The chapel on the hill
The church clings to its rock like a limpet mine on a ship's hull. There is a sense of danger up here in the clouds. Any minute now you could topple right over the edge. Nausea overwhelms you as you peep out over the sheer drop to the valley floor below. In the distance you can see Paleokastritsa harbour, the monastery and not Homer's wine dark sea but your own. And that speck on the beach, it's probably just a pile of debris washed up by the storms. But maybe, just maybe, it could be the ghost of Odysseus waiting to be discovered by Nausikaa . It doesn't pay to look too closely. There's many a slip... To the south is the village of Liapades marching up the hill and to the left the fertile plains of the Ropa Valley, with its gypsies and market gardens. Out across the olives and cypress trees there is Corfu Town, the old fort, the islands of Lazaretto and Vidos sitting in the water and, across the channel, the snow-capped mountains of the mainland and ...