Around the Mediterranean in 3 Books 

The last couple of years – travelling up the coast of Albania, around Greece close to Athens and by sea from Athens to Corfu, a Mediterranean stretch of Algeria – has made me think how much of a circuit of the Mediterranean I have managed to cover over the years. Like Eric Newby with his book On the Shores of the Mediterranean (1984) or Paul Theroux with The Pillars of Hercules (1995). Of course you cannot follow the coastline of the Mediterranean today. Nor could you in 1984 or 1995.

▲ I’ve Google Mapped most of my routes close to the Mediterranean, but there are assorted shorter trips I’ve done – some Moroccan coast, Turkey around Antalya and assorted island travels including Corsica, Sardinia, Sicily, Malta, Crete and Cyprus. Not to mention any number of Mediterranean trips by boat, down to Sicily from Naples, along the Adriatic or through assorted Greek islands for example.

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Paul Theroux’s The Pillars of Hercules (1995) starts with the intention of travelling clockwise from one pillar – the Rock of Gibraltar – to the other pillar – Ceuta in Morocco. Things don’t quite work out as planned although in true Theroux fashion when he’s unhappy about a place his writing is at its best. So he complains about Gibraltar and he’s very unenthusiastic about the Spanish love of bullfighting. European pornography gets some attention in lots of countries, France he really doesn’t like at all, nor Greece (all those ruins!), but Italy works pretty well.

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Then he’s in ex-Yugoslavia when most of the region was in chaos and complaining that nobody was marching in from outside to sort it out for them! Eventually NATO did just that and that did not make all of them happy.

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I’ve visited the region in the peaceful Yugoslavia days – like Eric Newby in his Mediterranean book – but also subsequently and in 2005 I was in Mostar in Bosnia & Herzegovinia soon after the beautiful Old Bridge (Stari Most) was reopened after its 1993 destruction.

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Albania was chaos when Theroux visited, it was barely reopened in the mid-90s, much more sorted out (although still with very few tourists) when I turned up in 2006 and in 2024 it’s rapidly heading from under-tourism directly to over-tourism.

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It’s remarkable how some places have changed dramatically since Theroux’s visit. Sometimes for the worse – Syria was OK when he was there and for my visit in 1999, although my travels were all inland, I never touched on the coast. In Lebanon I certainly did travel along the coast in 1999, soon after the country emerged from its ‘do not visit’ status, which is pretty much back where it is today. If there is a ‘no change at all’ report from Theroux it’s in Israel where he notes that after Palestinian suicide attacks ‘There was always a violent reply. The Israelis, obsessively retributive, had an absolutely unforgiving rule of retaliation, and always with greater force.’ No change today is there? I’ve travelled around Israel several times, including along the coast from close to the Lebanon border to close to the border with Gaza.

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Now Gaza, there’s a current topic. If you could get into Gaza you could travel much of the Gaza coast, but forget about entering from Israel in the north. Or exiting to Egypt? I’ve travelled around the West Bank (Occupied Palestine if you wish), but never set foot in Gaza. South into Egypt if you think of the Sinai as a triangle – two Red Sea sides and one Mediterranean side – then I’ve travelled both Red Sea sides in 1990, but I’ve barely set foot along the Mediterranean one

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Nor did Theroux. On his Pillars of Hercules travels he arrived by boat in Alexandria, and travelled a bit of Egypt from there. And he arrived in Tunis in Tunisia by boat and also travelled around a bit. But Egypt to the border with Libya, then Libya, Algeria, Morocco, apart from a brief visit to Tangiers at the end of the book and a fascinating meeting with Paul Bowles? Nada. So Theroux’s Mediterranean travels are essentially European ones, forget much of North Africa. For a good review of the book check Stephen Greenblatt’s ‘Bored Among the Ruins’ in The New York Times.

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Personally in Egypt I’ve been to Alexandria a couple of times. In 2004 Libya was sort of open and from the capital Tripoli I travelled west towards Tunisia as far as Sabratha and east to Leptis Magna (the most amazing Roman ruins around the Mediterranean) and on as far as Misrata before turning south into the desert. I’ve done a bit of travel from Tunis in Tunisia to the south. And recently I’ve been in Algeria and my travels took me from Tripoli west to Oran and east to Constantine. Morocco? Well I’ve crossed from Spain to Tangiers a couple of times and travelled a bit along the Mediterranean coast, but generally my travels have taken me south, including all the way to Gambia on the 2007 Plymouth-Banjul Challenge.

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My other ‘circuit of the Mediterranean’ book, Eric Newby’s 1984 On the Shores of the Mediterranean, starts from Eric and Wanda Newby’s Italian retreat and, like Paul Theroux’s circuit, set out to travel around the Mediterranean clockwise. Like the Theroux book it doesn’t manage the whole circuit. In 1984 travelling through Tito’s Yugoslavia was no problem and remarkably the Newbys managed to get into Albania, on one of those strictly managed group tours of the staunchly Communist, at the time, hideaway.

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Greece and Turkey were no problem for the Newbys, but then apart from Jerusalem in Israel and Cairo in Egypt they skip through to Libya. You can hardly blame them, between 1982 and 1994 over 100 foreigners were kidnapped and held hostage in Lebanon.

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Or killed, William Buckley, the CIA chief in Beirut, was kidnapped in 1984 and held for about a year before his death.

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The Newbys do manage to get into Libya and travel along a great deal of the coast although without seeing very much, apart from the WW II sites around Tobruk. Leptis Magna, Libya’s greatest attraction? Their government guide zips them straight past. With good reason the Newbys do not set foot in Algeria, just like Theroux passed by a decade later.

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On the Shores of the Mediterranean does get a little tedious when it delves too deeply into the history books, sometimes it’s a case of one ruler following another for far too many paragraphs. On the other hand it’s regularly at its best when things go wrong, as they seemed to quite frequently. Arriving tired and hungry at some heavily anticipated hotel or restaurant only to find it’s gone out of business. There were no mobile phone or internet connections to check those things in 1984. And there’s the train from Sfax in Tunisia to the capital Tunis. The Newbys abandon their slow and uncomfortable bus from Tripoli in Libya to Tunis in time to grab dinner and the 1030 pm train, only to find that it’s 1030 am, not pm. You should have known it was going to leave at 2230 Wanda tartly points out to Eric.

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Everything does come together for a memorable meal at the Negresco in Nice, although that merits a six-page puff piece which Theroux considers a case of ‘Newby! Singing for his supper!’

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One of the plus points of Theroux’s book is the long reading list, so long that you begin to believe he must have been hauling a trunk around to accommodate all the reading matter. His reading list sent me off on another Mediterranean voyage, this time with Evelyn Waugh’s 1930 travel book Labels. It probably appealed to Theroux because Waugh is also at his best when he’s having a thoroughly bad time and can come up with descriptions like his paragraph of what sounds idyllic praise for Sicily’s iconic volcano Etna at sunset, only to conclude with the comment ‘Nothing I have ever seen in Art or Nature was quite so revolting.’

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▲ Much of Theoroux’s travels were on ships, cruise ships or ferries and almost all of Waugh’s Mediterranean travel was at sea. This is the route map from the original 1930 edition.

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So travelling around the Mediterranean today? Forget any possibility of making a complete circuit. The USA applies Level 4 ‘Do Not Travel’ advisories to Lebanon, Libya and Syria. Australian Smart Traveller warnings agree on Libya and Syria, but at least only suggests ‘reconsider’ if you’re thinking about visiting Lebanon. Gaza, of course, is off limits. Remarkably, although you can travel around Algeria and Morocco the border between the two countries has been closed since 1994. Even to fly between them requires a stop in Madrid (Spain), Paris (France) or Tunis (Tunisia). Pretty much like travelling between India and Pakistan, as I suggested in my recent Shattered Lands blog.