Europe > Greece > Crete > Crete > Articles > Autumn in the Amari Valley

The Cretan vineyard harvest was just over. I munched a bunch of plump green grapes and spat the seeds out of the car window as I drove up the bumpy road from Rethymnon into the high green oasis of the Amari Valley. Here was the very essence of the pleasures of early autumn in Crete – earth and rocks baked to pungent orange by the summer sun, oleanders still spotting the roadsides with pink, the taste of just-picked grapes crushed on the tongue, and a million leaves in the olive groves flicking from green to silver in the cool breeze as a late afternoon rain shower brushed across the hills.

The Amari Valley lies tucked into the waist of the long, thin island of Crete, between the Venetian city of Rethymnon on the north coast and the seaside resort of Agia Galini on the south. The main north-south road passes it by. High mountains seal it in. A few visitors happen on the Amari by lucky chance. Most holidaymakers, intent on sea and sand, never even dream of its existence.

The Amari is not a single gorge-like valley, but a rough circle of lumpy land flanked by the Kedros range of hills to the southwest. In the northeast stands mighty Psiloritis, at 8,058 ft the highest peak in Crete. You can’t see one side of the valley from the other, because the view is blocked by the big bare whaleback of Samitos mountain at the centre of the circle. Around the base of Samitos, spread across the lower slopes of Kedros and of Psiloritis, lie a dozen whitewashed villages where traditional ways of life and of having fun still go on with little reference to tourist expectations and demands.

The Taverna Aravanes, on the edge of the tiny village of Thronos at the head of the Amari, commands one of the most stunning views in Crete – the whole of the Psiloritis side of the valley, dominated by the magnificent spectacle of the twin-horned mountain itself. “Ah, Christopheros!” was owner Lambros Papoutsakis’s greeting when I reached the taverna. “My brother, where have you been?” It was three years since I had last stayed with Lambros at the Aravanes, but Cretans don’t forget their friends. “I have some work for you, Christopheros,” said Lambros, grinning. “Yesterday we picked all our grapes; now you can tread them. Take your shoes off and roll up your trousers, my friend.”

I waded up and down in the big covered tank, treading a slough of grape bunches. Grapes squeezed between each toe, small stones tickled my soles. A thick, aromatic scent rose, making my head spin. Lambros’s five-year-old nephew Gianni jumped in too, and we waded round in fits of giggles until the sticky grape juice had spattered us red and purple.

After Lambros had hosed me down, we went off to visit neighbour Nikos. Glass thimbles of home-distilled raki were raised and clinked. We stood sipping under Nikos’s walnut tree, cracking nuts and watching Psiloritis flush from pale orange to deep mauve in the light of the setting sun. I fumbled out my few phases of Greek – “Cheers! Your good health! Very delicious! A long life to you!” It was as if I had never been away.

Late that night I stood on the Aravanes terrace with Lambros, looking for the twinkle of fires on the summit of Psiloritis. Inside the taverna the village louto-player George was hammering the eight strings of his deep-bellied instrument while a circle of Thronos men took it in turns to sing lines and verses of mantinades, sharp little songs about love, drinking and the shortcomings of friends and enemies. “Many people are climbing the mountain tonight,” Lambros murmured, “because tomorrow is the feast of Timios Stavros, the Holy Cross. Christopheros, come to my village, Petrohori where I was born, to the church and the festival tomorrow.”

Next morning in Petrohori we found the village gathered in its Sunday best outside and inside the little church of Timios Stavros. The rich-toned chanting and counter-chanting of priests, cantors and people went on for two hours while candles smoked in the breeze and clouds rolled like gunsmoke over the shoulders of Psiloritis. It had been a wet and stormy night up there, said those returning from the vigil at the summit chapel dedicated to Timios Stavros.

In the afternoon, knowing it was going to be an evening that would not end till morning, I took it easy on a long drive peppered with short walks round the Amari Valley. The villages along the slopes of the Kedros range on the southerly side of the valley seem at first glance as ancient as those on the other side of Mount Samitos. But the impression is a false one. On 22 August 1944 the German forces of occupation began burning the Kedros villages and shooting people as an act of reprisal for the abduction by partisans of the island’s garrison commander, General Kreipe.

“The burning went on for an entire week,” wrote George Psychoundakis, who watched the destruction from a partisan hideout cave high on Psiloritis. “First they emptied every single house, transporting all the loot to Rethymnon, then they set fire to them, and finally, to complete the ruin, they piled dynamite into every remaining corner and blew them sky high … They shot all the men they could find.”

A long, long line of war memorials, one to each rebuilt village all along the road, tells the tale of the shootings. Forty-three men from Gerakari – 9 from the Kokkonas family alone. Nineteen from Kardaki; 30 in Vryses, 38 in Ano Meros. This last memorial has a notable sculpture, a heroic Cretan woman raising her hammer to chisel the names of the dead. But nowadays, though the old men and women remember, the younger generations no longer hark back to that bitter past.

Every Amari village possesses at least one church, and many of these have interiors decorated with stunning 14th- and 15th-century frescoes. At Meronas I stood in the half gloom of the three-aisled Church of the Panagia, admiring newly-restored depictions of the entry into Jerusalem, the Crucifixion and Christ washing the feet of his disciples – wall paintings done with characteristic Cretan vigour, sympathy and humour. At the front stood the village’s most treasured possession – a beautiful 14th-century icon of a melancholy Virgin and Child. “We look after her carefully,” the priest’s daughter had told me, “because she looks after us.”

The plentiful sun and rain had enhanced the natural fertility of the well-watered Amari Valley.

The feast night of Timios Stavros in Petrohori was indeed a long and wild one. Three hundred villagers sat packed knee to knee at tables in the square. We ate lamb and goat, drank off last year’s pressing of Petrohori wine, and danced – literally – all night. A band of musicians scrubbed away furiously at Cretan tunes; and with Lambros’s arm around one shoulder and his brother Dimitrios’s around the other, I finally learned how to dance the siganos.

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