Overland to Crete
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“But you’ll be murdered!” said my colleague, Mary.
“No I won’t,” I said. “It’ll be excellent. Like being in The Bourne Identity.”
I was trying to decide whether to go entirely overland, via The Balkans, or to take the train through France, down the east coast of Italy and then get the overnight ferry from Bari to Patras.
Since the TransBalkan Express was conjuring up images of knife-wielding, one-eyed Albanian hitmen chasing their prey onto the roof of the restaurant car, going via Italy definitely seemed the more relaxing option.
I was heading off to Crete to live for a few months and, since the tourist season hadn’t yet started, I couldn’t get a direct flight so I would have to go via Athens. The only direct flights to Crete are the holiday company charters that operate from the beginning of May until the end of October.
“Maybe I could make the journey more interesting and get a ferry from Athens to Crete,” I thought. “Maybe I could spend a few days in Athens, even. Actually, I haven’t had a holiday this year so maybe I could make a trip of it – I’ll go overland all the way.” It was settled. As quickly as that.
I googled “train London to Greece” and found myself on the website of The Man in Seat Sixty-One, an extremely informative site devoted to showing adventurous souls, and environmentally-friendly ones, how to travel around the world by train.
I would need to get the Eurostar to Paris; an overnight sleeper-train from Paris to Milan; the Eurostar Italia from Milan to Bari; an overnight ferry from Bari to Patras; the coastal train from Patras to Corinth; the new high-speed link from Corinth to Athens and then a ferry from Piraeus, the port of Athens, to Heraklion, the capital of Crete. The journey would take around three days from departure to destination.
I learnt that I could book the journey myself on the various train company websites listed – Eurostar, TGV and Trenitalia – but it seemed a much easier and less time-consuming option to use London-based Rail Europe, the ‘one-stop-shop’ for European rail travel.
After enquiring by e-mail, I telephoned to make my booking. I would have booked online, saving myself a £6 administration fee, but tickets for the Italian section of my journey weren’t on there.
Another added expense was that I couldn’t book a return as I was going to be away longer than the three-month window for booking the return part of the journey; the price of tickets for single journeys can be high. However, for Eurostar, I discovered that it’s cheaper to book a return ticket even if you’re not going to use it – it works out about half the price of booking a single.
Since I’d left it quite late to organise my trip, about a month before I was due to head off, the ‘cheap seats’ on the overnight train from Paris to Milan had all gone so I had to book a bed in a shared First Class compartment (cost around €120/£80). Lone female travellers need not fear – the compartments are single sex for those travelling on their own. However, it’s a good idea to check this at the time of booking.
The Eurostar Italia, Italy’s swish inter-city service, was an absolute bargain. An eight-hour one-way trip from the top of the boot to the top of the heel cost around €58/£38.
Tickets for the train from Patras to Athens could be bought in Patras station, a ten-minute walk from the ferry port, and cost about €14/£9 for the four-hour trip via Corinth. I could have caught the bus, which takes around three hours, but the train follows the stunning coastline of the north Peloponnese, passing the five-span 2252 metre-long Rio-Antirio road bridge, which links the Peloponnese with mainland Greece, and crossing the Corinth Canal.
As for the ferries, this was easy. I looked on www.ferries.gr, the website of a Crete-based company that advises on and sells tickets for all Greek ferries, discovered that Superfast Ferries was the line I wanted and then booked online on the Superfast website. Since I was travelling overnight, I reserved a cabin for comfort (prices start at around €100/£67 for a four-bed inside cabin). Again, those travelling alone share single-sex cabins and, if you’re very lucky, you might even get one to yourself if it’s out of season. And I didn’t need a ticket, just the booking reference, but I printed off the e-mail just in case …..
Booking the ferry from Piraeus to Heraklion was a more disappointing experience, however. I did some research and decided that I wanted to travel with Minoan Lines, a ‘fast ferry’, one that would take five hours and not the usual eight. Leaving the booking until the week before I left, all the tickets had been bought and I had to go with the slow and antiquated Anek Lines, which departed at 10am and arrived at around 6.30pm. Many Cretans visit family in Athens for Easter and all of them seemed to be travelling back home on the same day that I’d earmarked for my own voyage.
Everything arranged, I was all set. A month later, due to thorough planning and no unforeseen circumstances, the journey went without hitch.
One of the best things about travelling by train and ferry for long journeys, I discovered, is that it gives you the space to catch up on activities that you can’t always make time for in daily life: reading a couple of novels, learning a language, listening to some new CDs you’ve downloaded to your MP3 player, writing, sleeping, whatever you want. It’s also a good opportunity to meet locals, to find out about the country and glean inside advice on things to see and do.
If you time your connections right, you can spend a couple of hours or a couple of days exploring a town or city that you might never otherwise have chosen to visit. I spent an afternoon in Bari, famous for its football team and for being the resting place of the real Saint Nicolas aka Santa Claus, whilst waiting to board my ferry; I also had two monument-packed days in Athens before heading off to Crete.
If you only have a few hours to spare, most train stations have left luggage facilities, with varying opening times and costs, which I found invaluable as I was lugging a 25-kilo case behind me.
Ah yes, luggage. Having done a long trip overland, my advice is to travel as light as possible. You will need to get your luggage on and off trains several times and many of the European train and metro stations I visited did not have lifts or escalators to some platforms; I ended up having to heave my bags up and down stairs.
Travelling overland by train might work out more expensive than the cost of some plane fares but you can’t put a price on experience, memories and the sense of achievement for just having done it. For me, the journey was equally as important as reaching the destination.
So in the end, Mary needn’t have worried. I managed to travel around two thousand miles without encountering a knife-wielding maniac. But I do wonder what kind of trip I would have had if I’d gone via The Balkans. I think I’ll just sneak another look at The Man in Seat Sixty-One……
Useful links
Eurostar website
Rail Europe website
The Man in Seat Sixty-One
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