Varieties of wind, hues of silver

And misremembering the Battle of Actium

The sudden clash of a bin lid whipped up against a chainlink fence announces that a new threshold of wind speed has been breached, but it’s an impotent sort of cymbal and the tragedy never quite manifests. These pressing gusts feel curiously different from the hurtling Atlantic gales which had battered the Outer Hebrides for a month before my journey. They brought weekly hurricanes that detached tiles and peeled the entire roof from my mother’s motor caravan. (From a young age I learned a deep-seated dread of the wind.) A Scottish onslaught is no empty threat; today’s Greek variant, though wild and moody, is a milder form of commotion.

It has been a day for silvery hues as my southward journey into Greece nears its furthest point. Since leaving Lefkada this morning, a pervasive haze, always seemingly far away, has deflected the sunlight. Instead of producing discernible clouds, it has gradually thickened and appeared to grow closer, implying the onset of rain while never promising it. Not yet anyway.

A smooth and free-flowing motorway snakes around the south of the Ambracian Gulf, an inlet of the Ionian Sea encircled by mountains to the north and east and the high southern hills through which I now drive. From this albeit faraway vantage point, the Gulf with its dramatic backdrop appeared as a perfect stage for the setting of the Battle of Actium. Here in the autumn of 31 BC, hundreds of galleys fought to the death as the combined fleets of Mark Anthony and Cleopatra did futile battle with the forces of Octavian (founder of the Roman Empire). I’m no scholar of ancient history, but I am awed by the prospect of 900 wooden ships engaged in their glacial carnage, some apparently powered by five banks of rowers. (I can’t picture it, given the required length and weight of those upper oars and their too-short fulcrums, but what do I know?)

At least, this is where I thought the Battle of Actium had happened. Perhaps part of me had wished for it so that my imagination could play with the imagery in such a perfect setting. I was wrong – the battle was actually fought outside the Ambracian Gulf, just north of Lefkada where I had been a few hours earlier.

I am reminded again that too often we see what we want to see.

Onward, past grey mountainsides of steeply towering rock, and beneath them silver-green planes of olive trees for miles and miles, blowing lugubriously in the wind. It’s 19 degrees Celcius, neither warm nor cool. Somehow the lack of distinct cloudforms augments the hugeness of this terrain. Occasionally a few spots of rain hit the windscreen but they soon dry, and the cracked earth remains unquenched.

The kilometers disappear under my wheels until the four-pronged immensity of the Rio-Antirrio suspension bridge over the Gulf of Corinth to twinkling Patras emerges out of the deepening twilight. The horizon beyond is dominated by the dark mountains of the Peloponnese, and in front of them, white horses gather in their thousands over the surface of the water.