By Motorbike in the Cyclades

Motorbike holidays in the Cyclades.

Trip start date Friday 30 August 2002

Trip end date Monday 16 September 2002

At the back of a virtual drawer, I happen to lay my hands on a bundle of forgotten photos, which stir the memory of a pleasant holiday that deserves to be recalled. After a couple of weeks' holiday in Calabria, with children and relatives, back in Rome we decided to set off again Resi and I, with our motorbike towards the islands of Greece; August is nearly over. Travelling on two wheels there's no problem finding a place on the ferries, using a deck passage. Having planned to leave from Ancona, the pleasant route through Lazio, Umbria and the Marche was already a holiday. At Osimo we were hosted for a night, and for a day of relaxation, in her lovely house, by our dear friend Teresa; the next morning, Tuesday 3 September, bright and early, we were at the port to board. The destination was Patras, where we wouldn't arrive until well into the following day.

The crossing is long, at dawn we enjoyed watching from the deck the stop at Igoumenitsa, a port we had visited several times over the years, for touring holidays, bound for Greece and Turkey. Having disembarked at Patras, we joined the motorway for Piraeus; driving it was not, and still is not, a pleasure, because of the heavy traffic and the driving of the Greeks, if possible even more undisciplined than that of us Italians. At Piraeus, having reached the port and made our way among the many boarding points for the endless archipelago of islands, we boarded for Milos. We arrived there late in the day, on Thursday 5 September.

We were a little worried about not having booked anything, but we never ran, in the Cyclades, the risk of not finding accommodation; wherever we landed we were always set upon by people offering a "domatia", a lodging, that is, made up for the most part of a studio room with a living-bed area, bathroom and corner for cooking. The price was always affordable, and it often included breakfast. We always had a good time, hospitable people, clean rooms, bed linen and the rest more than acceptable. An amusing detail: in one domatia, a lock that secured the bathroom from the outside rather than from the inside. On all the islands, we took lodging in the port village, branching out in the following days to visit the sites of interest; none of the Cyclades we visited is large enough to force you to move your base.

It's rightly said that we Italians concentrate our holidays in August, but on the islands we found that in September, those travelling on the ferries are mainly residents. On the beaches we were almost always alone or virtually so; the countless tourist settlements were for the most part deserted. There was no shortage, however, of completely isolated travellers, among them we fondly remember a professor from a university in the U.S.A., whom we met again at more than one of the sites of our stops. He entertained us with pleasant conversation, in learned Italian, but with pronunciation and stresses improper; still, joking between my wife and me, we repeat a frequent exclamation of his: -what a beautiful isola- (with the stress on the o). A group of Dutch motorcyclists also crossed our path several times.

MILOS

Milos, an island of volcanic origin, wraps around the ancient crater, which forms a wide gulf open to the north, with several inhabited centres scattered across the whole island, linked mostly by a network of roads reasonably surfaced, apart from a few stretches.

SIFNOS

Sifnos lies to the north-east of Milos; it is not among the smallest of the western Cyclades; its port is Kamares, well protected in a small gulf open to the west. The capital is Apollonia on the eastern side. The island is overall mountainous.

SERIFOS

Serifos, located to the north-west of Sifnos, can be reached after a short crossing. We disembarked at the sheltered port of Livadi. The island is mountainous, rather bare, with numerous clusters of white houses scattered mainly on the eastern side.

KITHNOS

Kithnos, the last landfall; the holidays were drawing to a close; we covered the island in a whirlwind manner, devoting less time to it than it would have deserved. Kithnos, the barest of the islands we visited, is the least elevated; it is crossed by a longitudinal surfaced road linking numerous centres, while others are linked by paths less easy to travel.

On the return we did not retrace the same itinerary as on the way out, but headed for Bari. During the crossing a moth settled, to keep us company, on the camera bag.

From Bari the trip back was direct to Rome; we did not miss a visit to the lovely cathedral of Trani. The return was blessed by abundant rainfall, on the mountain stretch of the motorway towards Avellino and on the final stretch, Naples-Rome lit up by flashes of lightning. As a compensation, though soaked, we travelled for free from the toll booth of Naples, since the ticket-issuing system had gone into meltdown because of an electrical surge stronger than the others.