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Continue reading →: The slow road south down the spine of the PindosThe most unforgettable thing about a memorable visit to Katarraktis was the almost vertical wall of the Tzoumerka mountains to the east. I hardly took my eye off them. There’s a reasonably easy route to the ridge, possible I would think to ride on a mountain bike. A trail that…
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Continue reading →: An annual celebration in Katarraktis
I awoke just after 7:30. Had I been dreaming? I thought I had heard a rhythmic hand clapping. Roja had done a double-take also. Then, just as I put it to the back of my mind and dozed, there it was again. No mistake this time. I sat up and…
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Continue reading →: A Haunting in Venice
This is the third in Kenneth Branagh’s Porto series, following Orient Express and Death on the Nile, and in which Branagh directs and plays the lead role. Since I was a teenager I have throughly enjoyed Agatha Christie’s writing and adaptations, of which I think I have read, and seen,…
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Continue reading →: Recital of the Dark Verses by Luis Felipe Fabre
(translated from the Spanish by Heather Cleary) Its a hot August in 1592 in Úbeda in Andalucia as a bailiff and two recruited civil servants, Ferran and Diego, arrive at a monastery for a secret mission, to transfer the body of Saint John of the Cross, Fray Juan de la…
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Continue reading →: Back to KatarraktisFrom the chapel at the top of the mountain it is said that your prayers can be heard more clearly. Though that might not have been the case today. Up at almost 1400 metres the weather was what one might expect in the hills of the UK, windy, with squally…
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Continue reading →: Storms, and Lively WaterfallsI left Meteora yesterday morning before the busy campsite atmosphere and tourist aspects of the place began to get too much for me. It had been great, but I suspected another day would not have been. The family in the green bus at Papingo showed how home-schooling could work, and…
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Continue reading →: La Montagne (The Mountain)
France 2022 The star of this pleasantly strange film without doubt is the mountain itself, set as it is, almost entirely on the snowy peaks and rockfaces of the Mont Blanc massif above Chamonix. As to the question of what it’s about, it’s about a middle aged man caught in…
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Continue reading →: The Monasteries of the AirThis journey of mine, my route here in Greece, is inspired by Patrick Leigh Fermor’s books, Roumeli, and Mani. I’m in Roumeli territory right now, and have been for a couple of weeks, the Pindos mountains. Meteora is the subject of the second chapter ‘The Monasteries of the Air’. Fermor’s…
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Continue reading →: The Bride Wore Black by Cornell Woolrich
Eddie Muller’s introduction to the Mystery Classics issue of this is an appropriate summary.. Woolrich was the most noir writer in the mystery genre, as The Bride Wore Black amply proves. It contains all the requisite elements: the obsessive protagonist on a murderous quest, the latticework of dreadful coincidence, the…
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Continue reading →: A weekend in the Vikos GorgeThe rain did come on Saturday but not as continuous as had been predicted. Late on Friday night the sky at night was quite spectacular with the amount of lightning around. In the end Saturday was a series of closely knitted together showers, of varying strengths. Roja and I got…
To live more widely
supera superiora sequi
SafeReturnDoubtful is my alias. Rua is my fox red labrador pup, born 14 Feb 2026 and learning fast..
Where is Rua?
I was so much older then…
Quote of the Week
Alice asked the Cheshire Cat, who was sitting in a tree, ‘What road do I take?’ The cat asked, ‘Where do you want to go?’ ‘I don’t know,’ Alice answered. ‘Then,’ said the cat, ‘it really doesn’t matter, does it?’
Lewis Carroll
