BUILDERS on Cephalonia are like dancers in that scene from
Zorba the Greek: the bouzouki music starts off gently, then gets faster and faster to a crescendo and ends with people running round in circles with arms and legs flying.
Our villa is now built, and it’s just what we wanted — but it involved a lot of hard work from master craftsmen, labourers, friends and us. Still, what building project ever went smoothly? We decided to buy (or, as it turned out, build) a villa abroad after paying thousands of pounds each summer to rent a villa in the Mediterranean. By having our own, we could use it ourselves, and invite friends to stay — which you can’t do if you’re renting and the price is calculated per person — and let it through an agency when we weren’t there.
People ask why we chose Cephalonia. Well, although we looked for about three years before deciding on the largest of the Ionian islands, in the end it was an impulse buy. We had dismissed Majorca (too pricey), the Costa Blanca (full of British criminals on the run), the South of France (a traffic nightmare), the Dordogne (weather not good enough), before starting to look at the Greek islands. Skiathos was too young for us, Ithaca so old it was like God’s waiting room, and we ruled out anywhere that had been invaded by Club 18-30.
Then, on a day trip to Cephalonia from the neighbouring island of Lefkas, we drove along the coast road to Fiskardo, high rocks and herds of goats to the right, a steep drop to turquoise waters to the left. “We won’t find anywhere better than this,” said my husband, Harry. “That’s it. I am going to retire.” When you consider that as a royal reporter for The Sun, he went around the world with the Queen, that’s high praise.
The one-day boat trip turned into a five-day stopover as we criss-crossed the island, admiring white-capped mountains, dense green pine forests, olive groves, underground lakes and those lovely beaches on Greek travel posters. The capital, Argostoli, is a busy market town and port with streets lined with mulberry trees. It’s also a real place, with picture-framers and a hardware shop, not just a tourist resort that becomes a ghost town in winter.
How could it be so unspoilt? Doug Goodman, spokesman for the Hotel Association of Cephalonia, said: “The islanders learnt a lot from mistakes made by other Greek islands, which is why there are no buildings above three storeys, no hotels closer than 100 metres to the shore and none of those ribbon developments of discos and eating places aimed at the British. There is no crime, no unemployment and only one traffic light.”
The response to the film Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, which was made here, was, says Goodman, a good yardstick of the Cephalonian mindset. “On some islands the film would have taken over, but there is only one small restaurant near Sami called Captain Corelli’s, and that’s where the actors and film crew used to eat.”
The film was good for Cephalonia. Although the critics panned it, it was a showcase for the island’s scenery and boosted tourist numbers. In the novel by Louis de Bernières, the captain escapes the Nazis by boat from a little place called Spartia, a charming village by the sea, built in higgledy-piggledy fashion to confuse pirates.
And it was in Spartia that we found our Eden, thanks to Dionysos Koumoudos, a local hotelier known as Dennis, who is also a land agent. There were no new houses on sale worth buying, he told us, and the old ones for sale could not be guaranteed earthquake-proof. Nearly every building on Cephalonia was destroyed in the earthquake of August 1953, and since then buildings must be constructed to rigorous standards. There have since been quakes far stronger,which damaged nothing.
The one-acre plot he showed us was a verdant slope surrounded by olive trees, and it was on sale for £54,000 — which sounds a lot, but we could have built two villas on it instead of one. We shook hands on the deal, went home, and then flew back two months later to meet architects, solicitors and bank managers, all with the help of Dennis and his wife, Suzanne. The process was painless, and the paperwork completed within weeks.
Something I had to accept is that wives are invisible in Greece. It was “Meester Harry” that George Maravegias, the builder, wanted to talk to, and the electrician and the man who cut the marble. Even the labourers became visibly nervous if Meester Harry wasn’t around. But Cephalonians are lovely people, and the work went smoothly.
But when we arrived at the newly built villa a month ago, there was a pile of rubble by the front door, a cement bag floating in the pool and lots of little jobs to be done. Lights were missing from the front gate and the grounds looked like a battlefield. With our first paying guests arriving in a fortnight, our stress levels went off the Richter scale even if the earthquakes did not.
Fortunately our friends Vic and Erin Chapple came to visit. They knew all about gardening, so set about raking, digging and planting. In three days, with two hired workers helping, there was an orchard, a driveway lined with conifers, a rose bed and even a herb garden for visiting cooks. After Dennis made a few stiff phone calls, the electrician at last appeared, and the painter and the gravel for the drive. The Zorba the Greek tune became very fast indeed.
Our four-bedroom, four-bathroom Villa Athina, with a pool 12m by 10m (39ft by 33ft), was designed by a local architect, Aristedes Sigaras, with only slight adjustments by us, and most of the building work was completed in a year. We furnished it from top to bottom with furniture bought in the UK and sent out by container. I should point out that we’re not wealthy people. We got a Greek mortgage through the Alpha Bank, and we see the house as an enjoyable investment, which we hope to visit about four times a year.
But be warned: owning property abroad lays you open to bad behaviour. Your least favourite relations will phone and ask when they can visit; a girlfriend invited for a week will say: “How about a fortnight?”; people you are fond of come out with startling remarks — such as “I’m not going if she’s going; she talks too much”.
For sanity’s sake, we have house rules for when we are there: no CD players around the pool (not fair on our neighbours), political discussions are off-limits, and if you want to get up at 7.30am just remember that others are asleep, having been up playing poker until the early hours.
So now we can relax and really enjoy the place. Except that Harry has just announced that he’s building another one on Cephalonia. In fact, work has already started, but he kept it quiet in case I got stressed. Can you believe it? Villa Athina is available through Something Special (0870 0270508, www.somethingspecial .co.uk) from £480pp per week in October, based on eight sharing, including flights from Gatwick, car hire and welcome hamper (£580pp for four sharing).
Greek Islands Club (020-8232 9780, www.greekislandsclub.com) also has villas on Cephalonia. A week including flights and car hire starts at £425pp based on two sharing.
Dionysos “Dennis” Koumoudos has set up Unique Villas to manage villa projects on Cephalonia (01202 849165, koumoudos@aol.com).
