Falling for Icarus

A story that combines travel with personal memoir. Rory MacLean sets off to Crete, the land where Icarus and Daedalus made their maiden flight. There, with help from his Cretan neighbours, he attempts to build a woodhopper from scratch and make it fly.

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On a windy afternoon in early spring Rory MacLean fell to earth in Anissari, a village surrounded by white mountains in an ancient corner of Crete. MacLean's mother had died only a few months earlier and he had been engulfed by grief. But an old desire had also taken hold to build and fly an aeroplane. And so he set off to the land where Daedalus and Icarus had made their maiden flight and settled in to days of eating lamb and drinking wine with his Cretan neighbours and, with their help, attempting to build a Woodhopper from scratch and make it fly.