 1900 BC.

 Leaving Heraklion we were able to cycle along the north coast on a road paralleling the main highway for the most part. 

This route was not exciting until we cycled high into the mountains to avoid a tunnel that the main road went through, and then had an unbroken run down through a myriad of tiny towns to Agios Nikolaos, our exit point from Crete.

Early the next morning we arrived on the dock to take the 12-hour ferry to Rhodes and were surprised by the “Greek way of doing things”, which ensued when the ferry was late arriving, and many people attempted to board before all the passengers had disembarked! Finally we boarded and got the bikes secured. And smiling we left Crete, basking in the ancient Mediterranean sun.