It is said that when the young Theseus was first seeking his father Aegeus, the king, he travelled from Corinth to Athens. At the cliffs of Kakia Skala, the "evil stairs" close to Megara, he met the robber Skiron who would force passers-by to kneel and wash his feet and then kick them over the edge to be eaten by a giant turtle. Theseus instead pushed Skiron over. The modern motorway journey from the Isthmus to Athens is less fraught and the seafood less aggressive -but the limestone cliffs of Kakia Skala still present a major obstacle. Here, some 50km from the capital, the dual three-lane highway narrows to a two-way national road and winds for 8km along picturesque but plunging sea-edge slopes up to 650m high. Besides slowing traffic and creating numerous jams, the bottleneck is also dangerous. Dealing with this section has been a key outstanding task for the 1990s PATHE project, the Greek government's scheme to build a 780km long motorway from Patra in the west via Athens to Thessalonika and Euzoni in the north.
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