Roads to Rhodes

I have been an international jet setter recently. We flew back to the UK from a week in Rhodes last Wednesday, washed all our pants and flew out again on Thursday morning to go to Helsinki. We had a most important visit with our daughter, Tilly, who has been in Finland for nearly a year and is due to come back to the UK at the beginning of June. We squeaked in a last minute visit and we were so glad we did.

We got home on Monday night, welcomed back in true, British style, with two days of biblical rain and the need to put the heating back on in mid May. If I wasn’t so knackered, I’d have rewashed all my pants and jumped on another plane out of Poplar. I am, however, utterly wiped out and have spent many an idle moment thanking my lucky stars that my high school band, The Scab Sisters, never got further than 90% imagination, 10% singing our album ‘Prawn on a Log’ into my best friend’s tape recorder. Although I am still convinced that the world needs our version of Five Little Speckled Frogs and a medley of assorted Cliff Richard covers. Should fame ever come knocking on that particular door, it will be a very low key touring schedule, with lots of naps and days off, or there will be tears by bedtime.

As far as our relaxing holiday in Rhodes went, we were completely unable to relax. On our second day, still dismayed by pogo yoga on a platform and the sound of George Michael’s greatest hits via the medium of loudspeaker and zither, we were done. We jumped on the first tour bus out of Dodge, which happened to take us to Rhodes Old Town. I loved it there. It’s a fascinating city, with a wealth of architecture, history and really excellent Greek salad. What I did not love was our bus stopping at fifteen hotels so that a thirty minute journey took an hour and a half. I also did not love being trapped in front of a family who were delighted to be going to Rhodes Town, not to see the wonderful architecture, but because it had, and I quote, ‘A fuckin’ Maccies. Thank Fuck.’

On day three we hired a car for the duration of our trip and spent the rest of the week exploring the island. It was absolutely the best thing we did and it saved the holiday and me from a long stretch in prison. We drove about in blissful silence, ate in tavernas with no radio and went to places without many other people around. We did try going to Lindos one day, which is very beautiful and accepted as one of the hits of the Dodecanese and a must visit place. After an hour of dodging screaming German toddlers on sullen Greek donkeys and every, single shop selling fridge magnets and hilarious t-shirts, we were ready to burn down the entire town and left.

Rhodes is a beautiful island. It takes about two hours to drive from one end to the other, yet it has a wealth of different landscapes and identities. We drove through valleys full of vineyards, acres upon acres of olive groves and great, pine forests that wouldn’t look out of place in Switzerland. We visited volcanic beaches, windswept beaches full of kite surfers, rocky coves and beautiful golden sands. We visited fifth century churches, Islamic libraries and a haunted sanatorium that was once Mussolini’s summer residence. We visited the ruins of one of the most complete cities in the ancient world. We went to the modern art gallery in Rhodes Town where we were the only two visitors for our entire stay. We ate some of the best food of our trip, surrounded by peacocks trying to pinch chips and drinking water straight from a spring. It was brilliant.

It’s difficult, on an island whose economy is fuelled by tourism, to get grumpy at the amount of tourists. It’s doubly difficult when you are one of those tourists yourself. You can’t begrudge people who need to make money to survive, turning the quaint fishing village of Faliraki into a shanty town of sports bars, strip clubs and inexplicable models of velociraptors, because you’d prefer it to be quiet and quaint and covered in bougainvillea. I get it and I very much admire the two, adjacent corner shops that had appropriated both the name and the branding of Asda and Morrisons on the main drag in Faliraki. Kudos to them and may their tills ring loudly forevermore. It is a shame though, that somewhere so splendid and beautiful in its own right, has to cater to people who just want it to be Blackpool but with better weather.

Having said all that, if you do make the effort and sneak off the beaten path a bit, and go out of season, you will find all the things you want. You just need a bit of patience and a pair of wire snippers if you’re anywhere within ten feet of a PA system.