A Place In The Sun’s Craig Rowe has shared a chilling tale of a ‘scary’ and ‘harrowing’ car ordeal that occurred while he was navigating rural Greece using his phone’s map app.
The beloved presenter has returned for a new series of the popular Channel 4 property programme, yet Craig confessed he once thought a particular filming experience might be his last after his vehicle became trapped on a slope in a secluded village, leading to a dramatic rescue by local police and firefighters.
In an exclusive chat with the Mirror, Craig recalled: “In Crete last year, I picked up a car from the airport, just a little basic car, it wasn’t very powerful – to say it had the power of a sewing machine would probably be overstating.
“Anyway, I picked up this car, I obviously would have picked another car but I got there so late so I had to get the car that was available. The reason I would have picked another car isn’t because I’m being fancy, it’s because some of the roads are really really bad and there’s lots of loose gravel. They’re mountain roads, when you come up from the beach and go inland, they’re basically mountain roads and you need a good car!
“Anyway, I was going to a property, I was going to meet the team at a property to do the filming. I was following maps [on my phone], which again I would caution people when you’re on an island as the remote part of the island, sometimes the map just isn’t right. Anyway, this map told me to go left, then told me to go right, you know when you’re driving up a road and you think: ‘This doesn’t feel right!’ but I thought, trust the map.
“Anyway, what it ended up doing was it turned me into this sort of residential road and then I went on top of this really steep slope, it was telling me to turn right but on the right was basically a slide heap onto all this coal, it was basically a dead end. The map was basically telling me to drive into this massive pile of coal and wood and all this sort of stuff.
“I then put the car into reverse to go back down the hill but as I put it into reverse, there was no traction, the car slid and I slid down this gravel hill. The brakes weren’t working, the handbrake, by the grace of God I then managed to turn the steering wheel so it landed on this ledge by someone’s garage but what happened as it turned onto ledge, I basically beached it.
“It was then balancing between the ledge and a slope, every time I tried to do something in the car – the acceleration, nothing happened. Every time I went to put the brake on, the car would rock and if I moved from the car seat because my weight was keeping it up right, if I moved from the car, the car would have rolled down the hill and I could have rolled down with it.
“I was stuck in this b****y car in the middle of this village in remote Crete! All these people were coming out and they were all shouting at me in Greek, which I don’t speak, I was like: ‘I don’t understand!’ In the end, somebody called someone from another village, who could speak English, she said: ‘They’re not shouting at you, they’re worried about you, they are worried you’re going to roll down the hill!’
“This lady, who could speak English, she then called the police. The police turned up but couldn’t do anything so then the firemen showed up first thing they did was hold the car and got me out of it, they said: ‘It’s amazing it didn’t roll down the hill with you in it’ as if you made wrong one move, it would have rolled backwards!”
Craig thankfully added: “They got me out safe and sound”, adding after securing the car the hire company then retrieved the vehicle. Reflecting on the experience, Craig said: “It was quite harrowing, it took about four hours, the schedule for that day was completely derailed!
“What an experience, it was actually really scary because when I was rolling down the hill, I had no control of the car – the brakes wouldn’t work, handbrake wouldn’t work, I was just sliding down this hill. I thought: ‘Oh my God, is this going to be my last episode ever?’ You look back now and laugh but at the time, it was really scary,” he added: “It was harrowing but there we go, I live to tell the tale!”
The new series of A Place In The Sun is available to watch on weekdays at 4pm on Channel 4.
