A Greece for all seasons: my autumn roadtrip through the Peloponnese

An out-of-season journey through the peninsula reveals Byzantine villages, deserted beaches and friendly tavernas

As I drove across the causeway which links the tiny fortress island of Monemvasia to the south-eastern coast of the Peloponnese, the Aegean sparkling on all sides, I recalled a line by Yiannis Ritsos, one of Greece’s greatest 20th-century poets. Ritsos lived in Monemvasia, in a house that is today a museum on a cobble-stretch by the tawny castle walls. A favourite passage goes: “The voyage is neither a leave-taking nor a home-coming – an ethereal bridge …”

The excuse for my trip to the Peloponnese’s deep south – Messinia, the Mani, and Laconia – fell between those two ideas. My mother has roots in the Peloponnese – a sort-of homecoming that I’ve long wanted to explore – and with the summer over and greedy for an adventure to myself, I set out by car, leaving Kalamata, the leafy port city and gateway to the area, on a coastal road circuit.