Crete: Treasure island

Beyond the fly-and-flop resorts and sophisticated villas, Crete bears the evidence of centuries of civilisation. Ben Ross delves deep into its past

I am in a cave in Crete. This is not in itself surprising. Crete is, after all, an island of many caves, some of them grand, deep and mysterious. For example, a few kilometres away is the Dhikteon Cave, which is a cave with a car park, an entrance fee (€4/£2.85), and a history steeped in Greek myth (Zeus is supposed to have been born there). There are handrails to guide you and your fellow travellers as you troop downwards into a vast stone throat of ancient stalactites and stalagmites, and a café where you can buy sandwiches afterwards. It's a baroque sort of cave, and you can see why Rhea (Zeus's mum) picked the place out for the little chap's arrival. There's even what looks like an ancient birthing pool at the bottom, now lined with low-denomination coins.

No, the surprising thing about my cave is that, for a cave often frequented by foreign visitors, it's extremely pokey and a bit damp. It's also very dark. A man of few words and a grubby plastic bag full of bike lights had accosted me at the entrance. He'd held up a finger.

"One euro."

I'd handed over the required change, and he'd given me a light, which didn't work. Neither did the next one. Luckily, the third let off a feeble yellow glow that seemed adequate (at least to him), and he'd beckoned me inside.

To enter the Trapeza Cave, which you will find near the tiny town of Tzermiado on Crete's Lasithi Plateau, is to unpeel one of the last layers of human history on the island. Fall down through the centuries, back beyond the heyday of the Ottoman Empire and of the Venetians, past Byzantium and beyond to the Romans and the ancient Greeks - all of whom very evidently left their mark on Crete - and you reach the era of Europe's most ancient culture, the Minoans. But even the Minoans are not as ancient as the people that once lived here.

The man with the bag of lights points to a dark corner: "Skeleton here." And then to another: "Skeleton here." And another: "Family skeleton here. Mother and father."

There's nothing much to see, really: just dark patches of earth in the gloom, the bones themselves having been removed after their discovery. However, the skeletons that once lay here dated back to Neolithic times - the remains, perhaps, of one of Crete's founding families.

The island is alive with this sense of the rise and fall of civilisations, of how each new era has built upon the remains of the last. And as you emerge blinking from this dank, cramped hole in the mountainside, you're left with a sombre sense of how transient our own "modern" age might be.

Cheer up, though, because the view is spectacular. The Lasithi Plateau is a vast agricultural plain, green with crops and spotted with old windmills, which lies about 30km to the east of the tourist hub of Agios Nikolaos in eastern Crete.

Getting there by car from "Ag Nik" is tricky: beyond the town of Neapoli, the narrow road screams upwards into the mountains, then wiggles alongside scree-sided peaks. However, the plateau itself is stunning, stretching lush and verdant as far as the eye can see and guarded on all sides by forbidding grey shoulders of hills. A loop of road encircles the plain and takes in various crumbling villages, as well as slightly larger hubs of Tzermiado, Psychro (for the Dhikteon Cave) and Agios Yeoryios, all of which bask in a summer somnolence of ripening citrus fruit and braying donkeys. Ancient, black-clad old ladies tote vast piles of vines on their heads; oranges and bananas are for sale at the side of the road.

It all seems centuries away from the bronzed outer layer of Crete's historical onion, which lies way back on the north-eastern coast. Here, Crete very proudly celebrates the 21st century. Our self-catering villa, set in a secluded bay east of Agios Nikolaos, is a lesson in modernity, from its array of technology (internet access, DVD player and the like), to its private pool and elegantly tiled terrace.

Here, sophisticated desires for indulgence and relaxation can reasonably assert themselves, perhaps with a quick walk to the beach, or a feast of meze and braised lamb at the nearby hotel. It's a world of poolside drinks and tennis lessons; scuba gear and pedalos, and, as such, the contrast with the island's interior life is breathtaking. Yet even here, Crete can catapult you thousands of years backwards in the space of just a few kilometres.

The E75 highway drills determinedly along the full length of the north coast, but is regularly punctured by brown signs diverting you to sites of ancient archaeological interest. Even in the north-east of the island, where we concentrated our efforts, it would have been easy to become blasé, were it not for the sheer mind-boggling antiquity of the ruins themselves.

Try Lato, for example, a Classical settlement with astonishing views down to Agios Nikolaos (once its harbour), which lies inland on a green knoll. Here, amongolive trees and grazing goats, the remains of a theatre clearly demonstrate that Crete has been a place of pleasure for centuries.

Or there's the Minoan town of Gournia, visible from the road to the east of Istro, which dates back to 1,500BC, its streets picked out in the low-rise remains. Even more impressive, though, is the ruined Minoan palace which stands just a few hundred metres from the town of Malia, one of Crete's most popular package holiday destinations. A vast central square is shaded by huge amphoras standing like sentinels; traces of halls, corridors and staircases demonstrate humbling complexity of design.

The biggest draw, however, is Knossos, a place steeped in legend until it was uncovered and partially restored at the beginning of the 20th century. The palace lies in a peaceful, pine-scented vale a few kilometres to the south of the capital Heraklion and even early in the day, is busy with time-travellers gawping at its five-storey stonework. It's an unmistakable monument to confidence and grandeur, making it all the more astonishing that - until relatively recently - it had been erased from the face of the earth.

For history on a gentler scale, we venture to Kritsa, a tiny village near Lato's ruins. A narrow road winds upwards through the white stuccoed houses and it's the perfect place to shop for tourist trinkets, lace sold from stalls at the side of the road, or just relax over a salad in its solitary square. Despite the quiet, there's a sense that things will get busier here soon: a van loaded with chairs and tables passes through, its klaxon alerting local café owners to an imminent sale of vital plastic furniture. Below the village, the Byzantine church of Panayia Kira provides a solemn contrast. Low- rise and rough on the outside, it boasts incredibly intricate frescoes inside that date back a mere (in Cretan terms) thousand years or so.

Crete's many-layered history is nowhere more apparent than at Spinalonga, the fortress-topped island reached from the small town of Elounda, to the north of Agios Nikolaos. It began as a Venetian military outpost in the 16th century, was occupied by Turkey in the 19th, and eventually became, of all things, Europe's last leper colony, which closed in 1953. At each rebuilding, the old foundations were added to and adapted to the building's new role. These days a €10 (£7) boat trip will give you an hour to explore the tumbledown ruins: a small exhibition of photographs giving a particularly poignant insight into the family lives of the lepers who were incarcerated here.

After all that, return to the present for a while: collect your thoughts over a coffee and bougatsa (a sort of cheese pie) in Heraklion's busy but beautiful Platia Venizelou, or buy lunch at one of the restaurants beside Ag Nik's supposedly bottomless inshore lake. Then take off to the shady date palms and overpriced beers of Vai Beach at the far east of the island, where you can spend some time browning your own outer layers. After all, if there's one thing that the astonishing array of relics in Heraklion's Archaeological Museum tells us about the life and death of civilisations, it's that we should seize every opportunity to enjoy Crete in the here and now.

TRAVELLER'S GUIDE

GETTING THERE

The writer travelled as a guest of Inntravel (01653 617 906; www.inntravel.co.uk), which offers one-week holidays at the Istron Villas from £690 per person based on two sharing. This includes return British Airways flights from Gatwick to Heraklion, car hire, and use of facilities at the Istron Bay Hotel.

The nearest airport is Heraklion, which is served by GB Airways (0870 850 9850; www.gbairways.com) from Gatwick and Manchester and a number of charter airlines, such as Thomsonfly (0870 1900 737; www.thomsonfly.com) or Fly Thomas Cook (08701 111111; www.flythomascook. co.uk). To reduce the impact on the flight on the environment, you can buy an "offset" from Climate Care (01865 207 000; www.climatecare.org). The environmental cost of a return flight from London to Heraklion, in economy class, is £4.50. The money is used to fund sustainable energy and reforestation projects.

VISITING THERE

Crete's historical sites are open Tuesday-Sunday 8.30am-3pm. Entrance fees range from €2-€4 (£1.40-£2.80).

The Archaeological Museum at Heraklion opens daily from noon to 7pm. Entrance is €6 (£4.20).

The Diktaion Cave opens daily from 8am-7pm. Entrance is €4 (£2.80).

The Trapeza Cave is open every day; entrance is free (unless you need to hire a bike light).

MORE DETAILS

Greek tourism: 020-7495 9300; www.gnto.co.uk