We bade farewell to our lovely spot at Kastro beach. Before we left we saw that one of the locals was doing a roaring trade selling bread, fruit and such like to the Europeans who were too lazy to drive their motorhomes three miles up to the local village.

Today on our drive south we have witnessed, again, the poor standard of driving in Greece. France long ago improved to something like normal; the Italian’s recklessness has noticeably reduced over the years, even in the south; but Greece still has someway to go. If there was a world championship for bad parking, and I wish there was, the Italian’s would get the silver medal but the Greeks would get gold: double parking, parking at right angles to the curb or just leaving your vehicle in the middle of the road while you have a chat with your mates, these are all normal behaviours.

Sarah and I are constantly wincing and me slowing down as someone overtakes with a car coming in the opposite direction and a collision seems inevitable. Worst of all, to our minds, is overtaking in towns and villages. Because I slow down to the 31 mph speed limit in towns and villages the average Greek motorist sees this as the perfect opportunity to overtake, never mind pedestrians, stray dogs or cats.

Another interesting sight on today’s journey was an anonymous little town in the middle of nowhere that had somehow and for some unknown reason, managed to find the funds to built a very respectable replica of the Eiffel Tower at about one tenth size. It stood in the town square with no discernible purpose.

I have to say that having toured the Peloponnese fairly extensively in 2017 we are slightly running out of major attractions which we have not already seen, but I spied in my Rough Guide something called Nestor’s Palace in the South West Peloponnese which seemed worth a look. So this was our target for the day.

Nestor’s Palace is the best preserved palace from the Mycenaean period of Greek history. The Mycenaeans were a very early civilization, perhaps they could justifiably be called the first European civilization along with their contemporaries in Crete, the Minoans. They lived in Greece from around 1600 BC to 1100 BC and their Linear B script is the first known writing in mainland Europe and is an ancestor of ancient Greek.

The reason the palace is called Nestor’s Palace is because in Homer’s writing he mentions a great palace belonging to Nestor in roughly the location where it was discovered. Homer’s stories also gave archeologists some of the clues as to where to start looking for this palace.

The site has been extensively excavated and the whole site covered over by a high tech roof. The palace was destroyed by an very extensive fire in about 1200 BC with the unintended consequence that the largest discovered collection of clay tablets containing Linear B script were hardened in the fire leaving them intact for archeologists.

I have to admit that all that is visible are the bottom one metre or so of the palace walls, although there are some interesting items which give the visitor a more personal insight in to life 3,300 years ago, such as a clay bath and the charred remains of hundreds of drinking vessels which it is assumed were stored on shelves which collapsed during the fire.

Due to the Linear B tablets archeologists know quite a lot about the last year of the palace’s existence including it’s extensive trade in various types of oil. One interesting little fact is that the Mycenaean word for oil is exactly the same as the modern Greek word for oil!

My description of the palace to Sarah clearly didn’t fire her enthusiasm because she decided she did not need to see another old ruin, so we set off for our overnight stop in the little port of Pylos. We parked Basil at the marina (36.916609, 21.698936), in amongst rusting old boats and went to explore the town. It is definitely the most upmarket town we have visited so far in Greece this trip. The port area is very nicely pedestrianised and most of the restaurants look suitable for well heeled visitors in the summer. We, however, have found somewhere that does not look too expensive and we may go out to eat there tonight.