Melinta - Dinosaur or Dreadnought?

Superficially, an unremarkable pebbled strand were it not for the beached Dreadnought or – given its age, hardly less likely – a dinosaur rock that juts straight into the blue wine-and-water Aegean at the crook of its western quarter. Closer examination of the bedrock and stones strewn across the narrow shoreline reveals clusters of sedimentary conglomerates with embedded pebbles and veins of plain or reddish quartz. Layers of high grade ignimbrite intrude everywhere across the region, and although it is known in Turkish as garlic stone (sarımsak taş) it has a lovely light pink colour. Various stages of greenschist (I’m guessing, from the olive green of its powdery precursor) through to the fully vulcanised harder-than-marble product – are common, but they far from dominate; the beach is a scrapyard of remnants from the massive volcanic action that disrupted Lesbos, and set it adrift from the Anatolian shores around 23 million years ago. Melinta - like Drota, further along the coast to the West - is an amateur geologist’s dream and nightmare rolled into one puzzling package.

Looking seaward, Sou’-Sou’-West, lie the Greek islands of Chios and (just visible during a clear sunset) Psara; while to our extreme left the dark hump of the Karaburun peninsula can be spied, along with a steady stream of cargo ships heading to and from the Turkish port of Izmir. The Dreadnought is broken up at an incredibly slow rate, slightly abetted by the goggled excrescence of human swimmers. However the rock was laid down and partially metamorphosised, the layers of it now lie perpendicular to sky and shore, where its armour plates are pried apart by wind and sea; but meantime a hardy species of olive bush manages to sprout here and there in the crevices.

Melinta was once home to a factory or warehouse, connected to the olive oil industry that dominated Lesbos a century ago. There is no chimney here, though, and its proximity to Plomari, the regional centre of soap exports to Odessa and Alexandria and made the locals rich enough to construct mansions. Here, all that is left are a few walls, the foundations of which at the shore end mostly eroded and undercut by the sea. It was probably a staging post for the hinterland, and served by coastal traffic (though there is no evidence of an old pier or jetty). But there remain a few historic beach houses, three stories high if you include their stone foundations.

Some are not so old, and accommodate restaurants, pensions or both; and there are tourists staying here, with many day visitors, so parking becomes something of a problem weekends. Beyond the row of seafront buildings adjacent to The Rock and stretching Eastwards along the shoreline, enterprising folk have constructed holiday homes, many quite large, though nothing high enough to cause much of an eyesore. As yet. On the other side, a handful of battered properties have fared less well against the raging sea.

The wrecks of inflatable boats and discarded lifejackets of refugees are found even here on the far side of Lesbos. Most of them land on the Northern shores that face Assos, but there have been so many that some have either overshot the sandy coves of Tsonia and Petra; or else they’ve launched from Dikili or the beaches of Karaburun.

The miniscule growth of Melinta, like other seaside settlements hereabouts, was inhibited by piracy until the mid-nineteenth century. Locals preferred to live high up in the safety of the surrounding hills, so towns and villages such as Megalochori (for Plomari), Akrasi (for Drota) and Palaiochori (for Melinta) are much more historic. Each is located on one or more streams that flow only in stormy weather, bringing much of the pebbles and sand down that make up the strands. Beyond Plomari at Agios Isidorus only this year a flash flood turned the concrete floor of its stream into the bed of a raging torrent that carried several parked cars out to sea, and flooded the basements of seaside pensions.

Stretching back through Ottoman, into Byzantine and ancient times, local fishers pulled up their simple boats, turned them over and buried them in the stones of the strands. They would carry their catches home in woven baskets. These would have been self-sufficient communities for centuries, until demand for olive oil soap brought them into a modern globalising world. The Drotas, Melintas and Plomaris of today no longer rely on the olive for their existence, and soap hasn’t been made hereabouts in half a century. Ouzo production, however, sourcing local spring water and herbs - is gradually modernising. Tourism, with the restoration and new building of holiday homes, dangles a new wave of prosperity in the eyes of locals and speculators. George Kakes, a local civil engineer, is talking about a coast road, snaking Westwards towards the seven kilometre sands of Vatera. We have been here before.

No Dinosaur!