Walk like a Minoan: hiking and foraging in eastern Crete

A winter hike on a remote section of Crete’s E4 trail, fuelled by feta cheese and wild herbs, proves the perfect antidote to bleak times

Like swirling paper scraps from a bonfire, the charcoal-winged vultures circled high overhead. When I imitated a lamb’s bleat they circled closer, stretching their massive wings and craning long wrinkled necks. The bone-white rocks of the Gorge of the Dead was a fitting backdrop for these pterodactyl-like birds – I could have been in a scene from Jurassic Park.

Named not for the hikers that have perished here (happily none has) but because it’s littered with caves where the Minoans once buried their dead, this seven-mile canyon – also called the Zakros gorge – is the end of the Cretan section of the ultra-long-distance E4 hiking route. The whole trail runs for more than 10,000km from Tarifa in Spain to Cyprus, but this island’s stretch starts 320km away in the north-western town of Kastelli-Kissamos and ends at the remote resort of Kato Zakros.