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The current capital, Moscow, though, is a fine place to view Bolshevism’s folie des grandeurs, especially with the 86th anniversary of the Great October Revolution marked next Friday, 7 November (an anomaly explained by the fact that the Gregorian calendar was in force under the Tsars). The former capital created by Peter the Great has spent much of 2003 improving its image, which has involved erasing traces of the Soviet Union. In case you missed it, this year has been Leningrad’s – sorry, St Petersburg’s – 300th anniversary. The return portions from Athens to London Heathrow remained unused. At the time of purchase he was told that alterations could be made to the date of travel and the name of the passenger for a supplement of £50, but was later told that changes could be made only in Athens.His family’s travel insurance was bought from Mondial Assistance UK (020-8603 9692, ) in conjunction with easyJet ( ).. It also included £42 in “Air Passenger Duty, UK Passenger Tax and Passenger Liability Insurance” for the unused outbound flight, which was eventually refunded after he asked about it; “apologies for this oversight”, said the company.The outward journey to Cephalonia via Athens was made with the Greek national carrier Olympic Airways (0870 6060 460, ), at a cost of £194 each for three adult economy return tickets. The price included flights for three adults from Gatwick and three days’ hire of a motorboat.

And even his beloved mandolin lay buried in a hole in the ground for 40 years.How had I overlooked De Berni?s’ warning signs, and created instead an image of an island rich in rapture and romance? The harsh fact is that it did for Antonio Corelli, and at nearly £1,000 a day, it pretty well finished me off too.TRAVELLER’S GUIDECephalonia or bust: Frank Partridge paid Tapestry (020-8235 7777, ) £2,227.50 for a three-bedroom self-catering apartment in Fiskardo. Yes, he met the love of his life – but circumstances dictated that he spent most of his days viewing her from afar, and by the time they became close again, age had taken a heavy toll. He was billeted among generally unfriendly people; his masters changed sides and he and his fellows were betrayed by their former allies; he was left for dead by a firing squad; and his best friend died in his arms. And there I discovered the clues I had missed first time round, clearly prefiguring the disasters ahead.It dawned on me that Cephalonia did not treat Captain Corelli at all well. To battle-scarred veterans like us, alighting at Gatwick and retrieving the car from Heathrow was but a minor inconvenience.A week later, still thoroughly shell-shocked, I picked up Captain Corelli’s Mandolin and re-read the final chapter, to remind myself why I’d undertaken the adventure in the first place.

But all too soon, as even people whose holidays are of the intended duration are prone to say, it was time to leave. On the Sunday, we met the rest of our tour group for the first time and had an uneventful journey home – although, of course, we landed at the wrong airport. We explored a hidden and glorious network of caves by torchlight. We made a point of proving that the local white wine – robolo – is highly drinkable, and were usually among the last to leave wherever we spent the evening.By the end of the week we had almost recovered from the trauma with which it began. For three of the four days, we made up for lost time in a lightly powered motorboat, puttering across the sound to Ithaca, happening on a lonely and deserted island which we had to ourselves for a whole afternoon.We breezed into the famous isthmus at Assos, berthed and secured the boat as if to the manner born, and took a table at a tourist taverna. The sun shone, the light sparkled on the water, Fiskardo was pleasantly bustling.

In the time between the phone being lost and my discovery of the fact – followed by a call to Orange to put a bar on further calls, the person who found it sent three text messages and made 11 calls.Incommunicado I might be, but I was also in Cephalonia. I had finally started rolling the stone towards the top of the summit, and I was not going to let it slip back now.Between Wednesday and Sunday, we made the best of the time we had in Cephalonia, even though I was immediately knocked off my holier-than-thou perch by leaving my mobile phone on the plane to Athens – thus reminding my disorganised daughter where that particular gene came from. So I would have to hire a car and pay a surcharge for someone to pick it up at the other end But I would not be daunted by any of this. The tour operator, Tapestry Holidays, was not prepared to help us when we arrived off the plane at Cephalonia before 7am on a Wednesday morning: “Unfortunately, in these situations, guests are responsible for any subsequent costs incurred due to revised arrangements,” says the company.