‘These torturing hours of ascent seemed as though they could never end ……… the sun trampled overhead through sizzling and windless air. Feet became cannon-balls, loads turned to lead, hearts pounded, hands slipped on the handles of sticks and rivers of sweat streamed over burning faces and trickled into our mouths like brine. Why, we kept wondering, though too short of breath for talk, does one ever embark on these furious wrestling matches, these rib-cracking clinches with the sublime?’
Patrick Leigh Fermor, ‘Mani – Travels in the Southern Peloponnese’ (1958)
