After walking down the gorge and a night in Agia Roumeli I left for Sougia, pictured above, on one of several ferries that now ply the route. It was a day of powerful winds and whipped up waves.

As I waited to board, my ferry rocked and rolled in a heaving sea, its steel ramp clanking and grinding on the harbour. It was quite a spectacle after days of calm and an audience had lined up, smartphones at the ready.

As the ramp flexed up and down with every rise and fall of the boat, soaked crew members shouted instructions to anxious drivers waiting to edge their cars across, all their commands lost to the wind. The drivers gripped the steering wheels of unfamiliar hire cars, their terror caught on film by a growing crowd.

The first in line was an elderly woman. She looked like she might die, overcome by fear. Nothing happened for a while as she peered warily over the steering wheel, her hire car marked by a lopsided sticker: ‘Crete Adventures’. Then she revved up, paused for a moment focussing on the ramp’s undulations, and whizzed across as it levelled briefly, seizing the moment. She smiled to the crowd like a queen in a carriage and the crew cheered. Emboldened, other cars followed, although none with the same panache.

Finally, as high bursts of sea spray lashed the ferry, there were fairground screams for a good ten minutes as I and hundreds of limping walkers scurried across the ramp as best we could, some soaked and some spared.

And eventually off we went, a huge car ferry rammed full of people heading to Sougia to the west, another going to Chora Sfakion to the east. These are the only ways out for the several hundred walkers who tumble out of the gorge every day in the summer months

After a choppy forty minutes Sougia came into view. Ten or more coaches lay waiting by the harbour to scoop up gorge walkers and whisk them away, and a few of us hobbled up to the village.

The Rough Guide to Crete describes Sougia pretty well:

“A rather unkempt little place – not particularly attractive at first sight – Sougia tends to grow on you. Its best feature lies right at the end of the road: an enormous swathe of bay with sparklingly clean, clear sea and a long, pebbly beach.”

At the very far end of this long, pebbly beach there’s a nudist area, which the locals call the Bay of Pigs.

I’d planned to walk to nearby Lissos tomorrow, where there once stood a prosperous ancient Dorian city, but three things messed it up. The first a forecast of thunder storms and rain all morning and the other two my legs, or rather their calf muscles.

Despite the fact that I walk a lot, a descent of 1250m with around 20 kilos on my back, much of it steep and zig zagging, has left me hobbling a bit. You can spot gorge veterans everywhere by their hobble, which tends to last a few days. So I’m going to come back another day for that and catch a ferry in the morning to Chora Sfakion, where I worked in 77. That’s me in the middle with my colleagues Yianni and Patelli. Moustaches were in vogue back then and a must for Cretan men.

Change of plan

Suddenly remembered Josie and Lauren arrive in Heraklion on Wednesday (daughter and partner). Spur of the moment decision to head for Rethymno via Chania.