Our visit to the Delphi site takes up good part of a Sunday, and we are many times lucky there. Firstly, the entrance is free on the day as it’s (unbeknown to us previously) an Environment Day. Secondly, and with more luck then design, we manage to stage our visit so that we avoid most of the tour groups as we visit the museum in the lunch hour and the sanctuary - normally the busiest part of the site – towards the closing time.

This little rant in full swing, I stop myself and wonder who am I to criticise people who travelled thousands and thousands of miles to see the same things I would jealously like to reserve for myself? And why do I feel better just because I have never had inclination/money/courage to go on an organised tour? So let me go back to the meritum.

The spring lies at the bend of the road couple of hundred meters up from the main site and it’s here where we begin our pilgrimage. A spring still spouts water from a mouth of unidentifiable animal on the roadside and we fill our bottles with clear, cold, refreshing mountain water. The actual area of the spring (in which the visitors had to purify themselves before entering the sanctuary) is now railed off because of the danger of an occasional landslide but we can peek down to the ruined entrance and – below the canopy of trees, in perpetual semi-shade broken by the rays of light filtering from above – at the stream flowing down the rocks to soon disappear under the road. It’s here that I have, for the first time, the impression that will be repeated again and again in Delphi: if the old gods are still alive somewhere in Greece, it’s this place indeed.

Delphi museum, recently refurbished, is an impressive, clearly laid out and reasonably well labelled in Greek, French and English. French is understandable as the site was excavated by the archaeologist of the French school (original panels in French and Greek only are still present round the site), and English is included for its obvious lingue-franca role; though I found strange that there was no descriptions in German, considering how many of the tourists in Greece and in Delphi as well were from that country.

Doric temple of Apollo is the dominant building in the sanctuary, after all he looked after the site for most of the year, his was the oracle and he killed Python the serpent to claim his ownership. It is another one of these strange Greek instances where balance seems to be of such supreme importance (they even had 'everything in moderation' written on the wall somewhere here): the site was under Apollo's patronage only for part of the year. The winter months, when the oracle was silent, were given to Dionysus, the god of wine and passion, poetic and sexual frenzy, and the theatre was build to stage plays under his patronage.

Theatre is just above the temple, but to be honest it's not particularly impressive after the Epidavros one, so we have a look at another angle of the untiringly fascinating view and continue amongst the pines higher up to the stadium, which now has Roman-ear seats, but is originally on of the oldest stadia in the world. It was used for the Pythian games, run every four years here from 6th century B.C. The sides are covered in trees and as it's more or less deserted (tour groups rarely venture that high) it's an admirable spot for a picnic lunch: partially shaded, evocative structure, and half-way to the top of the world.

The site paths are not concreted over and the site is not accessible to wheelchairs or pushchairs, though most paths are not particularly precarious and a reasonably fit 3-4 year old would cope with no problems. The newly refurbished museum is fully accessible to wheelchairs.

Delphi is achievable from Athens as a day trip, by car or by bus (10 euro one way); there is several buses a day, but the bus ride takes 3 hours and is generally boring and painful, so you have to be pretty desperate to want to do it twice in one day. Travelling from Patras is an option for those who come on ferries from Italy and the route is beautiful and picturesque, taking in the new suspension bridge over Corinth Gulf, medieval port of Nafpaktos and town of Galaxidi. The journey also takes about three hours but there is only two buses a day, so a day trip by public transport isn't possible from that direction.