After we had toiled through mud to Amphissa, we began to reap the benefits of a clearing and bracing north wind. We had an exhilarating climb of three hours up the Amblema Pass, which leads over the ridge connecting Parnassus with the still higher mountains to the west. Before we got to the top, which is the backbone between the Corinthian Gulf and the Gulf of Malis, a cold cloud, which we may as well call a winter storm, came rushing out of the gap to meet us like an army debouching from a covert. We began to fear that Doris, into which we were going to pass, was another storm centre, and our feeling of pity for the one man who had been prudent enough to take his bicycle back to Athens began to change to envy. But after dropping a thousand feet or more into Doris we got below the storm, and the roads became somewhat drier. When we were at the level of that upland plain they were quite good. Doris had been a storm centre in the morning, but at noon was almost clear. What luck!
Confronting us on the north side of the plain was another mountain barrier which shut out Thermopylæ from our view. Rain-clouds were playing around this mountain. After luncheon at Gravia, it was a matter of from two to three hours to get across the plain and partly climb and partly circumvent this second barrier. And then came a most exhilarating experience. Here was the sight of a lifetime. The Gulf of Malis far below us, the road visible in all its extent winding like an enormous serpent down the side of the mountain to the plain from two to three thousand feet below us, and then running straight as an arrow to Lamia, Mount Othrys in the background, Thermopylæ to the right, and, soon after, Tymphrestos to the left, with the Spercheios winding down from it. Historic associations apart--as if they ever could be apart!--this is a landscape not easily surpassed. It is one of those views which seem to gain in power with repetition. It was the fifth time that I had seen and felt it; and I firmly believe that I had a keener relish in the view than my companions who saw it for the first time.
Bicycling down the face of a mountain like that, over curves that take you half a mile or a mile in one direction, and then as far in the other direction, is about the nearest approach to flying that has yet been given to man. One seems to be floating in the ether, and dropping at will down to the earth like a bird on the wing.