AN ISLAND WALKABOUT

BY
ALASTAIR WHITE

ALASTAIR WHITE, a National Service conscript, did his basic training at RAF Bridgenorth. His training for his future work with JARIC (UK) began a month later at RAF Brampton. He was posted to Episkopi, Cyprus, in April 1957. In late September of the same year, Alastair, together with his friend Pete Wynn, took a week's leave to trek the Island's countryside - despite the EOKA threat. While the two RAF servicemen, wearing civilian clothes, encountered no hostility, eight British subjects lost their lives during that month.

This is the letter he wrote home about his experiences.

Alastair White THEN

Alastair NOW

Episkopi,
1 October 1957.

DEAR FOLKS,

Well, I've just spent the most fabulous week in my life. I made sort-of notes on the journey, and will try to form a comprehensive account of our trip, but some of it is a bit beyond my powers of description.

'The two of us left Episkopi about 14.00 on Sunday, 22 September, armed with little more than two blankets and a tin of sardines and headed off in the general direction of the hills.'

Everywhere we went we found the Greeks very hospitable, real country folks like ourselves. Either that or two-faced twisters!

'After about two hours hard walking uphill, we arrived at the village of Zanaja, where a farmer friend of my companion lives.'

It's a typical southern Cyprus farming village - stone houses, flat roofs, all white washed and scattered about higgledy-piggledy; hens, goats and sheep running around all over the place.

We were very thirsty, of course, and made straight for the village well, which was surrounded by a flock of sheep being watered by a shepherd. So we shoved our way to the middle and mucked in with the animals.

Alastairwashes his sore feet in a bucket of cold water outside the home of Christos Konstandinos.

We then made for the cottage of Pete's farmer friend, Christos Kontandinos, where we were to spend the night. He made us very welcome. His house, by the way, was a single-roomed, stone-built, no-window affair with simple furnishings and containing all his worldly goods, including his hens.

Anyway, Christos sent for a load of grapes for us to eat first, the like of which I have never tasted as far as sweetness and juiciness go. Then he set about preparing the evening meal. His wife was farther up the hills in a place called Vouni, for the grape harvest.

A Lesson in Greek manners

MEALS ARE quite a business. There are about a dozen or so little bowls on the table, all filled with different sorts of food. You get issued with a fork and a big chunk of bread and then you just dive in. The meals usually last for hours and are washed down with gallons of wine. I wish I could remember half the things that we were given. There were some right queer dishes, but I never refused anything and, indeed, I thought most of the local food was 'rare'.

Alastairtoasts Christos Kontandinos in his simple home, where he was the shepherd's guest for the night.

At the start of the meal Christos offered me a glass of clear liquid, which I thought was an aperitif. Not wanting to hurt the old boy's feelings I downed it after a ritual of clinking glasses and all that rot. Boy, did I feel it! It was as if my inside was on fire. It served its purpose, however, for I ate like a wolf. All through the meal, too, we drank red wine or krasi. I had quite a lot and the only effect it had was to give me a 'plukey' tongue and make me feel drowsy.

I think Christos had poured me a treble of Zivania. This is a traditional Cypriot spirit produced from the residue of grapes that have been pressed during the wine-making process. It's colorless and vicious. Typical alcohol content is 45% by volume. It should not be confused with Raki or Raku (Turkish), an aniseed flavored alcoholic drink, which turns milky when water is added.

I didn't know at first that the Greek for 'yes' is nae. So when Christos asked me if I wanted more wine, instead of saying an emphatic 'no, no,' I was in fact saying an enthusiastic 'yes, yes' and wondered why my glass never emptied...

The farmer, of course, didn't speak a word of English, and we knew no more Greek than 'good morning', 'goodbye', and 'thank you'. But it's amazing how we can converse by sign language, and more often than not, generate a great deal of amusement. Partly by gestures and partly by telepathy, we gathered he was setting off at 02.00 for Vouni, where his missus was and so we elected to go with him.

At 20.00 we went to bed (two of us in a single bed, fully dressed) but I couldn't sleep. I was feared of falling off, so I gave up and slept on the floor amongst the hen droppings.

'Anglicos! Anglicos!' in Vouni

FIVE HOURS later - 01.00 - we were woken, had the remains of last night's supper for breakfast and started off on the 18-mile tramp to Vouni. It was still pitch dark and we couldn't see a thing - so we just stumbled along beside Christos.

We arrived at Vouni three hours later, just as dawn broke at 05.30. It's in the heart of the grape-growing country, where EOKA is very active. The village has about 2,500 inhabitants.

'Vouni is a right crazy, mixed-up place. A sort of "corrie" on a hill, all steep cobbled streets - houses, farms, shops thrown together on all sides.'

The village was a fine sight in the morning mist, with the people all setting about their daily chores. At first we were greeted with incredulous stares and the people shouted 'Anglicos! Anglicos!' Folk rush out to stare. For the next week, everywhere we went people stared, as often as not in a not-too-friendly way. But after we used our few well-tried Greek words and phrases, they thawed a little and wanted to know from where we had come, they would ask us where we were going and much more.

'We reached the house where Christos's wife and kids were staying and were immediately offered cups of coffee, rolls and local cheese made from goats' milk - terrific stuff it was too.'

After that we went to a coffee shop. These coffee shops seem quite an institution here. They strike me as similar to those that were all the go in England a couple of centuries ago - places where everybody meets, sits, drinks and where they exchange news and the latest gossip.

Vouni's main coffee shop today remains much as it was in Autumn 1957

The coffee costs two pence a cup and with it you get a glass of water. You pour some of it into the coffee, sip a little water, followed by the coffee and the rest of the water. It's a ritual that both Greeks and Turks perform. I really go a-bundle on the coffee. It's totally different from Nescafe or any of that rubbish.

'The village priest, complete with Makarios-type beard, Makarios-type shawl and Makarios-type lum hat always holds court there. They were the only characters from whom we rarely received a smile.'

After the coffee, we went to the local butcher to get some meat. There was a big group hanging round outside. Soon two men marched down the street carrying a newly-slaughtered sheep around their necks. Everyone rushed to grab the best part of the poor beast. For the next 15 minutes, there were loud arguments and the sound of chopping. At last Christos emerged from the shop with about two yards of the sheep's guts trailing behind him.

Christos took the meat home to prepare, accompanied by us. We then returned to the village, where a festival of some kind was taking place. The children had been given a day off from school to enjoy themselves and the place was crammed with them. There must have been about 200 kids and they followed us everywhere - talk about a Pied Piper of Hamlin situation.

There were all sorts of stalls and a few roulette-type gambling games - in the churchyard, too. Hot dishes - the equivalent of 'busters' - were plentiful. We sampled some fluffy dough things fried in deep olive oil - darn good they were, and we had peaches, walnuts and almonds thrust upon us. They wouldn't let us pay for a thing.

Both of us had cameras slung round our necks and the kids kept shouting, fotografie, keen to have us take their picture. It was now about 08.15 and time for another breakfast. We were served a form of macaroni to start off, followed by sheep's kidneys and liver and a lot of what-not, all fried in oil.

Entertaining the 'locals'

CHRISTOS WANTED us to meet his sister who lived in another part of the village.

'Off we trekked, reaching her house around 10.00 to find his relatives in the middle of a meal.'

We were welcomed, given a chair at the table and fork and invited to dig in. The meal lasted till after 16.00. Six hours of solid eating and drinking:

'When it was all over, the family pushed back the table and gave us a selection of Greek songs, - you know that queer, off-key stuff you hear on short wave radio. Of course, we applauded politely and said 'very nice,' et cetera, et cetera...'

Then they insisted we get up and sing. I didn't know the Greek for 'sore throat', so after a hasty conference, we decided to give our hosts a spirited rendering of Nellie Dean and On Ilkley Moor Ba'tat and were rewarded mightily with great applause.

The marathon meal over, we continued our village tour. Suspicious stares followed us. I reckon we were the first pale faces they had seen in civilian clothes since the start of 'the troubles'. Into another coffee shop, we went, received the usual hostile glares, but expressing our few Greek words brought smiles. Old men here play a card game called Pastora (or something.) We watched for a while, got the hang of the rules and decided to join them. They were quite chuffed that we wanted to play.

'As the sun went down, we returned to Christos's house, expecting to go to bed. But no, we were met with another meal. Meat, spuds, beans, rice, bread and wine.'

As you can imagine, having been up and about since 01.00 we were ready to go to bed and made signs that we would sleep in our blankets on the deck. These hospitable folks, however, insisted we sleep in their beds. Too tired to argue, we climbed in. There were two double beds in the room. The two of us in one, the farmer, his wife and their two daughters in the other. Six to a room and two beds. And I slept like a lamb!

A bus journey to remember

CAME NEXT morning and we were up and off to the coffee shop for an early morning constitutional. We had left our rucksacks back at Zanaja, so after breakfast, we had to make the18-mile journey back for them.

'We covered the first half by bus. And what a bus! It was no more than a large van with four seats shoved into the back. They told us it could carry 19 people. I counted there were 28, including us, dozens of baskets of grapes, earthenware pots, bread, wooden stakes and goodness knows what forby.'

'The roads are just dirt tracks, and we were bumped and jarred something horrible, but there was no danger of falling out, - we were wedged in so tight. I'll never forget that journey.'

We hopped off the bus 10 miles later at a village called Pano Kivides had coffee (again) and hoofed the last eight miles back to Zanaja, and collected our rucksacks, when we arrived there.

'At about 17.00, we decided it was time to think about kipping down for the night, so we filled our water bottles and struck off into the bush for a quiet sheltered spot. We found one at the top of a 200-foot rise.'

We immediately gathered wood for a fire and prepared our evening meal. We had steak and kidney pud (out of a can, of course) strawberries, peanuts, bread and Oxo.

It was terrific sitting round an open fire under the starry skies with a warm breeze blowing. Just then, I wouldn't have been anywhere else in the world. We nattered for about an hour, then rolled up in blankets and dropped off by the smoldering fire.

The trek continues

'A shepherd and his yelping dog, surprised to see us in the wild, woke us next morning.'

AFTER BREKKY, we rolled up our blankets, doused the fire, cleaned up and set off again. (It is perhaps worth noting at this point that I had not been out of my shirt or sox for three days and three nights).

'We were traveling through grape country, heading for Vouni again. We were hot and the rough road was dusty, but every so often we peeled off into a vineyard, picked a bunch of grapes and carried on walking, munching.'

I must say, though, I had some misgivings about doing this, - memories of Blairgowrie, a field of raspberries and an irate wifie catching me.

A Cypriot farmer's wife uses donkeys to take her produce to market. Everyone works in a Cyprus village.

About midday and three coffee shops later, we arrived in Vouni, which we had left the day before. Some people recognized us and insisted we join them for more coffee.

'The scenery changed as we left Vouni. The Troodos Mountains loomed nearer and the dry scrubland gave way to fresh-looking greenery - a welcome sight. We had dinner under an orange tree by rushing water - the first I'd heard since I arrived in Cyprus.'

Suddenly we found ourselves on the main road towards Troodos. What a difference! Tarmac surface, huge Walls Ice Cream billboards, stalls selling cold Coca-Cola stalls, and English-styled shops on the route. After the isolated villages we had seen, I felt they tainted the simple purity and beauty of the countryside.

But we had to stick to the main road as it was the only feasible way up, so we slogged onwards. At dusk we found a grassy knoll to spend another night beneath the stars. We had an almond tree to ourselves, so almonds were on the menu that night!

It was now four days since we last spoke to an Englishman, four days relying on our pidgin Greek. We are about 2,800 ft. up and heading in the general direction of Mount Olympus, 6,403 ft. above sea-level. Supper finished, we started to collect brushwood for mattresses, and at seven we rolled over and dropped off.

Gunfire in Platres

WE ROSE at 06.00 after 11 hours' sleep and I changed my sox. They were solid with sweat and dirt. Breakfast consisted of mackerel, cheese, bread and water and then we off we set cross-country, taking a short cut to Platres. The route followed the side of a steep valley, which reminded me of Glen Nevis. We crossed the top of a 200 ft. dam. It was sensational.

Then, along the other side of the glen, along a precarious path, we went down to a stream where we had a very welcome wash and shave in spring-clear, cold water.

Refreshed, we pressed on to Platres, which we reached in about half an hour to find it was bustling with troops and gun-fire echoing up in the hills. This quite alarmed us as we had lost contact with the outside world. Had the 'troubles' started again? We were soon put at ease when we learned the gunfire was caused by a rifle club practicing.

'Platres is a lovely place, a real tourists' delight. It is, to quote an author whose name escapes me, 'nestling in a cradle of majestic mountains'. The buildings are magnificent, resembling Swiss chalets, but with a style of their own. Pine trees all over the place.'

The presence of troops had its effect on prices. We had a coffee costing us 50 mils as compared with 10 mils in the villages.

'On we went again, next stop Troodos. The road became steeper and for the rest of the day we were slogged our way up and up. It began to get cooler and big clouds gathered. We even had about 30 seconds' rain. The scenery was fabulous. As we got higher and higher, we could see right across the island.'

No room at the inn

AT LAST, we reached Troodos village in the late afternoon. It was now decidedly chilly. We were a bit dubious about spending the night in the open air, 6, 000 ft. up.

'There was a forces' leave camp up there so we hoped to spend the night there. Holiday camp, it was not. Barbed wire all round, policeman at the gate and guards patrolling everywhere.'

We went to the reception desk and waited about an hour to be informed by a snooty woman it was a place for 'officers only' and we should 'clear off' forthwith. So we departed thinking very naughty things about NAAFI 'holiday' camps!

Next we tried a local hotel, but it had closed after the summer season.

There was only one thing to do: cadge a bed at an army camp in the area.

'We found the Royal Marines. They were real good, tough, blokes and gave us safe refuge. They thought we were nuts, of course, walking around the Cyprus countryside place without being ordered. They were the first Brits with whom we had spoken for four days. The top of Mt Olympus was only 500 ft. from where we were.'

We went down to the village that night to sample the local coffee, and what did I see in big letters? 'The Ben Nevis Coffee Shop!'

We decided to get up early and see Mt Olympus before dawn. What with the early start tomorrow and a grueling day just past, we went to bed early. When we got up at 04.00 ready to dash to the top, the commandos were convinced we were crazy.

'Anyway, next morning we rose before the lark and made our way upwards through the pines to the radar domes on top of Mt Olympus. but we were stopped from going all the way to the top by an army sentry from the signals' facility, which was based on the peak of the mountain. So we just hung around and waited for the sun to rise. It was blooming cold.'

'When we came close to the radar domes, we were stopped from going all the way to the top by an army sentry from the signals' facility. So we just hung around and waited for the sun to rise. It was blooming cold.'

We were above the level of the clouds and when the sun came up, the colors were terrific. I wanted to take a shot of the sun cleaving the horizon but found I was down to the last exposure. By the time I changed films, the sun was half way up the blinking sky.

The summit of Mt Olympus from where the whole of Cyprus can be seen on a clear day.

An asbestos mine

WE PACKED and made off straight away, down the other side of the mountains - going north. About a mile later, we stopped for breakfast, - a tin of grapefruit, sardines, bread, cheese and water. I must say I felt quite fit on this diet. It was our staple food for about a week. Half down, we rounded a bend and saw quite an unexpected sight.

'Stretched below us, extending for miles, was a huge open-cast asbestos mine. I've never seen anything like it before. I can't say I knew asbestos was mined.'

A few miles past it and we stopped for coffee and bought some grapes. They cost 15 mils for an oke, which is about three pence for 2lbs. And to think they sell them to us at camp for a shilling a pound.

'As we walked, pine-covered slopes gave way to green, fertile valleys. We stopped awhile and watched a village potter at work. Fascinating. He was seated at a table and turned his wheel with his foot, producing fancy earthenware pots.'

Evrychou is built on the east bank of the Kargotis River. Small streams run down from the slopes and toward a deep valley. The Skouriotissa mine is located a small distance from the village.

About 16.00 we arrived at the village of Evrychou and stopped for supplies. We had traveled 24 miles and dropped 4,500 ft. Here we spent the night in the village police station.

Evrychou village square. It takes its name from Ev Chous in Greek, meaning Good land). Until the early 50s, the streets were lit by a few petrol lamps. In 1937, the British authorities installed drinking water fountains with taps at various points. Prior to these, villagers were forced to drink from nearby streams.

A 'rest' at Golden Sands

IT WAS much warmer now and a distinct difference from the previous night on the mountains.

We set off next day and soon were soon given a lift on an army lorry. The driver was headed for Famagusta, a distance of about 100 miles, so we decided to go there too. On the journey, crossing a large plain, I saw a whirlwind, the first one I'd seen. A large column of - well, come to think of it, I don't know what it was made of - swishing round, sucking up dust and paper and leaves. Quite a sight. We passed through Nicosia, my first time there.

'In Famagusta we found another NAAFI-run leave camp - called "Golden Sands" - where we stayed a couple of nights. It was grim and miserable place, but we put up with it. Goodness knows how these army blokes can stay there a fortnight and love it. But they do.'

A view of old Famagusta.

I hired a bicycle and went to the town.

'The bike was about seven sizes too small, had a slow puncture, handlebars that were loose and then the brake cable snapped.'

Worse, I got lost and was pulled up for riding down a one-way street. Quite a rollicking evening in all.

Back 'home' again

MONDAY MORNING and we decided to head back to camp. After a frugal breakfast, which it was necessary to supplement with bread and Marge purloined from another table when the bloke wasn't looking, we found a lorry traveling to Episkopi, jumped on it, and here I am.

JARIC (ME) at Episkopi, which Alastaircalled home during his RAF service. The camp was a far cry from what he and his friend had seen during their Cyprus walkabout - and not once had they been threatened by EOKA! © Barry Porter.

It's taken me two-plus days to write this blinking letter - and I've got to write the same to Margot, Richard, Stan, Ian, Dave, to name but a few. So if you don't get another this side of Christmas, you'll know why.

Alastair.

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