Detour #306: Following the Rally of the Gods, Greece

Photo Hyundai

Ben Barry road trips his way round Greece to follow the action on the Acropolis Rally

The Acropolis Rally has been notorious as a car killer since 1973 and remains a fearsome test even for the World Rally Championship’s best drivers. No wonder this legendary Greek endurance event is known as the Rally of the Gods.

Touching down at Athens Airport late one September evening, I head straight to the hire car desk for my Rally Greece wheels – a base model Skoda Fabia. It’s hardly a GR Yaris (the next best thing to Toyota’s WRC car) but with air-con, plush seats and a long-striding, surprisingly cushy ride, the little Skoda makes the trip north up the E75 surprisingly relaxing. Even its tiny 1.0-litre turbo has more than enough poke.

The sun is dipping as I cruise up the near- deserted E75, past dusty olive groves and scorched hillsides. Two hours later, I roll into Kamena Vourla, an off-season seaside town given a fresh burst of energy by the rally crews and fans who’ve descended on it.

I grab a pizza on the same restaurant terrace as Ford M Sport driver Gregoire Munster and some of his team, and gaze out at the stillness of the Gulf of Euboea before calling it a night.

Early next morning, the rally service park sprawls out in a patchwork of hospitality areas and merchandise stalls. Fans stand within earshot as mechanics from Hyundai, Ford and Toyota swarm over rally cars to make sure they’re in the finest fettle after a gruelling test the day before.

This proximity to the action is intrinsic to rallying’s appeal, as is the fact competition cars look much like the ones sold in showrooms. They even drive on public roads to get to the timed stages, which, in Greece’s case, run on forestry roads.

Friday’s route covers 84 competitive miles in the heat and dust roads most of us would tip-toe over, but simply following a rally is like completing a Duke of Edinburgh award – you even get co-ordinates to follow to spectator areas.

I head back south on E75 for a few miles, before spearing off on the E65. It sweeps up into the hillsides in long sinuous curves that are three lanes wide, largely deserted and often generously sighted. To my right lie the most gorgeous views over the Mount Lti National Park to a hazy horizon beyond.

At Skamnos I take a smaller road towards Oiti and then Pavliani, a sleepy town of narrow, maze-like streets that boils in the late summer heat. Dogs lounge in the middle of the road and old men sit and watch the world slip by.

The rally stage runs through the forest somewhere nearby but there are no signposts to guide me, and the only indication that I’ve reached my destination are spectator cars lining the verges either side of the road. I park up and follow a worn path of trampled grass into the forest before finally emerging into a clearing.

Mere metres from where the rally cars will soon zoom past, a group of men sip beers and sing and a family lounges in deckchairs, bandanas round their necks like bandits – they’ll need them before too long.

When a marshal whistles to warn the first car is imminent, a noise like a chainsaw running riot quickly builds, then Hyundai’s Thierry Neuville bursts into view in a flash of blue and red and unbelievable noise. A fraction later the crowd is covered in a choking cloud of dust that gradually thins and rises to a wisp above the treeline.

It’s cool in the shade of this 36degC day for us spectators, but Neuville and his co-driver have no air-con and are wearing flame-retardant overalls and helmets.

“Imagine riding an exercise bike in a sauna while doing maths and trying to avoid things that someone keeps throwing at you… this is basically what we do,” jokes the 36-year-old Belgian when I’m lucky to meet him later.

Eight more Rally1 cars thunder through one-by-one – Hyundai, Toyota, M-Sport Ford – before we’re into the lesser categories. Once they’re through, I follow some of the fans out of the forest, checking the road map and heading over yet more heavenly mountain roads to the next stage.

Two days of gruelling driving later, Neuville prevails to take the win, one that later proves critical in clinching his maiden WRC drivers’ title.

The Acropolis Rally returns this year from 26-29 June, shifting back to its traditional summer slot with even more punishing competitive mileage and an itinerary that sprawls from Athens to Smokovo in Thessaly, over 150 miles to the north.

There are easier motorsports to follow, but there’ll be few more memorable road trips than chasing the Rally of the Gods.

Words Ben Barry Twitter/X | Instagram
Photography Hyundai / Red Bull

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ROADBOOK

CLASS: RALLY HO!

NAME: ACROPOLIS RALLY

ROUTE: Athens to Pavliani

COUNTRY: GREECE

Distance: 160 Miles

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