SOME MEMORIES OF ROBERT & MARGARET HARKNESS First draft Revised Aug 08

Adam Yamey Crossing Europe with a caravan Recently, I received a letter that had been posted to me thirty-two years ago. My late mother posted it in 1975, and addressed it to Harkness, Poste-restante, Platamon, Greece. By the time the letter arrived in this small village that rests on the coast of the Aegean Sea beneath Mount Olympus, I had already left it to return to London. The letter was recovered from the post office in Platamon by Robert and Margaret Harkness. When they returned to England at the end of summer they brought it back to Rough Hey - their home near Stoke Poges in Buckinghamshire. The letter remained there, unopened, for almost thirty years until after Margarets death when it, along with many other tons of paper, was rescued by their elder daughter Veryan prior to selling the family house. During the years since her parents deaths, she has been patiently and carefully sifting through these papers that Robert and Margaret accumulated during their long lives. When she found my mothers letter amongst them, she sent it on to me. Her thoughtfulness and kindness is typical of that exhibited by her late parents. Every year, Margaret and Robert left the UK for a long camping holiday across the English Channel. When their daughters, Veryan and Lindesay, were young, they travelled with a dormobile to a nunnery at St Gildas in Brittany. This is where Margaret and her parents had spent holidays during her childhood. Her father, William James Perry (1887-1949) - an eminent anthropologist at University College London (UCL), liked the area as it was full of pre-Christian archaeological sites. By the time I became a Ph. D student with Robert and Margaret in the early 1970s, they had shifted their holiday destination from France to the completely unfashionable seaside resort of Platamon in Greece. Popular with poor Yugoslav tourists from towns like Skopje in the south of Yugoslavia, this place was almost unvisited by holidaymakers from Western Europe. In 1975, I was invited or, maybe I invited myself, to join them on their trip from the UK to Platamon. In any case, I was welcomed as a member of their expedition, along with Vivian Bellairs who was the daughter of the embryologist Ruth Bellairs, who like Robert and Margaret, was on the academic staff of UCL. Vivians father, the late Angus Bellairs, had studied with Robert and Margaret during their undergraduate years at UCL. We assembled at Rough Hey on the eve of departure, and early next morning, Robert carefully attached the long wheelbase Land Rover to the family caravan. Robert had re-painted this rather elderly caravan with a semi-shiny, greyish-silver paint in order to reflect the sun off it when it was parked in Greece. The equally ancient, Land Rover had sufficient room for three to sit at the front. Margaret insisted that Vivien and I should sit at the front alongside Robert who drove. She wanted to be sure that we had a good view. Sacrificing all comfort she sat behind us on a plank of wood that served as a rear seat for the entire journey - a journey that was to last more than one

week. She took charge of the thermos flasks filled with hot tea and coffee, and doled them regularly out for elevenses and at tea-time. Dover was the first stop on our way to Greece. Not only was it from here that we would take a car ferry to France, but it was also the home of Margarets elderly aunt Kitty. She was one of Margarets three aunts. I had already I met one of these three the friendly, feisty, strongly opinionated octogenarian Auntie Nora at whose hands at least one teenage mugger had suffered badly. We went to Aunt Kittys flat, and were served tea there before we continued to the ferry port. We crossed the Channel in the late afternoon and drove a short distance to a place near Courcelles. The place where we camped that night no longer exists - it is now part of the French entrance to the Channel Tunnel. We camped on the side of the road on the edge of a ploughed field of earth. Robert and Margaret did not believe in official camp-sites: they liked to camp wild. After dinner, I felt the call of nature - I needed to evacuate my bowels. As I could not find any kind of toilet in the caravan, I asked where I should perform this bodily function. Robert promptly handed me a spade and a pick-axe. He told me to dig a hole in the field, do my business, and then to return the field to its original state. I had never handled a pickaxe in my life. I found a secluded spot in the field, and lifted the pick-axe high above my shoulder before swinging it down towards the earth. To my great surprise and horror, the implement just bounced off the concrete-like earth without disturbing it at all. I decided to ignore instructions, and hope for the best. Roberts desire to cause minimal disturbance was typical of his thoughtfulness for others, and of his desire not to be a nuisance to anyone or anything. The next morning, just before we left our overnight spot, Margaret brought out one of the bottles of the homemade marmalade that she and Robert used to make, and left it on the edge of the field as a thank-you gift for the unknown farmer who had unwittingly been our host for the night. We drove slowly eastwards across France Robert and Margaret followed a well-established route on their journey, but were kind enough to let me try my own variation on it, if only to show me that deviations from the well-trodden path often proved the superiority of the tried and tested. For a few hours we bumped along poor-surfaced roads that I had selected before we rejoined the tried and tested Harkness route. Every day we stopped for elevenses. Margaret served biscuits and pre-prepared tea poured from a thermos flask. Lunch was eaten, as dictated by tradition, at one oclock, or as near to this time as road conditions would allow. Stopping at the roadside with a caravan is not as simple as stopping without one. The caravan had small wheels and was not high above the ground. So, it was necessary to find a stretch of road where the caravan could be driven off the road and onto the roadside verge. This was not all Robert wanted to have picnic where it seemed to him that no one had ever been before. The site chosen had to be litter-free. Once these conditions were satisfied, so also were our appetites. The usual luncheon fare was bread and canned sardines, washed down with more tea from the thermos flask. Every day after lunch, Robert drank half a glass of red wine, and then he lay down on the ground. He took a twentyminute nap before we recommenced our journey. Our second night in France was spent in a field somewhere near to Metz in Eastern France. Robert and Margaret used this field annually, and they had a sort of affection

for its anonymous owner for whom they gratefully left the customary pot of marmalade. We wondered what happened to the marmalade. Did someone enjoy its contents? It was never found when Robert and Margaret returned to the same spot a year later. In the evening, we ate around the caravans dining table. Above it there hung a fly-paper upon which several sad looking flies had found their final resting places. As a true scientist, Robert was interested in recording everything systematically. He kept a note of how many flies met their end on this sticky trap each day. Robert was like a twentieth century Charles Darwin or Frances Galton: like his illustrious predecessors, Robert was interested in everything - he recorded all that he observed carefully, and then tried to make sense of what he saw. At first, I was frequently a victim of the fiendish insect trapping device. Whenever I leaned over to get something, my hair became stuck to the thing. On that, and many other evenings, after dinner, we played a few rounds of some simple card game I cant remember which, but it was always the same game. We gambled for matchsticks, and then retired to bed. From France, we crossed into southern Germany. We headed across Germany towards Schloss Reisenburg, just east of Ulm. Many years before I knew Robert and Margaret, they had attended a conference at this castle that belongs to the University of Ulm. Whilst there, they made friends not only with other delegates at the conference but also with the caretaker and his wife, and in so doing, established a convenient stopping place for themselves on their trips to Greece. We drove into the castle grounds and were greeted like long lost friends by the caretakers wife who offered us refreshments, and let us set-up camp. The next day, we set out to cross the rest of southern Germany. For the first time on our journey, we began to see churches with onion-shaped domes, and this prompted Robert to discuss the existence of a notional onion-dome line. On one side of this line, there would be no churches with onion-shaped domes, and on the other side these would be seen. Likewise, Robert felt that it should be possible to draw a watermelon line and an olive line. Crossing south of these lines should bring one into areas in which respectively water-melons and olive trees grow. I wonder whether Robert had Stendhal in mind - this writer thought that the Mediterranean spirit began below a line beyond which the Brussels sprout no longer grows. We drove past Munich on our way to the Austrian border near Salzburg. As we passed Munich, Margaret told us about the mysterious disappearance of the New Zealander John Williams. John had been a colleague of Robert and Margaret at UCL some years before I knew them. He was funded by the Mayo Clinic to do research at UCL. Suddenly, he disappeared from London. He abandoned his flat near Selfridges, and left no forwarding address. No one heard from him for a number of years. Then, out of the blue, he wrote to Margaret and, knowing that the Harknesses made an annual pilgrimage to Greece and also the route that they took to get there, suggested that they should meet him at Munich Airport. Much to Margarets surprise, the rendezvous was not kept. Then, no more was ever heard from, or of John Williams. After about five years, Johns sister in New Zealand contacted Interpol in order to search for John. He could not be located, and he was declared to be legally dead. Robert and Margaret who held keys to Johns flat also helped to deal with his estate in London. They emptied the flat, which was by now subject to a repossession order, and stored Johns vast library of books and LPs in a draughty stable at Rough Hey. There,

exposed to the elements, the books disintegrated gradually over the following years, and the LPs warped gently. Johns large collection of ornately framed paintings adorned the walls of Veryan and Seans home. When Johns estate was eventually settled, Robert and Margaret sold whatever of Johns possessions was saleable and then sent the proceeds to his sister who lived in very poor circumstances in rural New Zealand. From Salzburg, we climbed slowly up the Radsttter Tauern Pass until we reached its plateau-like col. We spent the night in a beautiful Alpine meadow near to the village of Obertauern. We were at a high altitude, and it was cold at night. Early the next morning, we continued southwards and, after driving a short distance, we stopped at the village of Mauterndorf. This was a planned stop. We parked near to the villages hardware store. Robert was addicted to hardware stores - Quincaillerie, as the French call such shops. However, this shop was a special one for Robert, because it was there that he could buy a Dengelhammer and Dengelamboss - a special hammer and anvil used to sharpen the Austrian scythes that he used to cut the long grass at Rough Hey. Their blades are made from wrought steel, and to sharpen them it is necessary to use the hammer and anvil to beat out irregularities that form in their cutting edges and cause them to blunt. It takes a great deal of experience and skill to sharpen scythes this way, and this Robert possessed. He was an extremely good craftsman - there was little in the way of mechanical engineering that Robert was unable to execute. After passing the city of Klagenfurt, we headed towards the border between Austria and Yugoslavia. We entered the Loibl Tunnel that connects the two countries. We could tell when we had passed deep beneath the border. The Austrian part of the tunnel was well-lit, but the Yugoslav part of it was only dimly illuminated, as most of the lamps that were designed to light the tunnel contained non-functioning bulbs that nobody had bothered to replace. Yugoslavia posed a problem to campers such as Robert and Margaret who could not bear to spend the night in an organised camping site. Camping wild was against the law in Yugoslavia, but this did not deter the Harknesses from doing it. The main problem that they had to face was that almost every road in Yugoslavia was bordered on either side by deep gutters that made it impossible to tow the caravan off the road without risking considerable damage to it. Robert and Margaret had, over the years, discovered about six places along the 1150 kilometres of road that they traversed through the country where they could both pull the caravan off the road and also camp - without being told to move on. Ironically, for those who shun campsites, the first of these suitable camping places was, or rather had once been, an official campsite. It was located near to Kranj between the Austrian border and Ljubljana. What had once been a proper campsite had been abandoned and left to disintegrate slowly, and was an ideal stopping place for Robert and Margaret. The next morning, we left the abandoned campsite and drove past Ljubljana through Slovenia into Croatia. Just beyond Zagreb, we joined the Autoput, the long trunk road that ran from Zagreb through Belgrade towards Nis and Skopje. This two-lane highway was, in those days, the main artery between Western Europe and Turkey. This road had very heavy traffic - many trucks, buses and a great number of battered Mercedes carrying families of tired Turkish Gastarbeiter back from Germany to

Turkey. The road was designed to avoid going through villages, and for the many kilometres between Zagreb and Belgrade there was nothing to be seen on the sides of the road except unending forests. The road was hazardous not only because of its heavy traffic but also because it was traversed at frequent intervals by farm tracks connecting the villages that the road avoided. These tracks were used by farm vehicles pulled by tractors or horses. Their drivers simply ignored the traffic on the Autoput, and crossed it hoping that God would protect them as they did so. This made driving extremely difficult for Robert. To break the monotony of the journey, Margaret liked to keep a record of the nationalities of the cars and other vehicles that passed us, and many did so because Robert wisely drove quite slowly. As I was long-sighted in those days, and was also quite good at distinguishing car registration plates from different countries, I was designated the chief observer in this diversion. Robert and Vivian who was travelling with us were both keen ornithologists. Every now and then, one of them would spot an interesting looking bird flying overhead. This did distract Robert. He was keen to see some detail on the bird that would help him identify it. As he tried to follow the birds flight, the Land rover would begin to drift across the road. As soon as this happened, Margaret would yell, For heavens sake Robert, keep your eyes on the road! I recall that the sighting of a hoopoe used to arouse particular excitement on the part of the bird watchers. We drove onwards until we reached the small town of Slavonski Brod on the Croatian bank of the River Sava, a major tributary to the Danube. From the town, I spied a minaret across the river in the Bosnian town of Bosanski Brod. Very sportingly, and at my request, Robert and Margaret broke with tradition, and drove us across the river into Bosnia to take a quick look at this sleepy former outpost of the Ottoman Empire. We returned to the Croatian bank, and to my great surprise, we stopped for the night in the middle of the town in a square surrounded by residential buildings and their inhabitants. No one seemed in the slightest bit concerned that we were camping there. Robert and Margaret continued to camp in Slavonski Brod for many years after the trips that I made with them, and it was only during one of their last trips to Greece that the police asked them to move on from that spot. After spending the night in the heart of Slavonski Brod, we continued along the Autoput. We drove through the heart of Belgrade. Belgrade was the home of Professor Zivko Adamovic, an academic entomologist who corresponded with Robert, and with whom Robert and Margaret had once spent a day looking at the insects that inhabited a sandy area near the city. Some years after our trip together, Robert and I collected Adamovic from Heathrow airport and drove him to Rough Hey where he was going to stay for a day or two. Adamovic was dressed in a smart suit, and as soon as he was sitting with a cup of tea in the kitchen at Rough Hey, Robert asked him whether he would like to go for a walk. Almost before he could answer one way or the other, we were on our way across the muddy fields that separated Rough Hey from the village of Hedgerley. Robert was suitably dressed for the rough country we were traversing, but his guest was totally unprepared: neither were his clothes suitable for the mud and the stiles over which he had to clamber with great difficulty, nor was his physique!

We navigated our way successfully along the poorly signposted roads that took us through Belgrade, and soon reached the southern section of the Autoput. This was a much better road that the northern section - it was a proper dual-carriage highway with a central dividing barrier. We moved on southwards until we reached a stretch of road that was crossed every few kilometres by uncompleted concrete bridges. These bridges spanned the highway, but were not connected to any track or anything else at either of their ends. At one of these bridges, we were able to pull the caravan off the road, and it was there in a fairly desolate area of southern Serbia that we set up camp for the night. Robert and Margaret were very concerned for their safety in this area. In the past, many small items had been stolen from them when they had camped there. So, all windows were fastened closed, and the bicycle that was normally fastened to the roof-rack on the Land Rover was locked into the caravan with us. Robert was prepared for trouble. He was a first-class shot, a former president of UCL Rifle Club, and should it have been necessary he was prepared to use the shotgun carried on board the caravan. This weapon was hidden inside the caravans toilet cabin, which served as a wardrobe. Despite having had numerous customs officials searching the caravan over the years, not one of them had ever found the shot gun. The night passed without incident. Usually, Robert and Margaret used to continue from the bridge camping site directly southwards through Skopje and Gevgelja and then in to Greece. I managed to persuade them to take another route from Skopje. At that city, we turned westwards towards Albania and stopped briefly in the Macedonian town of Tetovo, where we took a look at the tekiye - an old building that used to be used by the whirling dervishes when they used to whirl. We drove onwards, and stopped for lunch at the col of a mountain pass. It was there, whilst we were having a cup of tea at the end of the meal that I said to Margaret: Please pass the sugar, Mrs Harkness. Margaret promptly said: Do call me Margaret, Adam. I had known Robert and Margaret for about five years. Although I was happy to address Robert by his first name almost from the time that I first knew him, something inside me had made me refrain from addressing Margaret by her first name until that moment high up on a mountain in Yugoslavia. Neither Margaret nor I had been aware of my formal approach until that moment. At the lakeside town of Ohrid, a place that I had visited before, but one that was completely new to the Harknesses, we were compelled to spend the night at the towns official camp-site. It was not without some fuss from Robert that we reluctantly gave our passports to the camp authorities for registration. I had stayed at that campsite many years before. I was pleasantly surprised when an old man, who worked at the site, came up to me and made me understand that he recognised me from my earlier visit. I was touched by this. After leaving Ohrid the next morning, we stopped to look at an open air food market in a small town (it may have been Bitola). Robert noticed a wasp crawling about on a bunch of grapes being offered for sale. Being keen to improve his rudimentary knowledge of the Serbo-Croatian language, Robert pointed to the wasp, and asked the fruit-seller what was the Serbo-Croatian word for wasp. The fruit-seller had no idea what Robert was saying and thought that he wanted to buy the grapes. Robert never got the answer to his question. A few kilometres further down the road, we reached Medzhitilja, the Yugoslav border with Greece. Just as we had completed the

emigration procedure - a procedure that filled Margaret with anxiety, as she was keen to leave Yugoslavia as soon as possible- Robert noticed a house-martin nest in the roof of the border-post building. Robert fished out a tatty dictionary with a red cover and flicked through it. It did not contain the Serbo-Croatian word for house-martin. Very excitedly, and oblivious to the queue of traffic building up behind us, Robert pointed to the nest and tried to make the bemused customs officials understand that he wanted to learn the local word for a house-martin nest. The officials could not make out what Robert wanted, and Margaret frantically shouted to Robert from her perch on the plank inside the Land Rover: For heavens sakes, Robert, lets move on, and get in to Greece! I forget where exactly we spent the first night in Greece, but it was somewhere to the west of Mount Olympus and south-east of Ptolemais and Kozani. It was a very beautiful spot. On the next morning we set off eastwards through Greece towards Platamon on the Aegean coast. Our hearts were in our mouths when Margaret revealed that there was no certainty that the place where Robert and Margaret usually camped in Greece would still be available to camp on. The land where they usually set up camp for about six weeks was just south of the village of Platamon close to the beach. It was the property of the people who lived in Pori - a village perched high in the hills that overlooked the coast. The villagers had bought the land with the intention of building on it eventually. When we crossed the level-crossing that took the small track from the main coastal road across the railway tracks towards the site, we breathed a sigh of relief when we discovered that the site was still not built on. The site was separated from the beach by some low dunes. It was flat and sandy. There were no trees, but plenty of squat, thorn covered bushes. These were very useful for hanging out clothes and bathing costumes to dry in the sun. About three hundred metres to the north of where we camped there was a rectangular, modern hotel - the Platamon Beach Hotel, and in the distance towards the east there was a solitary house owned by a family from Thessalonica. Otherwise, there were no other buildings nearby. A Hellenic Rough Hey Very soon after arriving, the caravan was parked in a north-south direction with its door facing towards the east and the sea. Robert erected a canvas awning to the north end of the caravan, and this was supported also by two tent-poles with guy-ropes. This awning served as a shelter from the sun during the day, and at night Robert and Margaret set-up their camp beds complete with mosquito curtains (nets) under it. As soon as the awning was up, Robert dug a deep trench in the sand. It was over six feet deep, about eighteen inches wide and about three feet long. On either side of it he placed planks of wood specially brought from England. The trench was then covered over by a blue latrine tent. To use this military-style toilet, it was necessary to put one foot on each of the planks. I was terrified that when I was squatting over the trench something might drop down into it from one of my trouser pockets. When the user had relieved him- or herself, paper was available from a roll that sat on the shaft of a small spade that was stuck into the sand next to the trench. That spade was then used to shovel a bit of sand into the trench - a sort of dry toilet flushing. As the sand hit the bottom of the trench, the cockroaches that lived down there scuttled noisily around amongst the used toiled paper and other refuse that they inhabited.

Once settled in Platamon, life began to take on a regular routine - Robert and Margaret established a sort of Hellenic Rough Hey. On rising in the morning, a dip in the sea before breakfast was a pleasurable but compulsory activity. As at Rough Hey, breakfast included scrambled eggs with bacon. The bacon was brought from England, even before Robert and Margaret had invested in a camping refrigerator. They brought with them a whole side of bacon, and this was wrapped in muslin. How it did not rot completely is a mystery to me, but I do remember that on one occasion Robert noticed some green patches developing on the surface of the bacon. Without appearing overly concerned by this, he took one of his many Opinel folding-knives probably the one he used to pare his nails - from his pocket and scraped the green patches off the bacon. Then, he put the bacon on the roof-rack of the Land-Rover and exposed it to the sun, explaining as he did so that the ultraviolet rays from the sun would disinfect the bacon. In addition to bacon, and the marmalade already mentioned, Robert and Margaret used to transport butter and green beans harvested from their garden. After breakfast, Margaret used to retire under the awning either to read one of the vast number of books that she had brought with her, or to darn Roberts socks. During the year leading up to their annual trip to Greece Margaret collected all of Roberts socks with holes, and saved them for this opportunity to darn them. Like the proverbial subject of the Noel Coward song-line, Mad dogs and Englishmen stay out in the midday sun Robert spent all day out in the hot sunshine - communing with Platamons insect community. I will return to this topic later. The morning in Platamon was punctuated, as it was in Rough Hey, by elevenses tea and biscuits were served. On most days, the goat man would wander past with his herd of goats. He used to stop and exchange greetings with Robert and Margaret before continuing on his way. Another regular visitor was the man who sold tomatoes to Robert and Margaret. His tomatoes were the main ingredient of lunch, which was eaten under the awning. Sliced tomatoes, dressed with sweetish vinaigrette, and bread was the daily fare at this meal. After lunch, despite it being the hottest time of the day, Robert returned to his pursuits, and Margaret remained under the awning. On some days, when the afternoon began to become cooler, an expedition into Platamon was undertaken. We used to drive in the Land Rover to the level crossing just south of the village. There was a water tap by the crossing, and from this the Jerry Cans that served as our water supply were re-filled. What made this particular source of water a suitable choice for Robert and Margaret was a mystery to me, but the water from it was made safe and potable by chucking a handful of tiny white chlorine releasing water purification tablets into each of the cans. The water collection exercise was prolonged by the obligatory discussion between Robert, speaking in broken, but effective Modern Greek, and the guardian of the level crossing. Robert loved to talk to everyone he met in and around Platamon, and everyone enjoyed talking to Robert. There were a number of shops in Platamon, but only a few of these fulfilled Roberts main criterion for patronising them - namely, he had to like the shop-keeper, and to feel comfortable with him. Robert did not patronise shops with the best produce or even the best value for money - for him, it was the friendliness, and genuineness of the salespeople that mattered to him. For Margaret, an important aspect of the visit to Platamon village was whether or not the newsagent near to the railway station had an English newspaper - preferably, the Times, even if it was a few days old.

In the late afternoon, another dip in the sea was the pleasurable rule of the day. While Robert prepared dinner, and the sun began to set, we sat on deckchairs for a predinner drink. As in Rough Hey, Margaret had her glass of sweetish Red Martini. I cannot remember what Robert used to drink, but it is unlikely to have been the gin and tonic that he often drank at Rough Hey. Greek olives accompanied the drinks. It was with Robert and Margaret out there on the scrub near Platamon that I tasted olives for the first time, and fell in love with them. My family often ate olives, but I had never felt like trying them - it must have been the magical setting of Platamon that led me to try them. Dinner often included fresh sardines from the village, and these were delicious. Robert was a good cook. The evening meal was often accompanied by a mixture of cooked Mediterranean vegetables - a dish that Robert had christened veggie mush. Robert was somewhat flattered when I revealed to him that the veggie mush that he had invented was remarkably similar to the French classic known as ratatouille. After dinner, we used to chat briefly whilst Robert pointed out shooting stars and interesting constellations of stars in the very clear night sky. Then we all went to bed: Robert and Margaret under their awning, and Vivien and myself each in our own tents. There were occasional customary deviations from the daily routine at Platamon. One of these was the annual trip to Larry - the Harkness nick-name for the city of Larissa. The visit to Larry had two main objects. One of these was to change the oil in the Land Rovers engine and to have it raised on an inspection ramp so that Robert could check for damage underneath the vehicle. The other reason was to buy large earthenware (terracotta) pots. These were transported back to England strapped to the roof rack of the Land Rover. Some of them were destined to end up as ornaments in the extensive gardens that surrounded Rough Hey, and others were bought for friends who had asked for them. Another excursion we made from Platamon was one that I particularly enjoyed. It was a trip up into the hills to the village of Rhapsani, or Rhapsody as it was renamed by Robert. Rhapsani was perched on the slopes of the mountains overlooking the Aegean and boasted a few Tavernas where one could eat at small tables in the open-air. One of these was patronised by Robert and Margaret, and it was here that we ate the local grilled meats. Robert and Margaret did not eat out much in restaurants because they were petrified of taking any risk that would lead them to suffer from gastro-intestinal upsets. Many years before I joined them, one or both of their daughters had suffered from very bad food poisoning in Greece, and had to be admitted to a local hospital. It was for reasons based on incidents such as this that Robert and Margaret preferred to cater for them selves. Somehow, the small taverna in Rhapsani passed muster with Robert and Margaret - each year, they were greeted there as old friends. I believe that the wine that Robert bought from, and drank in Greece also came from Rhapsani. Ants and spiders There are many attractive spots around the long coast of Greece that would have been suitable for the sort of holiday that Robert and Margaret enjoyed, but Platamon had a special appeal for Robert. When his family started camping in Greece, they visited a number of places. How they chanced upon Platamon is not clear to me, but they did. On one of their early visits to the place, Robert happened to notice something that grabbed his interest. Even at the hottest time of the day, he noted that there were some large ants scurrying about on the sandy ground. They seemed oblivious of the high

temperature of the surface of the sand - it can reach between forty and fifty degrees Celsius during the day in August. Most other ants take a siesta at this time of the day, but not these large ants with red heads and thoraxes, and whose black abdomens were held erect like plump car aerials. These ants whose long legs held their bodies well clear of the burning hot sand were members of the species of desert ant known as Cataglyphis bicolor by taxonomists - or Catas by Robert. As soon as he noticed them, he was hooked - his unbounded curiosity had been fed yet another sea of questions. Each year, Robert felt compelled to return to Platamon to learn more about his Catas. The Catas lived in easily visible nests. A circular area of clean sand was surrounded by a ring of discarded black debris. The ants entered and left the nest through a small hole in the middle of the sandy area. Robert mapped out the distribution of the nests using skills he had learnt during his days in the army. For hours on end he sat next to nests with a stopwatch and notepad. He recorded the ants entrances and exits to and from the nest and related them to time of day. Fortunately for all of us, the Catas slept indoors at night. Robert was no ordinary scientist - he was not fixed myopically on one investigation to the exclusion of all others. Whilst watching the ants going in and out of their nests, he noticed what they were carrying and what was going on around the nest and its entrance. It was through this very careful and thorough observation that he noticed that there were commonly one or two (Zodarion frenatum) spiders hovering near to each nest entrance. These spiders attacked one or two of the less fortunate Catas from time to time. This was something that no one else in the field of Cataglyph study had noticed before. These spiders waited for their prey in little shelters near to the nest entrance. But more than this, it dawned on him that the predatory spiders were not alone. Almost invisible to the naked eye, tiny parasitic flies clung to the bodies of the spiders. Robert spotted them, and dropped one or two spiders with their parasitic companions into small specimen jars, using a few drops of the Greek alcoholic drink Ouzo as a preservative. In London, these were shown to appropriate experts who declared that Robert had discovered a new species of parasitic insect. In honour of the village on whose land he had made the discovery, Robert included the name Pori in the taxonomic name for this newly discovered bug - Trachysiphonella pori. When he and a taxonomist named Ismay had published a scientific paper about Roberts discovery, Robert sent an off-print of the paper to the mayor of the village of Pori. Robert was somewhat disappointed when he did not receive a reply from him. What the inhabitants of Pori made of his paper, if it had ever reached them at all, would have been interesting to know! Robert noticed that the Catas had a weakness for cheese, particularly the locally produced Feta. Robert and I conducted experiments to see how long it would take the Catas to sniff out a pile of cheese crumbs left on the sand as bait, and then at what frequency the bits of cheese were picked up by the foraging ants. Robert conducted many investigations of this nature, and then hit on the idea of following individual ants day by day. To do this he needed to mark the individuals. He used to captured an ant, and put it in a small container. This was placed it for about half an hour in the caravans recently acquired refrigerator. The drop in temperature slowed the ants metabolic rate so that for a short while it remained immobile. Whilst so anaesthetised, Robert applied a tiny blob of aluminium paint on the belly or thorax of the creature, and then placed the ant which, by then, was beginning to warm up, next to its home nest. The marked ants were not given numbers but names. Alu-bel was so named

because it had an aluminium mark on its belly. Canon and Hawker, two very plump ants, were named in honour of Roberts school friend from Winchester College, the rather well-built Canon Hawker. These names appeared in the scientific papers that Robert published later. Every day, Robert looked out for the latest marked ant. As soon as it appeared, he stalked it. Every ten or twenty seconds, Robert placed an aluminium plant label with its sharp point on the spot where the ant had been at that time. The markers were numbered sequentially. When the ant finally returned to its nest, having completed its foraging trip, Robert carefully mapped out the path that the creature had taken. This was painstaking work under the burning hot sun. Occasionally, he would be interrupted by the visit of the goat man or some other curious passer-by. To each of these, he tried to explain, in his inadequate Greek, what he was doing. I am sure that each of the passers-by became convinced that the English are quite eccentric. Back in London, Robert studied the results of his investigations, and from them was able to publish quite a few learned articles. The analysis of the ant paths was very complex, and in this he was aided by his good friend, the scientist Nick Maroudas. The Catas were by no means the only insects in Platamon. I have already mentioned the cockroaches that dwelled in the latrine trench. Equally unpleasant and much more annoying were the mosquitoes who feasted on us every night. Robert, who was a true friend of nature and also very concerned about not disturbing the Catas, forbade the use of insect repellent aerosols. Protection against the mosquitoes had to be confined to the use of creams, which in my experience were much less effective than the aerosols, which were available in those days. Whilst the ant population of Platamon received Roberts undivided attention, Margaret did not. She was very pleased to have Vivien and me as companions. In later years she was always pleased to see me when I appeared at Platamon, often unannounced, during my many trips in the Balkan Peninsula. Some years, a solitary Englishman camped somewhere near to Robert and Margaret - he used to join them at sunset for the customary drink and olives. One of the years that I was with them, a car and caravan pitched camp not far from Robert and Margaret. This was owned by a Belgian couple, who, like Robert and Margaret, preferred to camp wild - away from official campsites. They used to drive through Yugoslavia and had discovered the problem of getting their caravan across the deep gutters that ran along the edges of the roads. On comparing notes, it turned out that they knew about five or six places in Yugoslavia where they could pull off the road to camp wild. All but one of these were the places that Robert and Margaret already knew about. So, Robert and Margaret learnt of a new site from them, and vice-versa. Returning home On one occasion, I joined Robert and Margaret in Platamon in order to accompany them on the trip back to England. They did not follow the same route as on the outward bound journey. They headed through Yugoslavia as on the outward bound trip, but not towards Austria. They drove to the Italian border near to Trieste. One of the camping places that we used in Yugoslavia was most dangerous and noisy. A slip road off the Autoput led to a road that ran underneath it. A tiny triangle of grass bounded by the Autoput, the slip road and the road to which it led served as our

camping spot one night. So close was this tiny spot of grass to the main road that it was quite hazardous venturing out of the Land Rover and into the caravan, and during the night the caravan shuddered ominously as trucks thundered past us on the Autoput. We survived, and later spent one night in the middle of a small village near to Verona before heading to the Petit St Bernard Pass that joins Italy to France. We spent an extremely cold night at its summit, almost two thousand two hundred metres above sea level. Crossing mountains was a very slow business. To avoid needing to use the brakes too much, Robert drove with the Land Rovers low box, a high torque gear box. Most people only use this for steep, rough, off-road terrain. Consequently, we crawled up and down mountains at little more than walking pace. Robert was had an original approach to driving. Many years after our trips to Greece, he was driving me somewhere, and idly I began to watch his hand on the gear stick. He was constantly shifting gears - far more often than warranted by the road conditions. I asked him what he was up to. He told me that he was saving fuel by shifting into neutral as often as possible, and letting the car coast along! He drove quite slowly - a complete contrast to the way Margaret drove. We entered the south of France, and stayed in a field in a lovely farm belonging to a farmer who the Harknesses had befriended some years earlier. I think that the farmers wife served us an evening meal in her farmhouse. The next morning, we set off towards Paris. Margaret was most insistent that we did not waste a moment during this stage of the journey. We were heading to one of the southern suburbs of Paris - to the home of the Poutier family. The Poutiers were old friends of Robert and Margaret and had a lovely house. One thing that I remember about it is that Jacques Poutier possessed a fine edition of the famous French encyclopaedia by Diderot (1713-1784). A most important thing for Margaret was that the Poutiers had a bathroom with a bath-tub. From the moment that Robert and Margaret left Rough Hey until their arrival at the Poutiers about eight weeks later, Margaret was unable to take a bath except in the sea. The bath that Margaret took at the Poutiers before dinner on the evening that we arrived was something that she looked forward to for weeks. Margaret loved taking hot baths, and however enjoyable she found the trip to Greece, she really did miss her daily hot bath. On the trip that I accompanied them home from Greece, Robert had decided to bring home some live Catas. When we arrived at the customs at Dover, Robert called over a customs official, and after showing him some reprints of his scientific papers told him that he was proposing to import some Catas. This did not perturb the customs official who said that it would be alright to import the ants providing, as Robert had assured him, they were unable to breed in the UK. As we drove away from Dover, Robert grinned and said, Thats good, by showing him the ants I distracted the customs official from the plants that I am not supposed to be bringing into the country! It is said that you really get to know people well when you travel with them. In close contact with them day and night, it can either strengthen or fracture a relationship. My trips with Robert and Margaret only served to increase my love and respect for them. I have shared some of my memories of travelling with this remarkable couple, in the hope that you, the reader, can share some of the joy I gained from having had the privilege of being one of their friends.