Mentioning workshops from the past brought back a lovely memory from around the mid 1990’s……….
A group decision had me accompanying workshop attendees through Samaria Gorge. I was younger then (!) and rose to the challenges of the day more easily than when I last walked the gorge in October ‘23. On that day decades ago, everything went well, no incident for me as leader to be concerned about and a happy little band of us reached the bottom of the gorge intact and ready for refreshments in Agia Roumelli. That’s when plan unravelled. Due to a stormy sea there was no ferry boat to take us west, back to Paleochora. An alternative was proposed that we unanimously rejected – a ferry boat east to Hora Sfakion, then a bus over to Hania and from there we’d have to hire taxis to Paleochora. We quickly found pleasant rooms and adjusted our mindsets of finding ourselves ill prepared for a stopover, but like excited children, we raided a nearby mini-market for toothbrushes and such like.
Vague recollections of that day pale in comparison to the lasting memory that followed a great dinner. Our host, Nikos at Taverna Paralia, generously poured raki or metaxi into our emptying classes. The sky, black in the absence of street lamps, spread a canopy of stars the likes of which many had never seen before….and then out of the dark….came the unmistakable squealing of bagpipes playing a Scottish lament. Initially, I thought that the 5am start to a long day, raki and the stars had jolted me into a weird altered state. But no, a man emerged from the shadows—looking every part a wild, traditional Cretan, proud and upright.
He turned out to be ex military, every bit the Scot from northeast Scotland, but with his heart set in Crete. The night erupted, glasses were refilled faster than ever and our new friend, Alex, entertained us first with bagpipes and then with jokes and lengthy humorous tales that had tears rolling down our faces. Sometimes he couldn’t reach the punchline for his own out of control laughter. A friendship to last years was made that night and was solidified when, weeks later, we unexpectedly met again in the queue for the same flight home.
A wonderful experience of things going wrong yet turning out so very right.