Grand Tours: Watch out for Artemis and Her Nymphs ; Writers' Adventures in Literature: Patrick Leigh Fermor Is Awed by the Peloponnese Mountains, Where Myth Is Never Far Away

Beginning of article

In December 1933 Patrick Leigh Fermor, then aged 18, set out to walk from the Hook of Holland to Constantinople, a 1,200-mile journey which he famously chronicled in `A Time of Gifts'. During the Second World War, Fermor spent three years in Crete working as a British agent, and became a national hero when he captured the German General Kreipe (as immortalised by Dirk Bogarde in the film `Ill Met by Moonlight'). Several books and journeys later he returned to Greece, producing two of the 20th century's most celebrated travel books, `Mani', from which this extract is taken, and its companion, `Roumeli'.

F F F

On the map the southern part of the Peloponnese looks …