Victorian Love

Victorian Love.

Greek drivers are perhaps like good Victorian parents were, instilling dread and not above corporal punishment. And there may be a small inkling of affection later on.

Five years ago I was not a runner. I could run, but it was not something I did. I saw myself as a cyclist, then a triathlete, and running mostly happened at the last stage of the race. Of course I did train, or at least I thought I did. Now when I think back, I ran, but I never really ran. I never thought about how I moved or how I felt. My wife was the first person to ever mention that I needed to work on my stride. I remember wondering what on earth she meant. Triathlons for me were about not drowning in the swim, thrashing the bike and hanging in for the run. Not a very good triathlete then.

Five years ago I arrived in the still shiny new Athens International Airport with shiny shaved legs and my shiny one-year behind pro-team level bicycle. We had not even unpacked all of our belongings and I hit the road almost immediately. The road hit back. The car is king here. The old joke about ‘what side of the road do Greeks drive on - they drive in the shade’ is fundamentally true from an attitude perspective. Most road signs are up for debate, traffic lights too. Parking in Athens is possibly one of the most organic activities you can ever hope to behold. One of my favourite Bill Bryson observations is on Roman parking. No matter what road you happen across in Rome he muses. it always seems as though you just missed a parking competition for the blind. Clearly he has not yet visited Athens. Cars are often double parked, scooter owners sometimes leave their keys in the ignition so that if someone is inconvenienced by their goal-oriented parking they can move it themselves. The law is completely laissez faire in any regard to the road user. Don’t be mistaken, there are laws, but they are not enforced. You’ll find the police are about, usually smoking with their motorbikes parked in the shade spot on the pavement. Perhaps, after the strict Junta years this is just one of the heady hangovers of liberation. For the blind or the disabled, pavements are unnavigable.

One of my first rides was along the beautiful coastline to the south of Athens. The beach road to the ancient temple of Sounio is well known.  It probably could rate as one of the most scenic cycling routes in the world, rivalling the Cape Peninsula in South Africa. The combination of sea, sky and mountains were breathtaking yet I could not help but be distracted by the scattering of innumerable broken automobile parts and heavily dented safety railings. Cycling in London and Surrey now seemed orderly and gentrified. This felt like a blood sport. Ever since, I have never been able to shake the fear that some liberated multi-tasking cigarette smoking, coffee drinking and talking on the mobile driver would fail to see the brightly coloured cyclist on his windscreen until after he had found out what was dinner and hung up. I had never seen so many dented or scraped cars before, nor so many sign posts gently nudged away from upright before.

It was frustrating because cycling was really one of my first loves. I had visited unforgettable places in Spain, the Alps, Bordeaux and the Outer Hebrides. Cycling was an integral part of it. I miss it and often when driving somewhere spectacular I still wish I was riding my bike. Slowly and sternly the roadie was beaten out of me. That was the fear and dread part. Most probably I had spent too many years cycling somewhere with established road user rules and predictable driving. I could not adjust. Cycling is booming now in Greece, but it’s drivers are still the same.

But that fear pushed me onto the mountains and trails. I wanted to be as far away from drivers as possible. It was here that Greece suddenly opened up to me. It is a glorious place, with rugged mountains everywhere. It makes Wales seem like Belgium in comparison. Whereas running had always been a component of another sport, I no longer was racing or competing. My agenda had changed. I began to think of how I felt and how I moved when I ran. I became interested in analysing my stride. I took a far greater interest in running shoes. Before it had only been one brand of shoe and one brand only.

I started feeling connected with where I was running. It was a connection that built up with time, miles and miles; the repetition, the knowing of the hills, the trees and plants, how the rains had changed the trails. My running seemed to be integrated with the trails. The better I knew the trails, the more I ran. I was able to share this new experience with my wife and our dogs. It was a good place to rediscover running and it is here now, on these pine and thyme scented trails that I am most happy. And so, this is where I began.