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Travels in the Deep Mani of Greece Inspired by Patrick Leigh Fermor
The strange, wild south of the Greek Peloponnese
‘The Mani!’ everyone exclaimed. ‘Why did we want to go there? They were a terrible lot: wild, treacherous people… they shot at people from behind rock.’
All quotations are from Mani, by Patrick Leigh Fermor (1958) unless stated otherwise.
The first time I set foot in Greece, I was travelling across Europe on an Interrail. The other backpackers I met read out descriptions of the Greek islands in their Let’s Go Europe guidebook and invited me to join them. Instead, I took a train north-west to Kalambaka and wandered around the monasteries of the Meteora. I was inspired by a very different book: Roumeli, by Patrick Leigh Fermor, about the landscapes, people and traditions of northern Greece. The author is considered one of the greatest travel writers of his generation.
In 1933 at 18, Patrick (known as Paddy) left England to walk east across Europe to Constantinople (Istanbul). The resulting trilogy, beginning with A Time of Gifts, is his most famous work, although Paddy’s first love was Greece, leading to Roumeli (1966) and Mani (1958).
