Dashed dreams?

We walked along an extraordinary road this afternoon. As the grey-green waves, a legacy of last night's storm, battered ashore on the long beach that fronts the villages of Platanias and Malame, I remembered when this whole shoreline was relatively deserted - great swathes of bamboo punctuated by the odd taverna, mini-market or houses with rooms to rent.

Today we found what we reckoned marked the death of a dream - a road to nowhere (it just stopped) complete with ornamental lighting, now rusted, some standards broken off at the base, globes have blackened to prevent them from luring turtles to certain death, benches and seats for visitors who aren't there, huge hotel and apartment developments barely inhabited, some unfinished.

I'm some ways it was like the Crete I remember- but with ghosts, all those who invested in a future that vanished along with the European dream.