Contents
Spotlight
Winds of Change?
It might be stating the obvious, (though perhaps not to some of you who have only ever visited the island when it’s really toasty roasty and have found yourselves desperately trying to suck the oxygen out of your hotel air conditioning unit during a heatwave in August) but sometimes it gets windy here on Crete. In fact some people have even written books and songs about the phenomenon. For example David MacNeil Doren’s ‘Winds of Crete’ - which is one of the earlier ex-pat accounts about coming to live on the island - has several memorable passages about how the winds here can wreak havoc both physically and mentally. And Joni Mitchell famously described the winds blowing in to the island from Africa in her song ‘Carey’ (you know, the one where she’s still in love with Leonard Cohen but the novelty of living on the beach in Matala is starting to wear off and she is coming to the realization that despite the best of intentions she is not actually cut out to be a full time hippy).
On balance (?!), it is hard to say whether the ’winds’ are good things or bad things. On the one hand, the unpredictable nature of winds on the South Coast can be frustrating when planning a day on the beach (and painful, too, as anyone who has experienced the ‘pebble-dash sand blasting’ that is occasionally known to occur when a stiff breeze suddenly picks up just as you have applied your suncream, have paid for the beach chair and umbrella and have settled down to read that escapist ‘chick lit’ paperback). And the so-called Ghaddafi winds that bring red dust from the Sahara and send everyone crazy can be sheer torment. However, the fact that South Coast of Crete is prone to unpredictable gustiness may also be a blessing in some respects. It seems to be no coincidence that - so far at least - the South Coast has by and large managed to escape the ravages of over development that have accompanied the exponential rise in mass tourism on the North Coast since the mid 1980’s - leaving us with some of the most spectacularly beautiful stretches of coastline in the whole of Europe. Fingers crossed that it stays that way!
Gods and Windmills
Not-so-clever photo of the Lassithi
Plateau without windmills!
As one might expect, there are many myths and legends about the various types of winds. It probably also comes as no surprise that for every type of wind there is a Greek God to match. Currently our favourite source of funky facts about windy Gods comes from the superb website www.sfakia-crete.com – which is, by the way, a great place to start if you are looking online for information about this particular region of Crete (beats Wikipedia every time!). We can’t even begin to compete (and wouldn’t want to in any case), and are also wary of trying to filch too much from the site, so we will just give you a few nuggets here. The God of the North winds was called Boreas. He was, apparently, a bearded bloke with wings. Notus was the God of the South and Zephyrus was the God of the West winds. So there you go.
Here on Crete where people have always had a close relationship with the elements and the land, the potential for harnessing the power of the wind as an energy source was recognised very early on. And the Venetians were quick to get in on the act too, once they invaded! The windmills of the Lassithi plateau (OK so Lassithi isn’t exactly in our region, but it is just a road trip away!) are perhaps the best known examples of Renaissance technology in this respect (the windmills were used as pumps for ground water. Amazing!). It is pleasing to note that after many years of neglect serious efforts are now being made to restore the windmills on the plateau.
The Meltemi
Our most internationally renowned wind is called the Meltemi (it’s sort of an Oscar winner in wind terms. Which means that while it may be the flashy star of the show it’s not always the most important part of the movie). Contrary to popular belief it is not the same as the Ghaddafi wind (the one we talked about earlier that sends us all bonkers). The Meltemi or Etsian winds are, according to a popular reference source on the internet, the strong dry North winds of the Aegean Sea. They can be a blessing to sailors (because they help to get a becalmed boat off the ground, so to speak), but on the other hand they can also be a real worry, too, as they can blow up without warning and can reach up to 7-8 Beaufort before Captain Popeye has managed to get his act together and has fixed the frigging in the rigging. It is said that Philip 11 of Macedon used to time his military operations round the Meltemi (which is why there is a pretty picture of him to the right).
