Stepping onto Greek soil after cycling through Italy feels like travelling back in time. The scenery has a rawness to it that is less manicured and domesticated by the human touch. The land itself is redder, more burnt; a hint at the country’s fiery past. The black and ochre-coloured porous rocks that litter the coastline (shaped by pyroclastic flow) suggest what a place it was like as the mainland and it’s islands were formed out of the violent eruptions that spewed from the bowls of the Earth, millions of years ago. As soon as my cycling companion, Richie, and I started to track the Ionian coastline from the port of…