Diakopto to Karitena

Walking along a railway line isn’t easy, especially when the sleepers are laid at irregular intervals and never seem to fit your natural stride. I was following the E4 again, this time from the Gulf of Corinth up into the mountains of the northern Peloponnese. Trains still ran on the single track from Diakopto to Kalavryta, through tunnels and over narrow bridges. There wasn’t much room to pass, and I looked nervously behind as I climbed. Later on, we walked another stretch of the old railway down to Kalamata, now long disused, as it zigzagged through empty country.

It was now the end of October, with people wishing each other “Happy Winter” in the villages, just as they’d wished us “Happy Summer” when we’d started our walk. We were dodging torrential rain, stopping for a whole week while floods devastated the country, with cars washed away in Athens. But the rains brought the autumn flowers, with masses of cyclamen, tiny narcissi and crocuses along the paths, and near our campsite at Ancient Gortys, the only classical ruins we visited.