After the last rainy days we're desperate to get cycling again, but we hadn't counted in the wind factor. So we set out on a sunny day with a huge wind sweeping across Kos. Our ride takes us into the hills on the south side to an old village that now gets swamped by tourists in high season. Today it's quiet and peaceful. We stop for lunch after the exertion of the climb and enjoy the sunshine. It's only after we have traversed below the ridgeline and come out at a crossroads of sorts where roads diverge to north and south sides of the island that we realise how strong the wind has got. There's a castle on our map and we cycle down a lane beyond an army camp to see it close up. It looks like a classic Crusader model and it's perched at the head of a valley overlooking the resort village of Kardamena. It's as if the Frankish knights wanted to protect the traditional villages from the invasion of Anglo-Saxons, Huns and Slavs. A young man on a motorbike is rounding up a large herd of goats for the night. The sun is setting. We follow a track which becomes a paved footpath, with no steps, following a ridge that drops towards the coast. At the first olive grove we pitch the tent behind a bush.
Wind can be a real problem when you're sleeping in a tent and it is for this reason alone that we don't eat lentils. The next day it continues. We stock up in the town at the coast. It feels like a bad place in a spaghetti western today, but it's probably a fun and lively place in high season. Porky The Pig's Nightclub is probably the heart and soul. Our map leads us west along the shoreline and to a clutch of 'classy' hotel resorts. We ask a security guard about water and he shakes his head - "it's no good for drinking" - but offers us one of his bottles before telling us not to bother continuing. "It's all sand - just the beach - too hard for you." Too hard? Don't you know we've cycled through the Gobi desert? Well, no, actually we haven't and he's right - it's just a sandy beach. We sit on it and eat our lunch. When we retreat back towards town we see a little sheltered spot. There is no wind, the beach is deserted, we are thrilled. We stay the night.
How long can the wind continue? Back up on the spine of the island we are buffeted. We consult our little map and plump for the pine forest. We are close but we can't see it. That's because it's in a complex of gulleys, below the lie of the land. We ride down into the bewitched place and are freaked by the eerie cries from within. Pained, lonely cries. We see the cats first, then the peacocks. An ostentation of peacocks. (I looked that up.) They look fabulous. Someone must feed them and the cats are clearly hangers-on. We find some good shelter out of the wind and beyond the claws of the stray cats.
