Part III: A Historic Olive press, a famous house and beyond

Thursday 15th May, 2018: Thalames, Malta, Kardamyli, Kalamitsi, Proastio, Exochori, Saidona, Stoupa, Ag. Kyriaki, Areopolis

Some time a few months earlier I was chatting to my friend Christos, the writer and journalist, about my interest in the production of olive oil, the pressing of olives and the difference between cold and warm olive press. He said that one day I must visit the Skarpalezos mill in Mani, probably the only one in Greece that still operates the old fashioned way, completely as a 'cold press'. A family owned business it has been producing oil for over 200 years, using mill stones, with no heat-inducing processing and still using human supervisors instead of automation. There is a short video about it here.

Being in Mani it was an opportunity to see for myself this historic olive mill and to make sure that someone would be there I phoned first Christina, one of the two sisters who operate the mill nowadays, and fixed a visit for around 13:00 on Thursday.

The Skarpalezos olive mill is in a small village, near Stavrokopi, north of Kardamyli so decided to visit it first then make the return trip south to Kitta, via Karadmyli. On the way there I stopped at Thalames, as the main road passes right through the village and made a stop at what seemed to be n opening with a cafe on one side and a shop selling locally produced olive oil on the other side. It is not a square, in the common sense that one finds in the rest of Greece but nevertheless it was the first place during my stay in Mani that resembled a common area where a modicum of social activity seemed to take place. There were a few tables and some people, mostly old men, sitting in silence at the cafe.

Just across form the cafe is the shop selling various types of olive oil, next to a building that was in the past a mill but no longer in working condition. The owners, a German couple, advertise it as a museum but there is nothing really interesting to see in it, except for some discarded mill equipment. The shop stocked a variety of products, all based on olives with the olive oil being sold in small well designed bottles of 250ml and costing in excess of 12€ each. Rather expensive but the olive oil with orange seemed and tasted nice so bought a bottle just to use it on salads.

Stavrokopi is a relatively large village with a municipality building which I had to visit to enquire about the olive mill and where I was told that the mill was in fact not in Stavrokopi, as one finds on the internet, about a kilometre back at the tiny village of Malta. Malta is a typical village but without the towers that one finds in other probably richer villages in inner Mani. The olive mill is just a few meters away from the church which also is the centre of the village and which offers a small opening for visitors to park their cars. It seems that the rest of the village can only be visited on foot.

Christina was waiting outside the mill as she also expected a group of American tourists who were especially brought to the mill by an operator. I had a few minutes to chat to Christina and to photograph some parts of the mill before the tourists arrived.

*The old stones by the entrance to the mill*

The building itself is not large but all necessary equipment is efficiently arranged so that a human operator can have easy access to the different parts of the production.

*The production area with the pulping container at the front*

*The press and the sacks in the foreground that hold the olive pulp to be pressed*

*Christina explaining about the business challenges of operating a traditional olive mill*

Visting such a historic olive mill one that still uses traditional techniques that ultimately produce oil of the highest possible quality was exhilarating but leaving the mill I could not escape the feeling of sadness that a business like this depends almost entirely on the enthusiasm and to a large extent the romanticism of the owners, for how long can they compete in a business in which modern production dominate the market and the majority of consumers do not seem to care too much about the differences in quality.

Back on the road for a return trip to Kitta that was going to take about 3 hours, I had to visit Karadmyli which in any case was on my way back but it was the place where Paddy had lived and I was longing to find out about the attraction of this place.

Kardamyli lies by the sea, in an area that many regard as outer Mani. Paddy wrote:

“Kardamyli, a castellated hamlet on the edge of the sea. Several towers and a cupola and a belfry rose above the roofs and a ledge immediately above them formed a lovely cypress-covered platform. Above this the bare Taygetus piled up. It was unlike any village I had seen in Greece. These houses, resembling small castles built of golden stone with medieval-looking pepper-pot turrets, were topped by a fine church. The mountains rushed down almost to the water’s edge with, here and there among the whitewashed fishermen’s houses near the sea, great rustling groves of calamus reed ten feet high and all swaying together in the slightest whisper of wind.” [Excerpt From: Patrick Leigh Fermor. “Mani.”].

One can imagine the allure of this place to Paddy such that he built his own house there in which he lived until his death in 2011. Imagine we must do though, because 60 years after he wrote these lines, the place is now more of a touristic destination than a secretive hideout for writers and artists. Hotels, signs of "rooms to let", restaurants and cafes abound in Karadmyli nowadays. The streets were full of people most of them from the UK, obviously attracted by the famous book and indeed I saw a couple of people walking on the main street holding a copy of the book!!

Although any reference to Patrick Leigh Fermor and his house in Mani is always about Karadmyli, in fact Paddy built his house 1 km south of Kardamyli in a place called Kardamitsi. Looking at Google Maps on my phone I could see exactly the spot on the map referenced as 'the house of Patrick Leigh Fermor' and despite the knowledge that the house was under refurbishment I still wanted to see the area. Back in Athens, as I mentioned in the first post of this road trip, my visit to Benaki museum, which owns and manages the house, had informed me that it was not possible to visit the house due to the ongoing works. I got off the main road towards the sea and on the right there was a large gate with a sign "access prohibited". The house is built on a high plateau just above a tiny beach. I parked just a few metres from the sea front and walked the short distance to the beach from where I could see looking north the small island around which, according to eye witnesses, Paddy swam regularly early in the morning.

*A view from the beach just below Leigh Fermor's house looking north*

Kevin Rushby of the Guardian newspaper visited Mani in 2012 to experience for himself what it was that attracted Paddy to the area, as well as many other writers, and artists. Rushby writes on September 12, 2012 issue of the Guardian:

"When Leigh Fermor came to the Mani he did some impressive wild swimming. To honour his adventurous spirit I felt I should swim around to his house and take a look. So next morning, before the heat of day, I entered the sea by the harbour and swam south down the rocky coast hunting for that tiny beach. I swam for what seemed a long time and had given up and turned back when I saw it: a little shingly beach with a single-storey house above. I swam closer until I could stand in the water. It was a lovely place: deep verandas and stone walls under a pantile roof. Mosaics of pebbles had been made on a flight of steps. I called out but got no answer. The house was shuttered and quiet as though still in mourning. I waded up the beach and sat at the foot of the pebble path. I could see a colonnade with rooms off it, then a larger living room."

*A view from the beach just below Leigh Fermor's house looking south*

My feeling was that the beach was rather unremarkable but the view with the mountains cascading all the way down to the blue sea, and the clear sky above was a view that I could easily watch every day and never get bored of it.

On the way back to the car I noticed a footpath that was almost covered with overgrown bushes but it looked as though the path was leading towards Paddy's house and without a second thought I was off following the path which after a short climb it was clear of the shrubs and became a proper 'kalderimi.

This narrow path, a coastal path, which I found out leads all the way to Karadmyli, about a kilometre away, was between two properties both of which were under renovation with two separate entrances opposite each other. Obviously, I had arrived at the Leigh Fermor residence.

I started chatting to the workers who were friendly and after a while I asked one of them if I could walk in the garden of the main house. "Sure" he said "but no photographs" and "be quick because if the works managers sees you I will be in trouble". Through the main gate, the house was on the left, with all windows and doors open with work under way and no possibility of getting access to it. I could see one large room with a fireplace and large windows offering a clear view of the sea, obviously a sitting room and possibly a work place for the writer. Leaving the main house behind, I walked on mosaics of pebbles with which the garden floor was covered, towards a veranda, a few meters away from the main house, a veranda which I recognised from various photographs and also from the third film of Richard Linklater's trilogy "Before Midnight".

Leaving the PLF house, satisfied that despite the prohibition of visitors I managed to see a little of the reported magic of the place, I decided to follow the circular road that climbs up the mountain visiting remote villages, before joining the main road again on the way back to Areopolis and Kitta. The road goes through Proastio, Lakkos, Exochori, Saidona, Pyrgos, Neochori and Stoupa. The road climbs up to almost 1000 metres, there was hardy any traffic on it, the villages seemed to be unoccupied and to add to the bleakness of the scene there was the occasional tall tower, literally in the middle of nowhere.

*The Katriniaris tower, built on top of a rock with no other building around for at least 5km*

When Kevin Rushby visited Mani he sought to find out the place where Leigh Fermor scattered Bruce Chatwin's ashes. Bruce Chatwin became famous overnight with his 'In Patagonia' book, and when he visited Paddy he was so overtaken by the place that he asked Paddy to scatter his ashes in Mani when he died. Rushby describes in his article of September 12, 2012 how a local man, Fotis, drove him to the village of Exochori where they got off the main road between a chapel and a school and they followed a path towards the main village and how the local guy explained that Chatwin's ashes were scattered by Leigh Fermor there. I don't know whether the location is accurate but as I drove to Exochori I saw the chapel and the school, I made a stop and followed the path as a token expression of homage to Chatwin.

*Nearby this school the ashes of Bruce Chatwin apparently have been scattered*

Just outside Saidona I noticed a small chapel which remarkably had its door open. I guess there was nothing to steal and so the locals decided to leave it open for visitors to admire the the hagiographies which covered all the walls from floor to the ceiling. Given their age they were in reasonable condition.

*The interior of the chapel outside Saidona*

Back down from the mountain I came across Stoupa where I decided not to stop although Kazantzakis lived there and reportedly it is where he met the man on whom the Zorba character was based. Christina of the Skarpalezos olive mill had recommended Ag. Nikolaos as a worthwhile stop so it was time for an afternoon coffee at what proved to be a picturesque fishing village with elements reminding me of old Greece.

*No expenses spared for modern amenities :))*

Ag. Nikolaos was a nice break from the bleakness of the mountains, and the absence of any kind of social activities in all the villages I went through. I chatted to local old ladies and even to the odd village person (every village must have one!).

*They lived within a radius of 3 km all their lives. They were sweet and keen to chat*

*He was keen to tell me that a high-ranking priest had visited the village earlier that day*

On the way back to Areopolis and Kitta, the road goes through Thalames, a village that I had passed earlier that morning. As I drove through I noticed an old man sitting outside a building with a sign advertising it as a museum of Mani.

The old man's "museum" was nothing more than a small building that served as a store room of many things that one might call discarded items. I asked his name which he gave me as Nicolas Dimaggelos, apparently educated in Greece and Germany. He was well spoken, bright enough to recognise that I was the driver in the car that passed him a few minutes earlier but frugal with his words, Laconically spoken just like most of he people that I met in Mani. I kept him company for a while and as it started raining I carried most of the items that he had on display outside for sale, wicker baskets, jars of olives, capers and honey.

Part III: A Historic Olive press, a famous house and beyond

Part IV: Of hagiographies, ancient gods and serendipity

Part II: Getting the feel of inner Mani