The bits the Greeks forgot ……….

Now Lourdas Bay is pretty typical of most of the Greek resorts we have stayed at over the last forty years.

Amongst the holiday apartments, bars and pop-up restaurants, there are those skeletons of buildings yet to be, which stand against the skyline as bare concrete pillars waiting for something to happen.

But just occasionally tucked away there are a few relics from a bygone time.  

Some are ruined houses which were abandoned decades ago.  Just how long they have been left empty and forlorn is anyone’s guess, and often the old residents you ask are themselves unable to offer a date or a name.

All that remains are a few battered walls, a crumbling fireplace swamped by a mass of undergrowth.

And then there are a few properties which look at first glance to be empty but on closer inspection show signs that someone still calls it home.

We stumbled across this one on our daily walk to the village bakery.  

It stands just a little way down a path whose entrance is barred by a rusty old fence, and several notices warning you to be aware of the dog.

I can’t say it looked either promising or inviting. There was a telly beside the front door and a tired looking skateboard propped up at the side of the house, along with a series of sheds which were all but ready to collapse.

It is the sort of property which makes you wander just what stories lurk behind the door, and what the future holds for both the buildings and the accompanying land.

The speculation hovered on an elderly couple who have seen their children leave the island, heading for a better life in Athens or maybe even abroad.

Then there was the intriguing idea that it had been taken up by itinerant travellers who had chosen long ago to break their journey and somehow never moved on.

Now that was not such a daft idea, because in the 1970s an acquaintance backpacking across Crete had run out of money, and in an age before internet banking, or mobile phones, the only option was to seek employment on a Greek farm and work through the year making up the lost funds.

Likewise, a decade later we ran into a bronzed weather-beaten fisherman.  He had a northern accent and might well have come from Yorkshire.  But he was vague about his time on the island, and sensing that his life was a closed book not to be shared, the conversation dribbled away leaving heaps of speculation about how a middle-aged man had ended up far from home.

And that brings me full circle to the house behind the gate and a heap of possible stories.

Location; Lourdas Bay

Pictures; the house behind the gate, 2022, from the collection of Balzano