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The Mermaid Madonna & The End of The World
Here are two places in the north-east of Lesvos. They are both by the sea,
they are both beautiful in their own very different ways, and they are both among
my favourites. Apart from that they could be in two different worlds.
Skala Sikaminias
Skala Sikaminias, originally the harbour for the hill village of Sikaminia 1¾ miles above,
(and if you walk up the steep zigzag road in the afternoon sun, it feels ten times that),
later became, and remains, a thriving fishing village in its own right.
When in the 1950s Stratis Mirivilis set his novel 'The Mermaid Madonna' there,
and the decaying village of Molivos started to be revived as a tourist destination,
inevitably Skala Sikaminias too began to attract visiting holidaymakers.
(Administratively, Sikaminia and Molivos are both within the 'demos' of Mithimna)
Today, while the locals still mend their nets and unload their catches,
the little harbour is ringed with fish tavernas, which attract Greek families
from other parts of the island as much as tourists.
It remains a charming and intimate place, well worth a visit.
For a lazy day, take the daily excursion boat from Molivos in mid-morning,
wander round and have lunch, and return on the boat later in the afternoon.
Or if you are feeling energetic, Skala Sikaminias is an 13½ kilometre walk
along the coast from Molivos (see Walks 8 and 22 in 'On Foot in North Lesvos')
If you feel like a swim, there are pebble beaches
alongside the concrete roadto the west of the harbour,
or go along the small beach beyond the harbour tavernas and take the path
over the headland to the long, sandy, and under-stated beach of Kagia in the next bay.
But do not expect to find the Mermaid Madonna.
In the novel, this is a wall painting of the Virgin Mary with the tail of a mermaid,
painted by a reclusive sea-captain in the harbour church
in the early years of the twentieth century,
and some guidebooks have reprinted this fiction as fact.
However the current paintings in the church were done in 1992,
with not a mermaid's tail in sight,
and there is even some doubt as to whether the church was there until much later:
a late painting by Theophilos, dated 1933, does not seem to show it.
Palios
Palios is five miles east of Mandamados along a dirt road.
On the edge of wild heath-land there is a tiny bay, a short jetty with a few small boats,
and three or four fishermens' cottages around a dusty open space,
with sometimes a few browsing chicken or goats.
Off-shore is a group of small islands.
Apart from that, nothing, apart from a locked OTE phone kiosk,
and a couple of holiday cottages on a low ridge on the far side of the bay.
To translate Thomas Schröder in 'Lesbos',
"Here one is really at the end of the world; for lovers of solitude this is perhaps the
perfect place"
It is difficult to believe that this area was inhabited from the Hellenistic period
(the middle of the first millennium BC) or even earlier -
there are a number of tombs cut into the solid rock nearby,
and that until the early twentieth century there was an important harbour
here bringing Greek pilgrims from Anatolia
on their way to the Taxiarchis Monastery at Mandamados:
its function ceasing with the expulsion of most of the remaining Greek population
of Turkey after 1922.
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