Finding Inspiration in the Peloponnese

By Victoria Hislop For The Mail On Sunday

“In my new book, Cartes Postales From Greece, my fictional character makes a journey around Greece and falls in love with the Peloponnese.

In order to write about him, I had to go travelling myself, heading westwards from Athens to this wonderful southernmost part of mainland Greece.

I began in autumn, with plenty of energy to sightsee (this is the perfect season, with the sea staying warm enough to swim in until mid-November) and my travels soon shaped the route that my character Anthony would take and inspired the stories he would tell.

I went where tourists throng as well as to places where they don’t tend to hang around for long.

Sometimes I found myself where they don’t go at all, occasionally because of my terrible map-reading. Mistakes sometimes led to happy discoveries.

For example, crossing mountains on a rough track because I had missed a turning led to the most spectacular views of pine forests and waterfalls I would otherwise have missed.”

(See the original at the Mail on Sunday)