Meteora – rocks

No matter how much we enjoyed the week at Kato Gatzea, it was lovely driving off and being back on the road. Even better we found the new Volos ring road this time, so what took 3 hours last time took 25 minutes this time – its all so easy when you know how 🙂  The ring road is so new its not on Sat Nav yet and possibly not on the radar of many locals as hardly a car on it, therefore I do not feel as bad that we didn’t find it on the way in. We couldn’t find a reason to visit the city of Volos but driving round the edge you get a fabulous view right across and down to the sea, miles of white buildings with hardly a high-rise in sight it looks more like a large town than the second city of a country.

We were straight out to the motorway where we treated ourselves to a toll (€10) from Volos up Larisa. Tolls are odd here, we paid based on our height not our length, if we have been 6 cm lower then it would have cost us €4. Then again if we had come off at the exit half a mile before the toll booths it wouldn’t have cost us a penny – they don’t have that many toll booths so it would be easy to just come on and off and skirt around them if you so desired. From there is was straight up the dual carriageway to Kastraki, and the nearest campsite to Meteora. You can see it from 10 km away, amazing outcrops of sandstone rock towers that loom over Kalambaka and Kastraki. We pulled up at Camping Kastraki and as usual not a soul about, its right in the middle of the village of Kastraki beneath  the sandstone pinnacles which look close enough to touch.

The name Meteora means “middle of the sky” and very aptly describes the monasteries here which are perched atop the most incredible sandstone pinnacles. From some angles it looks as if they are built on top of mountains, which would be impressive, but they are each on a pinnacle. The tradition of Greek Orthodoxy has continued uninterrupted here for over 600 years, the complex is second in importance only to Mount Athos. We can’t visit Mt Athos though as they do not allow women or children into their ‘state’ at all, even people working there must be over 18 and be men. I have no qualms on the equality piece, just a bit rubbish I can’t visit and see such an amazing place.

Anyway, Meteora welcomes everyone, its actually a tourist centre nearly as much as a monastic centre to be honest. There were 24 monasteries but now only six monasteries are left, four are inhabited by monks and two by nuns. There are less than ten monks or nuns in each monastery, they have been all but turned over to tourism now and the whole area declared a UNESCO site. So they don’t really mind who comes and visits as long as you show a bit of respect, don’t wear shorts, women wear a skirt and you spend a few Euro.

There is now a road that takes you around the mountain to each site, we took a taxi to the top and walked to each monastery and then back down. More than a bit of a hike, we only went inside one monastery and it still took us over 4 hours. The best way to describe the landscape is like something out of a science fiction film, a bit like the Hobbit with better castles. Slightly surreal where everything looks like a Hollywood film-set as surely no-one would really build massive buildings on top of 1200 ft sandstone rocks.

The road up around the monasteries

The steps cut into the mountains that lead to each monastery are fairly new additions, most of which were completed in the 20th century, Before that everything and everyone was either hoisted up or down on ropes, climbed ladders lashed together or hoisted up 1200 vertical feet in a net (pilgrims included). The story goes that the priests used to decide it was time to get new ropes when the old ones broke! Not sure there isn’t some poetic licence there but new ropes or old there is no way on earth you would have gone up or down the sides of those cliffs held in a net unless you were one very brave monk.

Outside Megalo Monastery – a drop of 1200 ft between me and it

To get to all but one of the monasteries you need to climb the steps, first down the side of the mountain to a bridge and then back up the pinnacle the side, its hard going at this time of year so in summer it must be unbearable. The monks have their own transport system, they installed cable cars at three monasteries – if you can call it that!  We saw them in operation at two different places, to be honest you would not get me on one of them for all the tea in china.

Cable car at Megalo Monastery

The highest and largest is Megalo Meteoro Monastery, supposedly the best monastery with the most to see inside, so we started there – just our luck then they close on a Tuesday. The next largest is on the next pinnacle, Varlaam Monastery, which was built in 1541 and thankfully open. We arrived at the same time as four tour buses, but managed to keep out of their way fairly well. I was allowed inside the monasteries here, but the strict dress code means women must wear a skirt – not something I bought with me. The monks thoughtfully provide skirts for those of us that need one, mostly very fetching checked little numbers which were fine.

Happily appropriately dressed and admitted

Whether they are still used as fully functional monasteries wasn’t clear, there were a few monks about but many more builders doing repairs. We were allowed into the church, a small exhibition and to see where the nets for hoisting goods and people were (are) dropped from a balcony. Everywhere else was off limits, a shame as the interesting thing we hoped to see was where and how they lived. In all honesty, the inside was lovely but really doesn’t compare with looking at the structure from afar. Being Greece the old H&S doesn’t apply, people were literally climbing to the edge of pinnacle for the best photos. We didn’t do that! hence our photos are a bit rubbish – if you want to see how awesome it really is Google it 🙂

Monastery Varlaam from below

All around the area are hundred of caves, before the monasteries were built the monks lived in them. Many look as if people still make use of them today, would guess its just locals and climbs. One cave has literally hundreds of flags hanging all around it. The taxi driver told us one man regularly climbs up to the cave and each time hangs a new flag. Amongst the caves are ruins of old churches, some perched on the edge of the caves, other just outside. Again, how they were built defies understanding.

We walked across the couple of kilometres to probably the monastery that most people would recognise, that of The Holy Trinity as it was featured in the 1981 James Bond film ‘ For Your Eyes Only’.  We sat down by the ‘cable car’ to have our picnic and as we did so the thing started moving. We saw the priest let someone in on the other side and send him over the gorge with a flick of a switch. It was mesmerising and terrifying all at once. The fella who came over didn’t even shut the door!

Monastery of the Holy Trinity – aka St. Cyrils of James Bond fame

There are a few tacky tourist tatt stalls outside the monasteries but not too many. There isn’t a cafe, restaurant or even a drinks wagon at any of them, which we did think was missing out on some major euro profit.  They do provide loos, just not of the porcelain variety, obviously the one thing they never bothered hauling up the side of the rocks then!

On our way back into the village the last monastery was St. Nicholas, the tour buses don’t stop there so its very quiet. Outside was a local lady selling the gaudiest hand knitted goods, whereas all the other tatt sellers had been to the wholesalers. Iain reckoned she just buys rubbish looking knitwear from the wholesalers but I believed she makes it herself.  I decided to buy something off her as she looked freezing and probably hadn’t sold anything all day. She tried to rip me off €15 for a woolly hat! We did a bit of bargaining between us and I got her down to €10 – get me 🙂

 My super Meteora hat

It is difficult to write about Meteora without listing out superlatives, for us it has been magical and we think one of the most memorable places we have yet to visit. The pinnacles themselves really would be worth seeing, add the caves and then the monasteries and its going to have to be a big contender for one of our Seven Wonders of the Baxterbus Tour.

That’s us done with monasteries now, heading off today for Thessaloniki.

Holiday over – let’s get travelling

That was the week that was our mini break holiday, We had nearly a full week of glorious weather where we really did very little. The beach was a full six steps from the van door so our exercise was reasonably limited to popping in and out for drinks or food. Its been warm enough to sunbathe but not yet warm enough to feel the need to jump in the sea. For those at home shivering please do not envy us, for the last two days we have seen the tail end of a massive storm and some fairly torrential rain. The awning is out and we have made do with sitting on the step and looking at the sea through the rain :(.

Our total exclusive use of the campsite only lasted three days, then we were joined by a Dutch couple with a super de-mountable who we meet all over the place, this is the fourth time we have met them at various campsites. They are on their way home from Turkey, taking their time and stopping for a week here and there. We may meet up again as they will be in Bulgaria before heading North West into Serbia when we go North East into Romania.

the ace de-mountable

The village next to the campsite is Kato Gatzea,  a tidly holiday village just about 40 minutes out of the city of Volos. As with most places in Greece its suffered horrendously with the financial crisis, there are literally hundreds of part built houses around the edge of the village and up into the hills. Work stopped when the money ran out 10 years ago, building materials are still where they were left, mountains of bricks, tiles etc never been touched since. To add to the woes here, this is a holiday area for Greeks and as they do not have the money to go on holiday then Kato Gatzea has seen numbers of visitors fall ten fold.

Despite all that it has a lovely atmosphere, there are several tavernas lining the beach and whilst none are busy they are open and doing some trade with day trippers from the city. The village also has a fabulous bakery and a great mini market, both of which brace themselves for the daily visit where I attempt to speak a bit Greek and they have pretty much no concept of most of what I mean. The mini-market owner is very tolerant of my attempts and resists speaking English depending on the length of queue waiting to be served; in the bakery we have established a small dialogue as I buy the same loaf and two cakes each day. Iain asked why we always buy six slices of cheese or meat – it’s because the only numbers I know the words for are  ‘two’ and ‘six’ so we only buy in those multiples – simples really 🙂

Just 10 minutes walk in the other direction is another village, Kato Nera, similar to Gatzea just scaled up with many more tavernas.  At the end of the promenade in Nera is what appears to be a very well-kept 1950’s Butlins. On approach the “no photograph” signs and the armed solder give it away as actually being a holiday camp for Greek soldiers. Everything is painted blue and white, the chalets, the fences, the ice-cream kiosk, even the stones around the trees. All very patriotic but seemingly very outdated, its never going to a place they send them to let their hair down, more Clacton than Corfu.

Hellas International Campsite really has gone to the top of our list as one of our favourites, a combination of the site itself, the owners and the village. Add on the beach and the glorious weather (for the first 6 days) and it’s really been a whats not to like. In 2016 they are doing an Olive Harvest month from October to November – not sure they are offering you anything for the work but sounds fun and if we were able would be here for it. We have both said Greece will be a one-off visit for us as its so far to travel to get here, then again we said that the first time we went to Portugal(!) Greece has really taken a hold of us both and I am not so sure we wont be back at some stage and if we are then Kato Gatzea would be very high on the list of choices for a long-term winter stay.

We haven’t been totally idle all week, most of it yes but we did get out and explore a bit too. The Pelion peninsula is a very lush area where there are literally millions of olive trees.  It forms the shape of a hook between the Pagasetic Gulf and the Aegean Sea, so from where we are it looks like a ginormous lake. We took a walk into the hills high above the village, using what we thought was a footpath. In places it was dug out, in others just a worn path and then surprisingly every so often a ton or so of concrete had been dumped.  As we climbed the path passed houses and shacks, a good number of which had cars outside. For the life of us have no idea how they drive up this type of track, it would be akin to driving cars up the steepest bridle paths you have seen, some of the paths were barely wide enough for us to walk up.

As planned, we have avoided any forms of cultural tourism this week. I did give Iain a choice on Friday of visiting an attraction of some sort or food shopping – he chose the latter! Me thinks he is over the whole ancient Greece thing in a big way if Lidl is winning out. As our nod to tourism we walked up to the station in the hills for the Pelion Narrow Gauge railway, both of us are quite partial to a narrow gauge so we were fancying a day out, alas the train doesn’t start running until mid April, another fail in the planning department by us 🙂 but a plus in we didn’t spend a cent on touristy stuff for the first week in ages.

We have passed another milestone, exactly one-third of our trip completed as of today. When we first planned this trip we were very aware we didn’t want to get to half way and then it was all about turning round and heading back. So, to avoid this our destination is Belgium and we are taking the long route to get there. We will need to head for home only once we hit Brussels, until then its all about the outward leg not the return trip. It may all be in the mind but it works for us :).

We are away from here tomorrow,  next stop is the amazing monastery at Meteroa, it’s a place that has been recommended by several people and looks brilliant. From there its a pit-stop at Thessaloniki and then onto our last stop in Greece – Alexandroupolis.

Kato Nera promenade

yes indeed that is a bit of a suntan there 🙂

For the next week – life is a beach

Our stay at Camperstop Afrodites ended perfectly, the owners lovely 12 year old grandson appeared at our door mid evening with a plate of freshly fried doughnuts and some dipping syrup. Ok so the site needs a little work but we care not, it you are being given free fresh doughnuts then motorhomers should be visiting in their droves. There was a note hung up in reception to say the family were having a lamb roast on March 12th and anyone staying was invited to join them – where else does that happen? A lovely family, doing a sterling job at trying to set up a good stopover – more power to them and more visitors we hope too.

The National Road to Athens – not too shabby at all considering the views

Our next destination was Delphi, according to Sat Nav just over 7 hours away and 203 km, obviously thinks we are both over 85 years old and drive a Lada! We took the National Road which runs parallel to the motorway to Athens, both roads were quiet so we decided against paying out the €4.60 to sit in a lane a few yards to our left. Our choice was a bit twisty and had more than it’s share of potholes, but hugging the coast and giving views out to the islands it did its job well enough for us. About 30 or so miles before Athens we headed North over the mountains, a good wide road where we saw only a handful of other vehicles in over an hour. We actually saw more goat herders than pretty much anything, at least five different ones in the space of a few miles on one mountain. The landscape changed to being a bit more scrub-land, no olives or citrus just mile after mile of views over to the next sets of mountains.

 Views heading North of the Peloponnese

At Distomo there is a powerful WWII memorial next to the main road. It commemorates the 1944 massacre by the SS of 214 Greek men, women and children all of whom were civilians living in the village. The first time we have seen anything relating  to the war here, despite the fact Greece suffered some terrible atrocities.

Distomo memorial

We pulled in at a one donkey village to stock up with provisions and the shop owner and local Greek Orthodox Priest both started speaking to me. We established I was British, at which the Priest took a bit of a jolly fit, he spoke no English but according to shopkeeper said Priest visited UK many years ago. This all resulted in Priest needing to do a little jig sort of dance, with me needing me to take part! Luckily only the shopkeeper and one member of staff were around to witness this, I brought what we needed and made a quick exit back to Iain in the van. I have to say I have never before danced a jig with an Orthodox Priest and I pretty much bet I will never do so again, it wasn’t on my Bucket List but probably should have been 🙂

The ski resort of Arachova was an unexpected pleasure, worth the winding route up the mountain to just over 3000 ft, where it is perched on the edge looking as if it belongs somewhere in the Alps (that says us who have never been to the Alps). Whilst there are a lot of ski shops, ski wear and people wandering around with ski looking equipment we didn’t see anywhere near enough of the white stuff for anyone to be seriously sliding anywhere.  At a glance it seems a place where its good to be seen, a bit Nafplio on snow; plenty of trendy looking shops, lovely eateries and lots of beautiful people with crazy woollen headgear.

Arachova – Nafplio on snow (if you can find snow)

Just a few miles down the other side of the valley and we were at Delphi and our campsite, Apollon Camping.  As campsites go it has a captive market in the winter, the others in the area are all closed. At €20 a night its a bit steep, especially as the ladies loos had a flood of 2 inches of water on the floor, the ceiling had started to collapse along with the light fittings and there wasn’t any hot water – all very not 5 Star. But as we  looked out the front window at our view – right down to the Gulf of Corinth and over to the Peloponnese, the facilities didn’t matter so much. 

The view from our windscreen

Whilst at Camping Apollon we suffered what we will from now be calling  ‘dint day’. We decided at 7am to move the van from the lower level to the upper, slightly better view level before breakfast. Iain reversed off our pitch with my guidance – perfect, I climbed back in the van. We then had to reverse up behind the other pitches and oooops – we took out an electric post! How? cutting a long story short my shouting “oh watch it” without giving a bit more information meant Iain has no idea what to watch, therefore he watched something else close on his side! We now have a poorly rear bumper panel 😦  not to worry, gaffer tape cures all, should last until we are home when Paint & Trim will wave its wand and perform a no doubt faultless repair. On the upside, we now blend in much more with the locals – they all have smashed and dented panels on their cars and vans, it seems no one ever gets anything repaired. A dent here is a badge of honour and we are wearing ours proudly. Of course it could have been worse, I could have been driving!

We agreed Ancient Delphi was going to be the absolutely last archaeological site for us and we are seriously thinking of a theme park next week to go to the opposite end of the holiday experience. At first glance it is just another very well excavated city, climbing up the side of Mount Parnassus. What apparently makes this site so special is that it is the site of the ancient Oracle.  For us, and we are not real archaeological buffs, it was impressive but not as much so as Olympia or the Theatre of Epidauvrus. May have been the coach loads of tourists, of which there were several even at 9 o’clock in the morning; may have been the theatre wasn’t quite so impressive or it may have been we have seen way too many partially rebuilt temples. For us the views down to the coast over mile over mile after mile of olive groves, or the view up into the snow capped mountains were just as good a reason to visit Delphi as the more famous attractions.

We left Delphi Friday morning heading for Camping Hellas on the coast near Volos. Heading back the way we came to the National Road, from where it should have been a good 20-30 minutes to the motorway. Time dragged a bit and I saw a sign for a town I was sure was South of us, a quick check of the atlas and yup indeedy, Sat Nav is taking us back down the National Road to join the motorway 40 odd miles South of where we could have joined. Bloody brilliant then that is an extra 80 miles (we were way to far along when I spotted it to change route and we still don’t have a proper map, just the large scale atlas). To add insult it cost us €12.50 in tolls to get back to where we had started an hour before.

Once we arrived at Volos we negotiated the city reasonably easily  (second biggest in Greece and yet the roads weren’t too chaotic) At the junction for the coast road, massive bollards – the road was shut! Words resembling ‘massive bollards’ were bandied around the van.  Our options were take the Sat Nav  88km diversion or if we wanted to stay at another campsite, the nearest one 230 km in Athens. We went with the diversion, a quick check on screen showed another mountain pass coming up but Iain is taking these in his stride now.  This mountain was a seriously high one at 5000 ft, Mt Pelion, amazing switch backs for miles upon miles, Greek ‘alpine’ villages and good 2 ft of snow around as we climbed over the top (although the road had been snow ploughed so was clear). It took us 3 hours to do 88 km, amazing road, shame we couldn’t see anything much for fog 😦 Did everyone seriously know Greece was this mountainous and not bother to tell us? People continually warn us not to go to Bulgaria too early due to bad weather in the mountains, how can it be any worse than here – we dread to think.

We pulled in at a bakery just before the campsite (cheese pies and cakes required). Iain mentioned our long diversion, baker says “No, road isn’t closed”.  Apparently the actual diversion is less than a mile back onto the coast road. If we read Greek we could have read the sign, epic fail from us, more epic from flipping Sat Nav who is in danger of being dropped off the top of the next mountain pass. Oh well, we did it, another mountain ticked off and Iain is fast becoming a candidate for Greek Mountain Motorhome Guide of the year. Yes, we know, we need a decent map and we will be buying one soon and then we will start to plan the odd journey and we know that will mean smoother trips, but possibly not as much fun.

the red line alongside  our actual  ‘switch-back’ route

Seven hours after leaving Delphi we finally arrived at Camping Hellas, looked brilliant but not a single motor-home or caravan on site! For one awful moment we thought it was closed. Then the wonderful Antonios appears, he says they are doing work on the site for the season so not fully open, no facilities,  loos, showers etc, but we can stay. We have a cheaper rate than the normal discount rate so what’s not to like. It is beautiful here, we are on the beach, literally our front wheels are less then 10 ft from the sea. We love it, it was more than worth the journey, just us, a whole campsite to ourselves and our own private beach. We are both feeling like we have just left the UK on a airplane and arrived at our holiday beach, we have been just a bit giddy and over excited 🙂 The weather forecast was for torrential rain today – wrong! its been glorious. For the rest of the week we have a scorchio forecast, 22 / 76 degrees by the middle of the week.

Our very own beach

Due to good weather, our own beach and because we can, the plan has slightly changed – we are staying for a while, at least a week. We are rebelling against cultural attractions and we are going to sit on our beach, get suntans read books, cycle and walk into the village for very tasty spinach pies from the local bakery.

Its a tough life but he is up to the job!

If you don’t hear from us don’t worry, we are on holiday. The Grand Depart will be back on in a week or so when we can tear ourselves away.

Dora’s spot just off the beach

We found the canal and a whole lot more at Korinth

It seems we were not in Korinth (Corinth) as we thought, we were in Ancient Korinth which was 5 km away from the newer version. It did mean we were very close to another set of ruins and we just had to brave the rain and make the 400 metres walk into the centre of the village to the archaeological site. We agreed we would only pay the entrance fee if it looked more spectacular than anywhere else we had been, as we both felt a bit all ruined out.

The ancient bit refers to a town from 400 BC with an estimated 90,000 inhabitants, which is reasonably new as they believe the area has been occupied by man since 6500 BC. During the war of independence the Turks pretty much destroyed the ancient town and then in 1858 an earthquake finished the job off and lead to the new town being built. The excavations site is pretty much in the centre of the current village, probably the size of several football pitches it sits within the modern day village with just a wire fence around it. You can pay to enter or, as we did, you can walk right around the perimeter on the public roads. We chose the free option purely due to being a bit tight, it probably was more than worth the €6 each but when the option of a freebie presents itself we couldn’t resist. As with all the ruin sites one temple was partially rebuilt (perfect  for photo opportunities), in this case it was the Temple of Apollo.

Temple of Apollo

Even from the fence the whole thing was quite impressive, the buildings have some depth to them, in some case even the arches of window frames and its much easier to see the city outline than at other sites were its been piles of rocks that you have to picture as buildings.  Even better its seems they are discovering more of Ancient Korinth by the day, on the outskirts of the village there are ruins a plenty, not sure how big this place was but its going to be a few hundred more years before they find and uncover it all. As one of the greatest cities of Ancient Greece we were more than impressed, it seems that even when you think you have had a total fill of ruins the Greeks have something a bit more special to entice you in to another one.

Ancient Korinth

Alongside the ruins there is a good little cottage industry of shops and cafes, even on a wet and grey day the coach loads were arriving and everywhere was open for business. The tourist area of the village was pedestrianised with tavernas and souvenir shops each side and the Temple of Apollo at the end. The weather wasn’t at its best and we didn’t do the visit justice in terms of going in, yet would still give this place a big thumbs up and say its well worth visiting, especially if you are staying at Afrodites Waters.

We stopped off for a coffee and ordered a couple of slices of toast for Iain – we received a toasted ham and cheese sandwich each! Not totally sure they don’t understand what we want, I think there may be a ruse going on as you get what they want you to have and you happily pay for it. At €8  (£5.80) for two lattes, two toasties and a few crisps it was quite a bargain and it kept us out of the rain for half an hour. From there it was time to embrace the souvenir shops and hunt out a couple of magnets for the collection. In general Greece isn’t cheap for some stuff but on the tourist tatt its not bad at all – €1.50 for a magnet here vs €6 at Pont De Gard, bargain.

Precinct cafes with the Temple of Apollo at the end – good planning

We have both very much loved Campsterop Afrodites Waters, very different to anywhere we have stayed in Greece. The toilets are air conditioned, well I think that is why there was a hole in the roof anyway :). The mini market is just the best ever, 3 bottles of home-made olive oil, 4 jars of home-brew olives and some jam – what more could you need. The reception area has a BBQ grill, hot plates for cooking and a table and chairs if you want to eat there. If the Greeks need to make some money out of the tourists they could do a whole lot worse than have a string of these cheap and cheerful motor-home stop off points, no fuss, no hassle, just ace for a couple of days stop.

The perfect reception

The Camperstop advertises being just 100 metres from the ‘hidden and forgotton spring of Afrodites’ godess of beauty. At first we thought it was very well hidden as we couldn’t find it. Possibly well forgotten too as even the guide at the ruins didn’t have any idea where it was. Then I noticed a sign on site, followed a rough path up the side of the hill and hey presto it appeared I had found the spring. A craggy rock face with water dripping, the first part did look like it might be part of the mains system (the pipes visible in the mud gave it away) but the second, larger set of rocks were for my money the original springs of Afrodites, as advertised. I have therefore anointed myself quite liberally with the said spring  water and should I not resemble a Super-Model by Thursday I will be returning for a full refund!

The Waters of Afrodites

Our main reason for stopping off here was more for the canal that the ruins. The Corinth canal connects the Gulf of Corinth with the Saronic Gulf in the Aegean sea, being the bit along the top of the Peloponnese. Our first challenge was finding it, we found the top end fairly easily but there was a 3 tonnes weigh restriction on the bridge, we could see down the canal but the bit we wanted was a mile or so along – looking down where it was carved through the rock. We went down to the other end and hey presto there was another 3 tonne weight restriction. By now we were both getting slightly fed up with the idea of the canal – yes we have a map but the bit where the road crosses the canal has writing over it – we agreed to take the main road over and if we couldn’t find it give up. Turn right, 1/4 of a mile up the road one canal, at last. Once you find it you wonder how you could of missed it in the first place, well I think that was what Iain was trying to say when he queried why it had taken me several attempts to get us there.

Gulf of Corinth entrance to the canal

Was it worth it? for us a massive yes. Slightly disappointed there wasn’t a cycle path along side :), we were looking forward to adding it to our lists of canals cycled, but other than that its an incredible sight. It is a 70 ft wide cut through the land at the Isthmus of Corinth,  and makes the Peloponnese effectively an island. The canal is 4 miles long and it’s very, very deep, built at sea level so it doesn’t require any locks. It was never really a great success, when it opened it suffered rock slides which were a major deterrent to users, nowadays  the width of  only 70 ft makes it impassable for most modern ships. As a tourist attraction it does it’s job and would probably do even better with some decent flipping road signs to it.

The Corinth Canal

Since we had arrived here we kept looking up to Akrokorinthos way up on the hill, 1800 ft above sea level. Being 4 km up hill we weren’t going to walk it, but the sun came out on the way back from the canal so we thought we would pop up for a look. Basically a monolithic rock with a whacking great castle perched on the top. It’s the home of the God of the Sun, probably as its one of the closest building in Greece to the sun. I suffer from a fear of heights, it was high and I suffered. The pain eased when it was free to enter, but the even though the rain has stopped the stone paths were very slippy and this didn’t help me calm my irrational fears. We walked / skidded up through the first two gates, the path went right to the top but I decided that was a destination we didn’t need to achieve.

Akrokorinthos – another one that cannot be missed

According to the tourist blurb it is “the most impressive acropolis in mainland Greece”, whilst we haven’t seen enough acropolis to be experts we did think it would be difficult to better this one. From the road looking up it seems to cover a fair sized area, it’s only as you start to climb the pathways and go through each gate you see the area is much larger than it at first appears.  Not sure we did it justice, well we didn’t as they say it takes 3-4 hours to walk around everything and we were less than an hour. For the views alone its worth the drive up there, I cannot help keep promoting Greek tourist must sees – they really are so impressive you must see them if you can.

On the way up

The views just before the Sun God got home and started work

Seen from the village                                 Up close

The weather here continues to run through the full spectrum. Monday afternoon we had three hours of torrential rain accompanied by thunder and lightening right overhead. Today we had a bit of rain and then the sun came out and reminded us why we are in Greece – a glorious afternoon of sunshine looking down over the Korinthian Gulf whilst listening to the sound of the local dogs barking and the motorway just below us 🙂

Caterpillars 1 v Baxter 0

We were very happy with the site at Iria Beach. Whilst the area was a little run down and lacking in love with everything closed for the winter, the site itself was busy with 20 or so units and it was reasonably warm – once the snow melted both mornings. Our decision to move on was pretty much hastened by those creepy little caterpillar critters. Iain went and asked the owner what we should do with the first one, ‘not much really as they don’t bother anyone but you can kill it if you want’ was the response! Next day there was another one but on the next but one pitch. Our Austrian neighbour obviously feels a relationship with Arnie, he was out with a gas canister, a flame thrower and then torched the whole thing until it was just dust, that’s one that wont be bothering anyone again.

The cotton wool ball like nests are pretty much everywhere right now so I guess its hard for the sites to deal with. After a third one was torched we decided we didn’t feel comfortable and we were a bit concerned at the advice that they ‘aren’t a problem’ when we know from reading up on them in Spain just how dangerous they can be. We packed up and within an hour were back to Triton II campsite, on arrival we did a double-check and the only nests were outside the site so we booked on for a couple of nights.

Friday morning view from the beach

On both Thursday and Friday mornings we woke to a white world, it may have only been a dusting but all the same it had snowed at sea level (the campsite owner told us it was the first snow since he had been there in 16 years). By mid morning the sun was warm enough to melt any signs of winter but the wind had an arctic feel to it. In the sun it was glorious, enough for a couple of days of sunbathing and we both have a good red glow now. Everywhere we go the main topic of conversation between motorhomers is the snow, our Norwegian neighbours were out doing mountain passes yesterday, they say it’s just like being at home for them – long drive though from Norway to Greece to feel like you are still at home! The campsite went from nearly empty to pretty much full in a few hours, it’s a Greek bank holiday called ‘Clean Monday’.  We were a little worried when our next door neighbour strung up an outside light in the trees, luckily for us they do not party as hard, long or loud as the Italians and Spanish.

Palamidi castle

Saturday we decided it was time to go into Nafplio, we had resisted so far purely out of a mixture of laziness or being on our way somewhere else as we passed through. The sun was shinning so we dusted down the bikes and took a gentle cycle into town. The roads were quiet and easy to cycle on, plenty wide enough for a car and a bike and just 10 miles later we arrived in town. Wow, where did all these people appear from? It was so busy we had to push our bikes along the road into the centre as there wasn’t room to cycle. We later discovered everyone was there for the annual kite festival, we saw quite a few kites that looked a bit home made on the roadsides for sale but not a one in the air, maybe it was the wrong type of breeze?

Nafplio harbour

Nafplio is a lovely town, very trendy and cool, the sort of place you need the right handbag and sunglasses and then you can just see and be seen. People were busy doing nothing much except wandering along the promenades or sitting in the pavement cafes. The town itself is fairly posh and very lovely but the harbour area outdid it for us, it was incredibly beautiful.  From there you can see the three castles that Nafplio can boast to owning. There is one on top of the hill on the edge of the old town, another mid way down just above town but the true star has to be the one plonked out in the harbour. Similar to the one we saw at Methoni that was some sort of jail it is quite simply a breath taking scene.

Bourtzi Castle

Nafplio was once the capital of Greece, it was pronounced as such by the first Greek Head of State following independence in 1829, for his trouble he was assassinated on the church steps in Nafplio just 18 months later by some very ungrateful independent Greeks. By 1834 the new king had decided Athens was going to be the capitals so Nafplio settled down to becoming a rather swish and stylish holiday resort that took off in the late 1960’s, predominantly for the Athenians who kept that coveted capital title.

From the harbour towards Palamidi castle

We cycled to the end of the harbour where there was a footpath around the cliff, the sign saying “no pedestrians” had been moved and anyway we were cyclists so we carried on. As we rounded the corner the path stretched out to the next bay, another postcard view. As we are in Greece there were fairly steep drops straight into the sea off the path, the Greeks are tough and don’t do handrails or really any type of safety. After a brief and confusing conversation with a Greek lady we understood we had to turn back as we couldn’t follow the path as far as we need to go.

A beautiful path to cycle – but the drops were scary

We crossed over to the other side of town and followed the road out of town looking for a good picnic spot, not the best route as the road doesn’t touch the coast and was fairly busy. As we dodged the cars we saw the Wanderlings chugging towards us, we waved – they didn’t.  We gave up on the picnic spot and turned back to town which if anything it was busier, so it was time to head back towards Drepano. As we cycled along we saw the Wanderlings again, we waved – they drove off! Not wanting to labour a point but a couple of miles later we spotted a certain Dethleffs coming out of Carrefour – as we said ‘oh look who it is’ they were gone, again.

The monastery of Metamorfosis Sotiros has intrigued since we were here last week, its so high on the hill you can only just see it. Out of our league in terms of climbing up there but I did try and research something about it on the internet, a little disappointed that the first thing I found was a web site where I could make an online donation! Looks like the Greek monasteries have well and truly embraced the powers of money making on the internet.

The monastery is the tiny blip at the top of the rock next to a tree

Back at campsite after 21 miles we sunk down for a rest and noticed a calling card on our door. Yay! Roland and Claire were on the same site, an afternoon in the sun discussing the merits of  various tourist attractions, campsites, feral dogs and snow. They assured us they hadn’t seen us on any of the occasions when they had passed us during the day. Well Claire said she saw a bloke in a yellow jacket on a bike waving at her but she couldn’t think why he kept waving so she ignored him, fair enough :). We left them this morning heading for the carnival in Tolo but we are fairly confident we will run into them again over the next few weeks, hope so as it’s always lovely to see them.

At long last we have made the move and off, well nearly off, the Peloponnese. We took the main road directly North, a very quiet run up with some glorious views over to the mountains. We are stopped at  the Camperstop Aphrodite just a few miles before the Corinth Canal. As we approached we passed the entrance to Ancient Corinth, we had said no more ruins for a few weeks but it looks fairly interesting so will head back there in the morning before having a look at the famous canal.

This is our kind of Camperstop, it does what it says on the tin, there is everything you could need for €10 (well we hope it is because we forgot to confirm the price). The owner is a wonderful gentleman who explained everything in a mixture of Greek, French and English with the biggest smile you could wish for. By the time we had parked up and plugged in he was back with a tray containing complimentary bowls of currants soaked in honey and a couple of glasses of water. The site is a work in progress but then so is a lot of Greece!

Our plan now is to get a real plan and stick to it a bit more, so we will be here a couple of days then head onto mainland Greece. The new / real plan is now bypassing Athens (too busy), probably seeing Delphi (it’s been highly recommended) then out to Volos (another break on the beach). A quick stop at Meteor (top of our must see list) and then we will then be driving East and stopping just before Turkey (Iain has vetoed Turkey) and crossing the border into Bulgaria, from where its North all the way to Finland. This is all subject to no better plans coming up in the meantime but we are pretty confident its the way to go.

Valentines trip to the theatre

Thursday morning we were up and away handy from our snug stop at Elia, decision time, either try the pass over the mountains at Kosmas for a second time, or take a long route around. Just looking up at the mountains we knew it wasn’t going to happen, the snow was still there and it was forecast for a little more to fall. We checked out as much as we could on the internet, as we saw that the road rises to just over 1100 metres or 3600 ft – so as that’s higher than Mt. Snowdon – we decided to give it a miss.

Plan B then is up past Sparti and then due North to Tripoli, our first confusion of the day as we felt sure that was in Libya (our geography is appalling but we live and learn). As we neared Tripoli we were climbing in the mountains, again, this time the snow-plough had cleared two lanes and despite an inch or so of snow on the verges the main road was plenty clear, enough to drive over with no problems. As we approached Tripoli we were doing the smug ‘made it’ and really not bothered about route. We were aiming for Nafplio, so we turned right and set our destination to Argos (again, what is that all about, calling towns after shops). Lesson about to be learned in the Peloponnese – there are lots of mountains! and guess what we are on our way over another one. This time its Mount Parthenios, another 3900 ft of solid rock nicely iced in fresh snow, one lane just about open all the way over – the middle lane. Lucky for us we took said lane and didn’t meet another vehicle for nearly 4 miles and when we did there was room enough to slide gracefully around each other as the snow was down to a light dusting at that point.

We come from Wales, we can do a bit of snow. We seriously under-estimated the snow in Greece and to be honest on one occasion we were slightly out of our depth (yup in more ways than one). We have snow tyres – result – we knew spending all that money would come in handy. If we hadn’t then we would not have made it as far up the mountain towards Kosmas on Wednesday (could have been a good thing) but also coming back down could have been a whole lot worse. Likewise Thursday we probably wouldn’t have continued over Mt Parthenios without snow tyres, we now have a greater love for our Cleibers than we ever thought probable.

Moving away from snow, we rounded the top of Mt Partheneios and could see the Argolikos Gulf straight ahead, sun shinning over the sea and all was back well with our world. We pulled over for lunch just outside Nafplio and for the first time in a few days there was warmth back in the sunshine. As we drove through Nafplio we couldn’t make up our minds, bustling, very trendy looking shops, lots of posh cars and the first time we have experienced a feeling of a bit of wealth and style in Greece. Even the town itself has three castles so it doesn’t skimp on attractions, the one set in the bay just off the harbour is without doubt the icing on the cake in terms of the postcard scene stakes.

We set ourselves up at Triton II campsite, a few miles down the coast and next to a pretty good looking beach. A very well kept campsite where the only complaint so far is the amount of feral cats and dogs – they are sat outside the van all day expecting tit-bits. There isn’t any real booking in system here, you just stay as long as you want ans when you are ready to go search out someone to pay. The facilities are lovely and as we had been off site for a few days I headed straight for a good shower as soon as we were set up. All very modern, new  and clean but I have to confess my first thought was the shower head is very small and doesn’t hang up and that is without doubt the biggest plughole I have yet to see. Okay it took less than 20 seconds for me too, I left and went to the showers! (if you need help with that last sentence the first cubicle was for ladies who ‘stand-up’).

Outside the campsite entrance

The weather itself was a bit under the weather for a couple of days, warm enough but cloudy and overcast for a few days. We took a walk to Tolo just a mile or two up the beach, lots of small hotels and a couple of open tourist shops. It seems a fairly newish 1960’s type resort, nowhere near as smart as Nafplio and really doesn’t seem to try and compete. It must cater for a hefty summer tourist trade but guess that’s more for those just wanting the sunshine, sea and tavernas rather than the glitz and style of Nafplio.  Nothing there we could say was amazing and nothing we could say was awful, maybe it was the weather being grey made the town seem a bit too.

Tolo – a bit grey

Not our sunniest of days

In the opposite direction we found a small lane that ran adjacent to a large inland body of water, we know not what it was maybe a nature reserve? at the end it joined the sea inlet and according to Google there would be a  crossing of sorts to Vivari, so we could walk back around the other side of the lake. Of course there wasn’t a crossing, whatever may have been there once was now just a skeleton and looking like its days were very numbered. So we walked back whence we came, stopped in Drepano village for a wander and a loaf from the bakers, we noticed again that people here tend to use tractors as much as cars. As we walked through the village square there were nearly as many tractors parked up as cars, it seems they are the usual form of transport for many. Then it was back to camp where Iain spent the afternoon washing off so much dirt and grime that the van must be weighing a good few kilos lighter.

the sun coming back on the beach at the campsite

The best campsite bungalows – you live upstairs and have underneath for your table and chairs

The world of motorhomers in Greece is so small its incredible. We have been joined on site yesterday by Tony, who was until a couple of days ago camped with Michael, who is now over in Finikounda parked up with Roland and Claire, with whom we were on a campsite last week in Gytheio, who met with Norman and Marion in Lidl, who we parked up with on a pier two weeks ago. We come across many of the same vans and people where ever we go, its a little like being part of a roving community where you slightly know most of the people, if not to speak to them to nod to at least. We were discussing the other night that to the locals it must be just like a winter influx of gypsies and I guess in a way that is what the winter stayers who travel around the Peloponnese for 2-3 months really are. Iain needs to watch out as that tan and the long hair are beginning to give him a Roma look, next thing he will be buying clothes pegs and lucky heather and starting his own little business.

We have now passed into the unknown territory of the three digit number – today being Day 105 of our travels. Our previous longish term trips have been around the 90 days mark, it may just be a number but for us it marks an achievement – over 100 days and neither of us has murdered the other:) In all honestly the only real differences of opinion are to do with navigation, maybe more honestly expressed as me getting us lost. As we have covered just over 4000 miles in the last 3 months though we haven’t done too badly in terms of wrong slots.  Other than that we aren’t finding living in a 6 metre x 2.5 metres box at all stressful, its exactly the opposite as we are both very chilled and very much loving our life as wandering travelers. We have a good clear divide of responsibilities, Iain does Logistics and I do Catering, nearly all jobs fall into one or the other category. Budget comes under Catering, no idea why but it does, so I am currently patting my own back as we have now covered the cost of that ‘unexpected ferry’ from Italy to Greece and remained under budget.  

This morning, Sunday, the sun came back and then some. Time to head out for some Greek ruin viewing. I am trying to limit the number of these as they are not totally Iain’s cup of tea but every now and again we find one that even he is more impressed with than he thought possible. Today was one of those days, the Great Theatre of Epidaurus, built in 340  BC and rediscovered less than 150 years ago, yet again Greece pulls out yet another ancient monument that is even better than anything we have seen before.

Other than being spectacular to look at it is famed for having exceptional acoustics, supposedly the sound of a match struck on the centre stage can be heard perfectly clearly at any seat within the theatre. Whilst we were there a British school party arrived and the youngsters took it in turns to enact small dramas from the centre stage, whilst others climbed to the top rows to listen. In a word, yes, you can hear a word spoken at a normal level on stage perfectly clearly in the top rows. The position of the theatre is such that the mountains behind create a perfect backdrop to the stage, the overall effect is just beautiful. Really speaking only the first 14 rows are Greek, the Romans loved the place so much they increased the size of the theatre by adding another 21 rows.

Tomorrow we are heading down towards Spetses for a few days, check out the ferry and maybe pop over so we can say we ‘did a Greek island’. Then its round to Ermioni and look for somewhere to enjoy the sunshine we have forecast for a few days.

No idea why they paint the olive trees blue – but loving it 🙂

Snowbound in Greece! it could only happen to us

Monday morning dawned with a little sunshine breaking through the clouds, and a smattering of snow covering the hills behind the campsite. To be fair though it wasn’t as cold as we had been warned but none the less it had snowed in Greece against all our expectations, surely not enough to bother us though? We said our cheerios and were away reasonably handy for the latest dental adventure / appointment. Iain arrived for his appointment at 11am, to be told she would be at least 40 minutes late. He finally finished at 1.45pm, paid the bill and lovely dentist lady told him he needs to have a crown down when we are home as this repair will last 9 months. We know not what she is on about or what she has done, suffice to say we were released from Githio and back on the road at last.

Pretty spectacular snowy scene in Greece

First stop Skala, the usual reason for stopping at a five donkey town, there is a Lidl. We probably do need to start shopping elsewhere, we buy the same things every two weeks, we are not living on the edge of a Greek culinary experience out here at all. More so its meatballs, ham and as much rice and vegetables as we can carry, we did try Kangaroo steaks last week, no not very Greek but the best we could do on variation (by the way, do not try it unless you are an Aussie who knows what to do with them, instructions were in Greek and I may have overdone them by several hours, it was akin to eating my shoes). We do both want to try goat as yet we haven’t found it for sale anywhere, including local butchers. We thought everything was goat in Greece but even in cafes it seems its more pork and yet we haven’t seen a single pig here. Even the lonely goat herders, who we see daily tend to be more of the sheep variety.

From Skala it was time for the last peninsula, or the third Peloponnese finger. We had been warned at the campsite its very quiet, not many shops, no campsites. We filled and emptied all the bits of the van you need to do that to, packed away the shopping and stuck a pen on the map to see where we should go first. We took the route down the smaller roads and other than fruit lorries there wasn’t too much traffic about. We managed to get stuck behind this chap for a while, my concern was we were going to end up with quite a lot of his possessions stuck on our windscreen if he hit a pothole. Iain is now becoming very Greek in his driving – a toot of his horn and Mr Overloaded pulled in slightly and we were around him and clear.

First stop was the village of Elia, typical of most small harbour villages with a mix of very old and very modern houses and villas built around a bay with a small harbour at one end. We aimed for the harbour thinking we would stay overnight, as we rounded the corner we saw a very suitable parking space – just it was already full with three largish motorhomes. Luckily for us Mr Belgium motorhomer came out and told us he would move over so we could squeeze in, he proceeded to explain how he has only been seeing and speaking to Germans for days so it was good to see English people  and speak  to English people. Everyone always say English and its way to complex to explain Iain is not English and then explain Wales as by then people are glazing over. We have done the whole Welsh St David’s cross flag thing, even a Norwegian asked if it was his national flag.  Anyway, we squeezed in and settle down, Iain recovered from the pain and expense and in the morning we awoke to this view from our windscreen. Not bad is it? I do not think we will ever get used to the villages, harbours and views here. A chap in a car stopped and asked, in the very best of Oxford type accents, were we ok. He said he noted our British registration and as he lives here but is a Brit he wanted to check we were ok – people are kind where ever we are and its something we don’t want to forget.

Elia harbour

We followed the coast down to Nouvra, where the ferry departs from to the island of Elafonissos. The pier is at the end of a lovely sandy beach just a few hundred metres from the village. A tiny passenger only ferry was bobbing around in the gales and the car ferry plied its way backwards and forwards with a few cars each time. We took the cheap way out and had a look at the island through binoculars – it was close enough to see that nothing much was open so we decided against the trip over (the very choppy seas also played a part in influencing decisions).

Nouvra – the best sandy beach so far

Next stop was Neapoli Vion, we were expecting more of the same in terms of quaint and quiet villages. Culture shock time, a fairly large town, very busy, plenty of shops and people and a harbour with over fifteen ocean going vessels, from cruise to container ships, moored up. Not sure why the ships moor there, could be safe harbours in high winds or could be waiting for tides to Piraeaus. There is a road running right along the bay lined with restaurants and shops on one side and a promenade on the other. It felt like we had arrived in another country, it was busy, people were out walking, there were more cars than a Sunday boot fair back home, all in all it felt like somewhere people live and work rather than a holiday destination. Being as contrary as we are it actually felt like to many people, we were suddenly having to make choices on where to park, would we be in anyone’ way, was the van safe, all the questions we haven’t really had to consider since we arrived in Greece.

On the map we saw that on the opposite side of the peninsula there was a wildlife refuge, it sounded somewhere quiet and more us so we took the road out of town and it climbed steadily. We appeared to be heading over the mountain, rather than around it, but obviously the road was going to go around soon. The winds were still very strong, the road was becoming narrower and we were just managing the hairpins bends in one turn. It has to be said that the views were absolutely worth the sheer terror or driving a high sided box over a mountain pass in force 8. Not worth it enough to go down the other side and repeat the whole experience, we turned around at the top (777 metres / 2000 ft) and made our way gingerly back down to Neapoli and then ambled up the coast, around a few wrong slots, reversed out of the odd village (all as you do if you don’t have a decent map!!).

We eventually arrived at Monemvasia, known as the Gibraltar of Greece, we thinks that more to do with being built on a rock that the Spanish and British fighting over it. We arrived with those gales still in full force, as we crossed the causeway the waves were flooding across in front of us. As we arrived at what appeared to be a very large rock with a few houses on the side facing the mainland, a small petrol station (for an island without roads??) and some fortification on the top we were not excited enough to brave the cold, so deciding to hold off our visit until the next morning where sunshine was forecast we found a spot to park up on the harbour back in New Monemvasia. We aimed to have a little protection from the buffeting winds overnight. Little was the right word, a fairly sleepless night where no matter how much you know a 3.5 tonne motorhome isn’t going to blow over, every gust that just seems to tip you then release you back makes you hold your breathe for what seems like an age.

Our first site of the Rock

looking back to new town

Next morning and the sun was out in force, still hand in hand with the gales. Whilst we may have been ever so slightly underwhelmed when we arrived the previous day, after going through the gates we suddenly realised what all the fuss was about. Why isn’t this place at the top of every must see village list in the world? Looking up from the sea there are row upon row of stone built houses climbing up the side of the rock. Monemvasia has been owned / fought over by pretty much everyone in the region at sometime or other, The Byzantines founded it, the Franks seized it then lost it, The Catholic Church held it for a few years before the Venetians took over, followed by the Turks who finally lost it in the war of independence when the Greeks finally took it back.

Kastro lower town

The Kastro Monemvasia is divided into a lower and an upper town. The lower town originally contained 800 houses, many of the ruins are there as are four of the original forty churches. A large majority of the properties have been restored with several now hotels, guest houses or restaurants. We walked to the hotel at the top of lower town, not sure I would want to carry my suitcases or indeed find my way back after an evening out, however I cannot think of anywhere with a more stunning view. The terrace looked out over the lower town and down to the sea, as there are no roads there was no traffic noise at all, just the sounds of the waves crashing (and us moaning about the amount of steps!). We were unable to visit upper town as it was closed off for restoration work. From the bottom we could see the castle walls that protect the town on the summit but alas we couldn’t visit.

more lower town

even more stunning with the sun out

best shower we have found so far

If the old town wasn’t enough for us the the new town certainly isn’t too shabby in relation to its older neighbour. Plenty of bars and cafes, a few tourist shops and of course some good old fashioned bakers for Iain to buy his daily sugar fix. There is an outer and inner harbour, where despite the crashing waves several colourful little boats were moored up and bobbing furiously around.

New Monemvasia habour

Our next destination was planned to be Leonidio, as the crow flies just a short hop but a few choices of which mountain pass to take. At some point in the afternoon driver, navigator and Sat Nav got themselves in a tissy and we ended up in the usual small village, not wide enough for a twin buggy let along a motorhome. After what might be termed a ‘bit of a todo’ on who was in charge of directions we resumed our journey using the main road, I had voted as the best route, so we could stop and see the Elonis Monastery and follow the switch back roads that we had read about when the Wanderlings came over that route the previous week. As we climbed gently up past Geraki we were surprised to find we were in the snow line, we continued and when we reached 3000 ft we were so in the snow line that the road disappeared as we turned a corner. It was there, then turn the steering wheel and just white stretching ahead.

The plan became a bit unclear! Carrying on seemed foolish as we could see there was still one hell of a climb to the top of the mountain, turning around was out of the question as the snow was built up good and hard each side and left the width of a car between. Nothing else for it then, we reversed back down the mountain, it could sound worse than it was – oh no it couldn’t it was horrendous, a bit of armaco would have helped, not a thing. After a mile or so in reverse we felt confident enough to try a three point turn, with me outside in charge of keeping the van out of the drifts at the rear. Back down out of the snow and we are now considering how to get to Leonidio without using the snow roads, it could be a long trip but hopefully it will one hell of a lot less stressful.

Take two blogs, add two moho and wait for snow

On the dental front the news is both good and ongoing, three appointments down and another one to go on Monday morning. The dentist is the lady of many hats, she doesn’t have a receptionist or a hygienist or even someone to just sweep around. She does the lot all on her own, which we assume is why its taking four appointments as doing the whole thing in one go would be difficult with popping out to answer the door or phone when she is mid filling. Iain says its like stepping back in time and visiting a dentist 40 years ago – all a bit 1970’s and not too modern but still well able for a bit of teeth pulling.  We do think that she is fairly free and easy with the anesthetic, it’s at least four or five hours before it wears off after each visit, by the time he can eat again it’s nearly time to go back.

The big question of cost has been resolved, €200 all in, we think that is an absolute bargain as the last time I had a root canal done at home it was over £400. Our insurance will pay for €50 (after the excess) so it could have all been a whole lot worse. Before we came away we actually did hum and hah as to what the contingency fund should be and whether we would need one at all. After new windscreen wiper motor, a Kindle and a fairly heft dental bill it was a good call to have one and seems madness we considered not keeping the money separate and including it in the weekly spends. It seems relatively fair now that as I spent a good chunk of it on an electronic book and Iain has now spent a similar amount on keeping his teeth, that’s us even.

As our movements had been curtailed for the latter part of the week due to above it was lucky for us then the weather had been pretty well tip top on Thursday and Friday. The only way to describe it was it was like being in Greece! No, like you expect Greece to be all blue skies, slightly foaming seas and a bit of a mountain haze. Up to now we have seen a fair bit of rain but with good blue skies in between. For the latter part of this week it was actually warm too and we have been sitting outside for a few hours in the afternoons. There were still some cloudy patches but overall things have been on the up. Then we read a certain blog that said there is a forecast of snow this coming week in the Peloponnese! We did not sign up for snow in Greece, we came for sunshine so someone in charge of the weather needs to be taking a look at themselves and sorting it out as soon as.

Surely this isn’t a prelude to snow?

Gythio has become very familiar to us over the last couple of weeks, we have our regular shops and even our own parking spots on the edge of the promenade which is very handy for town. Our favourite bakers is a charming little shop where said baker employs his mother at front of house. I am sure she is just as charming as her son but she evidently hides it so much better. A request for bread is met with a look that says – can you not see I am busy talking, when I have the cheek to ask for a cake too she slides into meltdown. Yesterday I offered a €5 and you would have thought it was a €500 – she waved it around shouting what I assume was to the effect who the hell has any change. Two customers emptied their pockets and began counting out coins, slight mayhem but worth it for the entertainment value.

There isn’t what you would call a great selection of shops in town, hardware shops are plentiful, as we have found everywhere in Greece. Clothing shops are at either end of the spectrum, there is a large ‘fashion house’ that sells clothes no one under the age of 120 would be seen dead in. Then there is a very modern and expensive chic little boutique a couple of doors away alongside a very nice shoe shop, that’s the end of any retail clothing therapy. And no matter what the shop and how expensive or cheap, and pretty much every cafe or bar there is someone in every one smoking a cigarette. They say its stereotyping to say all Greek men smoke, its not – they do and pretty much everywhere you go.

Saturday afternoon was a bit overcast so we headed back over to Dirou to see the caves we had missed earlier in the week. It was a choice of the long route around the Mani, a couple of hours, or the shorter new road over the mountains – less than 30 minutes. We took the mountain route, despite it being the newer and main road we hardly saw any traffic. The views over the Taygetos mountains are spectacular and make the journey worth it for those alone. Over the last week or so we are beginning to see the wild spring flowers carpeting the countryside. Whilst it is only February the wet weather means it is growing season for wild plants and flowers, the red anemones that are spreading over the mountains are truly a gorgeous sight.

Back ar Dirou and there are over 14 km of caves that have been charted over the last 50 years, usually a Venetian canal boat takes you on a 30 minute trip through the cave system and then you walk the final 10-15 minutes. It is even open all winter and the trips run throughout, well they usually do. For some reason the day we visited the boat wasn’t running but the lovely lady at the kiosk told us we could still go in and pay just €5 instead of €15. As this sounded a bargain we agreed, paid and were waved off around the cliff to enter at the normal exit. From there it was every one for themselves, no guides, no real idea of how far to go and no one giving out the hard hats and life jackets all neatly stored on the wall.

For me they were caves with stalagmites and stalactites  and some fairly low level lighting, pretty much what you see at most caves type places. We walked about a kilometre and then it started to become very wet underfoot, there was nothing to say turnaround other than if you didn’t you were going to walk through six or seven inches depth of water, so we gave up and walked back. For us, worth €5 yes, not sure what you would see on the boat that would make it threes times better?

We cannot speak for the whole of Greece but the Peloponnese really is an amazing destination for motorhomes. For those that want to wild camp there are plenty of places tucked away and it seems at this time of year no one really minds, although it is illegal to wild camp we find that popping into a nearby cafe, buying a couple of coffees and asking if its okay is always met with a smile and a nod. Likewise people are happy to give access to their internet for the price of a cuppa. We have found a few places where local business have put signs up pointing motorhomes towards car-parks, to be fair that seems to be because some have parked outside hotels and restaurants and you can see that would annoy you if you had paid for a beautiful sea view to have it blocked by a great big white tin can. I guess that Greece is far enough way from Northern Europe that it is never going to be as accessible as Spain or Portugal so will never experience the mass migration of the winter grey nomads seeking out some sunshine, to that end the Greeks can afford to let people stop overnight here and there and know its not going to have a snowball effect.

This afternoon we were joined on site by the wonderful Roland and Claire (aka The Wanderlings), who are currently taking a longer break than us and travelling Europe without an end date. We follow their blog and usually try and avoid their routes as they tend to attract atrocious weather (totally honest – they parked opposite us and within an hour there was hail!!).

A really  lovely afternoon / evening spent discussing campsites, top spots to visit, motorhomes and all the other stuff that would probably be totally boring for non motorhomers.  It’s a very strange sensation to meet people who you have never met before but you know so much about them, and they so much about you. Thank you both, it was really good to finally meet up, and its been an absolute joy to get to know you both a little. We look forward to catching up again somewhere later in the year, obviously if you are still dragging poor weather around we may have to re-think but hopefully the sun will be with you by then :).

 the very lovely Roland and Claire – they really do run in the rain all over Europe!

The full Mani followed by a root canal

Iain is going to be able to claim to be part Greek from this week, thanks to new fillings and root canals courtesy of a very lovely lady dentist in Gythio. The previous filling was left somewhere in Italy and Iain was planning on taking the risk as to whether he could survive the next 10 months with a gappy tooth. We decided it wasn’t a great risk to take so on Tuesday morning he had an appointment to replace the lost filling, two hours later he re-appeared with a temporary filling and three more appointments for a root canal! Dentist said a filling would not last until we got home so she wanted to do the full works. I believe she had big windows and saw us coming but we can’t take the chance so himself is toughening up as if a temporary filling takes two hours, lord alone knows how long a root canal over three visits is going to be.

Due to the forthcoming suite of dental appointments our plans for the Mani were curtailed down to two days. To be honest if we had had two months we could still have stayed longer, whilst I have said I will not continue to say everywhere is amazing, incredible etc. etc in the case of the Mani it would be wrong not to say just how gorgeous it is. Whilst it is the most rural part of the Peloponnese that doesn’t mean there is less to see, far from it.  The area and the people are known as the Mani, which translates in English to the either ‘mania’ or ‘full of rage’, luckily for us everyone was the usual super Greek friendly, rage is not a word you can see being used that often here. It wasn’t that long ago that many of the villages could not be reached unless by sea. Nowadays there is a winding road up and down each side of the peninsular and its a bit of a tourist attraction in the summer months.

High on a hill Mani villages

From the main road there are numerous small lanes at every turn which lead  down to small harbours or to tiny fortified villages. Many of the houses are refurbished original fortified dwellings and there are still plenty of ruins just waiting to be snapped up. Just as many are new builds though, I guess its easy to be a tourist and not like the new stuff but this is partly what is bringing people back to live in the area so sometimes the new has it value even if it doesn’t look anywhere near as good.

The peninsula is split in two by the mountains running down the spine. We crossed over at the top to Aeropoli and took the anti-clockwise route. The caves at Dirou were high on our list to visit but as the sun was out and the sky was blue we both felt that dark and dank caves were not essential to the day. Aeropolis itself seems very like most of the modest towns in the area, plenty of min-markets and not much else. The road running down the East side is fairly straight forward, through some lovely villages but nothing to write home about.

We stopped off at the village of Koita where there was a good mix of ruins, beautifully restored Mani type dwellings and a fair few sympathetic new builds. There was one newish small road around the edge of the village but the old footpaths and cobbled alley ways are the main routes to most of the houses. Of course wandering around out of tourist season we stuck out like a sore thumb but everyone without exception had a smile or a wave for us.

As we wandered around we came across a lovely Greek lady sat on her steps who called us over for a chat,  we had a conversation of sorts with her pointing out that her house had been rebuilt 10 years ago. We went through our outstanding Greek repertoire of wishing her well and telling her where we are from, to which she replied in Greek, we guess something of the effect of,  “ah British, is that why your husband is one skinny sod, let me get you something to eat”, she then disappeared into her house. A few minutes later she emerged with a massive smile and an equally large paper bag full of almond crisp biscuits. Again and again its the kindness and friendliness of the Greeks that just tips the Peloponnese into the special category for us.

the friendly biscuit lady

Up to now I have been a bit of a fan of the Byzantine churches and have struggled to resist a photo of them. This obsession has been cured as we must have seen upwards of 50 churches whilst we were driving the peninsula, at times it has seemed there are more churches than people. Add to these the ‘churches on a stick’ type shrines which were every couple of hundred metres and the time has come to admit we are all churched out.

We stopped overnight in the village of Gerolimenas where we saw a handful of people, most of whom were stopped at the hotel for coffee. One of those places that is a picture postcard village around a harbour with nothing there except for maybe eight or nine tavernas, a very small pebble beach and a small mini-market. It is a relatively newish village, only built in the late 1870’s as a port where ships could offload and store cargo. Several of the old warehouses are derelict now but most of the houses are well restored and used as holiday accommodation. Having hardly seen a soul all day we parked up in a small car-park next to the harbour for the night, lo and behold there was another GB registered motorhome parked up in front of us. No one seemed to mind either of us being there but late evening the hotel did stick their generator on for the night, so much for a quiet nights sleep next to the beach for us then, it was like sleeping on a runway.

Gerolimenas

The village of Vathia is one of the most famous villages of the Mani, you can see why on the approach, it  is spectacular as its perched on the side of the hill with the towers looming over the landscape. The old village is deserted but within a few feet there are some newer houses, a few mangy cats were around and a young couple camping (tent the lot) in the courtyard of one of the new builds but no one else to be seen. We had thought we would need to search out the fortified villages but they are everywhere. The most impressive thing to us is how they blend into the landscape, as the houses are built from stone quarried within a mile or so and the houses just disappear back into the scenery.

the village of Vathia

Several people had told us that driving the Mani in a motorhome would be difficult as the roads were too narrow. We found the main road around was fine, the local bus passed us twice so its a good road despite what people would have us believe. We did find some of the roads down to villages and the harbours a little tight, but still we have not seen either a width or length restriction, it really is a case of if you can make it go for it, if you can’t then you will get stuck. Iain has better nerves than me and will take the van pretty much where he wants, whilst we are only 6 metres long I do worry about the height more sometimes as much as the length, we have had a couple of near misses with low overhanging balconies. But without the need to struggle down any of the small lanes and tracks the views are incredible. The ‘main’ road zigzags along up and down mountains, through villages and all along we found plenty of places to pull over and just admire the scenery.

We reached our furthest point South today at Porto Kaigo, where there was a helpful sign for “camper parking”. Obviously the best thing to do then is blindly follow the sign, we did, straight down the beach! There was a workman building a wall at the back of the car-park who looks a little stunned to see us arrive, maybe they meant tent campers but hey ho we were in and parked. From the edge of the village there was a pathway over the hills to a teeny church, a bit Mama Mia without the steps, and then the  footpath lead to the end of the Europe, well for us our very furthest point South – its pretty well North all the way for us now.

Yeah – just drive along the beach

Port Kaigo chapel above the village

We rounded our trip off with another stop at Kotronas, for us one of the most perfect little stopping points for no reason than it has a cafe, a harbour, a jetty and the clearest and most turquoise sea we have yet to see. Back at camp and the top news is the new Kindle has arrived 🙂 there have been a few nerves as it was fours days late, reading the envelope its been in Germany for three of them for some reason. Who cares, its here now and all is well again in my world.

Once the whole dentist shebang is out of the way it will be time for us to move on and head for the third finger of the Peloponnese, hopefully Monday or Tuesday. We would of thought we would have seen pretty much everything we want to in the last month but there is still a list as long as your arm of things we we want to see or places we would like to visit so with the good weather forecast to be hanging around it seems a good time to move and find somewhere new to base ourselves for a few weeks.

Lets see if the smile is there after a few hours of root canal work?

Greek tragedy averted on causeway

We finally got around to visiting Gythio this week. Our plan was to catch the bus into town for the market and for our first proper explore of the town. Having done a little research it wasn’t looking too promising as the Gythio tourist office themselves state “there are not really mentionable ancient objects to be seen, only a small Roman theatre, so just enjoy Greek life’. We need a few bits, such as a new mobile phone as our emergency phone no longer charges, perfect opportunity for our first retail experiences in Greece then. We were up with the lark and stood waiting for said bus at 8.45 – it came along bang on time, just unfortunate we were stood in totally the wrong place so it sailed straight past! The reason we were stood in wrong place is currently not clear, some believe it was the campsite receptionist giving duff information, or though it could also be that one of us didn’t actually listen to what she told him – jury is out. As the next bus wasn’t due for five hours it was shanks’ pony to town for us, no complaints from someone else so possibly that was tilting the evidence against said person?

Just before we arrived in town we came to what is apparently a small island, called Kranai, although an island it is now connected to the shore by a causeway and is more of an island-let – it’s just a little patch of land a few hundred metres from the shore. It’s major and possibly only claim to fame is that it’s where Paris and Helen stayed before heading off to Troy, after Paris had abducted Helen from nearby Sparta. I am never sure whether this is Greek history or Greek mythology and will admit I had to look it up it, for anyone else as unclued up as me it is the latter  The island also has a museum of the Mani (third one so far) and a lighthouse but the major draw seems to be the taverna. When we passed it was heaving, Nico (bet that was his name) was singing loudly and many a Greek mama could be seen twirling around the restaurant after having had an ouzo or two too many. On a dreary day the ouzo and dancing looked more fun than the tourist stuff. We kind of disagree with the Greek Tourist Board that there isn’t anything that good to see here though, Kranai on its own is worth the stop.

Approach to town with Kranai lighthouse on the island

sunshine or not –  the colours make up for it

Back in town there are two waterfront areas, the first runs along from Kranai to the port, then a second area around the harbour front. Waterside restaurants line the streets on both stretches, where the waiters risk their lives daily running across the roads to serve people sat on the harbour edge tables. At the far end of town there is a shopping area, not sure about shopping its more about cake. Every third shop was a bakery or a cake shop, either very old fashioned where you could see the bread being baked in the wall oven or at the other end of the scale with the most exquisite cakes imaginable. We found a phone shop and bought a cheapy for €18 but other than that there wasn’t much we wanted to spend our money on so we made do with a latte in one of the harbour-side cafes. The street market was in full flourish, not a massive market with the majority of stalls selling fruit and vegetables.

Gythio waterfront

Good old fashioned bakeries

On the harbour front we happened upon a shop selling fridge magnets (I know, but I am loving them) so we popped in for a browse. The shop sold all manner of tourist tat, some good some not so good but it also houses the studio of the owner, a Mr Yiorgos Hassanakos. Checking it out later we found he is a respected artist in Greece and uses one side of the shop as his workshop, from where he creates the figures used by the Greek puppet theatre.  As we stood he was working on new puppets and the walls were full of his creations and he kindly allowed me to take some photographs, amazing what you find in a fridge magnet shop me thinks 🙂

A couple of miles around the coast at Valtaki beach is the weirdly fascinating hulk of metal that is the “Dimitrios” is freight ship built in the 1950’s that was shipwrecked in 1981.  Considering the length of time its been there at first it looks remarkably intact, you can walk right up to it, nothing stopping you except you will get wet ankles. Closer inspection does show its disintegrating, gaping holes through the sides and the structure doesn’t look like it has that many more years before it collapses. As with pretty much everything in Greece there is nothing that tells exactly why it is there and what happened to it.  According to the internet rumours range from a ship smuggling cigarettes from Turkey to Italy and being set on fire to evade capture by the Greek authorities, to it being a ghost vessel of unknown origins. What the true story of how and why its there, who knows. Whatever it is, its very eerie being left there to rot but it is very photogenic and must be a bit of a tourist draw as there is a very good looking restaurant on the beach named after the ship.

We needed to refill one of our LPG tanks this week and I was  just a bit nervous after the problems we faced in Tuscany with filling. Greece continued to prove that everything is easy as we pulled in and the chap filled us up without any questions or concerns. We thought we had used a full tank in the last 7 weeks but as it was only €5 to fill it there must have been at least a third of a tank of gas left. As we don’t use gas for heating a tank usually lasts us a good couple of months, as I intend to cook less and make more use of salad as the weather improves we should be using even less.

On the cash / budget front we are doing brilliantly so far. Campsites are all reasonably priced here in Greece so we are benefiting there with good deals even when we do not do long stay. Fuel is coming in way under budget as we are now moving only fairly short distances between campsites. We admitted at the start we really just stuck a finger in the air to set our budget, it would be easy to think that therefore it isn’t difficult to be under the plan but it could just as easily been the other way round.  We are by no means feeling restricted on our budget, for us the being away and experiencing these places is outweighing any need to go out for meals or buy crazy souvenirs (with the exception of fridge magnets of course!).

As always there has been an upside of a downside, this week the poor weather has had a positive impact on route planning.  I now have some squiggly lines on the maps all the way up to Hungary. These lines have varying coloured stickers on them that denote whether there is an aire or campsite or other place we might be able to stopover. Experience has shown that we cannot trust campsites that advertise as open to actually be open. Emailing ahead is proving the best bet and so far less than half have emailed back to say they are open. Then there is the other extreme with a lovely Dutch site in Romania telling us they are closed but if we are stuck then just turn up and they will put us up in the garden somewhere for a few days, we love Dutch campsites and the Dutch – they never seem to see anything as a problem. Our experience in Portugal, when we used seven Dutch sites as we could never find a good small Portuguese one, was the Dutch run some of the best small campsites anywhere.

With both Romania and Bulgaria looking like they were ‘planned’ I was extremely happy until I took a closer look and realised my campsites either side of the border where absolutely nowhere near a point we could cross the Danube. Again ignorance plays a major part as I thought there would be hundreds of crossing points not just a handful. Back at the drawing board it looks like we will take one of the extortionate ferry routes, we don’t have a budget at all for any ferry crossings (how rubbish is that?) so it will be whatever it is and we will make a saving somewhere to cover it.

As our week finishes we were out earlier today and popped out to Kranai island on the way back, it was something we should have thought more about first. The causeway is about wide enough for a car and a motorhome can just barely squeeze down – which we realised after we were on the causeway – nothing else to do but carry on turn around and slink back down it. This photo was on the way back – it was worse on the way out as my side of the van was teetering over the sea but I was too nervous to pick up the camera!  Fair-play to the boss man, he might be rubbish listening to where the buses run from but he is pretty damn good on squeezing the van up the tight spots!

Our plans for the next week are not as exact as they are for the next two months, if we see the sun we head for the Mani for a few days, if we don’t then there isn’t currently an alternative. Luckily the weather has done a real about turn since Saturday lunchtime and we have been back with sunshine and its been very warm. There is still a blustery wind, which occasionally blows up to a gale for half an hour and brings an accompanying sandstorm, generally though its warm and hazy. Our forecast for the week is storms tomorrow followed by a fried egg forecast – fingers crossed.

Who ate all the olives?

Being used to plenty of good quality vegetables when we have visited Spain and Portugal we were expecting the same here. Alas its not the case, aubergines, tomatoes and courgettes are plentiful, other than those its all looking a bit sorry for itself. We never knew there was so much you could do with an aubergine, they are pretty much now our staple diet. Fruit is ok for apples and bananas but not much else. I thought we were going to be on this healthy Greek diet with loads of fresh stuff but its a bit hit and miss in the villages here, with the exception of oranges and lemons which are treated almost as weeds and it seems no one much bothers picking them.

Similarly fish is very expensive considering we are by the sea, the Greeks have supposedly over fished the waters, so much of the fish for sale here is imported. I thought we might have a chance at locally caught fish when Iain dug out the fishing paraphernalia,  the talk was cheap but his story was good, lets just say fish stocks have in no way been impacted!

Our neighbours lunch – courtesy of the local fish monger

The other thing we have been surprised it’s a struggle to find has been olives – where are they? The whole country is one big olive grove and we expected to see stalls at the side of the road and signs for local olives everywhere. Not happening anywhere we have been, we are buying tinned ones from the supermarkets, no wonder they have a financial crisis – they need to get selling the mountain of olives that must be stockpiled somewhere here.

Yesterday we decided it was time to mosey over the hills to the Gulf of Messenia On the way we passed a very elderly couple going in the same direction, he walking, she on a donkey. We pulled over and I asked them if I could take a photo, they were more than happy to pose. We exchanged pleasantries for a few minutes, ok they had no idea of what I was saying I guess but they smiled a lot and nodded at whatever I said.  Not sure if you can see from the photo but she was a dead ringer for Stephanie Cole, I was thinking a BBC film crew were going to pop out at any second.

When we arrived outside Koroni and there was a sign for the campsite which came about over 2 km sooner than Sat Nav was telling us it would do on the motorhome route. As you do, we ignored Sat Nav and followed the sign up the hill, the road became narrower, then we squeezed down between some white-washed cottages, then we breathed in as we went further and we both realised this could end horribly as the road was looking more akin to a footpath 100 yards ahead. At this stage a lovely Greek lady in her car started gesturing to us to spin around, we smiled and nodded, not sure how she thought we could spin a 6 metre motorhome on a road 2.5 metres wide. Iain took the decision to reverse back up the hill, take the first turn and keep his fingers crossed – that didn’t work either as it was a dead end on the beach! By now we were fed up and Plan G was just get the hell out of town and back on the main road, by use any road we deemed suitable i.e. ignoring the odd one way sign. From there we followed Sat Nav, amazingly we were taken smoothly around the outside of the village and in the other side, lovely wide road perfect for motorhomes bringing us straight to the door of the campsite 🙂

Camping Koroni is our new home for the next few nights, just five minutes walk from town it’s on the ‘first finger’ of the Peloponnese.  We are the only people on site, hard to understand why as it is lovely, much bigger pitches than our last site and less trees so plenty of sunshine too. When we arrived the owner offered a reduction for ACSI card, when we said we didn’t have one she said we could have the discount anyway. We have yet to find a campsite that doesn’t give the discount with or without the card but that might change as we go into spring and places are busier.

Koroni is another town that was once a Venetian naval fortress and has a Venetian castle, the sister castle of the one we visited in Methoni a few day ago. They were jointly known as the “The Eyes of the Serene Republic” and guarded the Venetian seas from pirates in days of old. The castle is nowhere near as complete as Methoni, its the standard H&S nightmare, but this one does have signs warning of danger, you walk right up to the edge to read them but they are there! There is a great deal of restoration work being undertaken and some areas are magnificent, to be fair as with nearly everywhere we have been in Greece it is free to enter so what’s to complain about.

View through castle gates down over the Gulf of Messenia

This is much more in the ‘Greek style’ I had set in my mind that Greece should look like. Lots of narrow, cobbled streets and stairways are clustered against the hill, which all lead up to that inevitable Venetian castle. There are houses plugged into every available gap, tiny old cottages and more modern houses all jumbled along the streets with steep steps running up between them. We do like they whitewash lines on the paths and steps  to help you see where you are going – oddly they also whitewash the trees – not sure how you wouldn’t see a tree but we have seen this in most towns.  Even at this time of year there is plenty of colour in the flower pots that line the streets, and if not the pots themselves are brightly painted in many cases.

Less steps – more a whitewashed ski run to get up and down

Who needs flowers with this lot

How I thought Greece would look – and does

We followed the streets up around the castle and by chance came upon the monastery, occupied by the Timios Prodromos Convent. I really do hate to keep saying everywhere and everything is amazing, stunning, incredible etc. – but again this was. There was nothing stating we could or couldn’t go in or even signs that tell you it is a monastery. It looked like a big church and the door was open, so we walked in and  found ourselves in the courtyard. There were several monks and nuns wandering around and they seemed fine with us being there, so we had a meander and then spotted the gift shop, from which we reasoned they accept visitors. At this stage a weeny old nun came over and offered us both some of her small star shaped biscuits. Being us of course we never refuse a biscuit (honey and tasty), she seemed happy we had accepted them, said a few words and waved her arms in a go  look around type gesture.

St. John the Baptist Monastery entrance

View over the monastery grounds from nearly the top of the old castle in the grounds

The tiny chapel was open (I was asked to put on a skirt, the nuns have a pile of them handy for female tourists in trousers) ornately decorated (chapel not skirt) and full of iconic paintings, we both felt very honoured to have been allowed to go inside.  We were allowed to wander freely all over the monastery grounds, at one point a nun came over to send us onto the roof of one of the churches. Behind the chapel in the parapets there were tiny cells in which we guess the original monks lived, one was set out with all the possessions a monk would have had which you could view through a gate, it was taller than it was wide or long, the bed no more than a couple of feet long.

As there wasn’t an entrance fee or anywhere to donate money we popped into the gift shop to do some spending. It sold small religious Orthodox paintings, jewellery etc. I picked up several bits and pieces and the shopkeeper nun charged us just €7 for the lot, worth every penny as an entrance fee.  A very beautiful place to visit where we were made to feel really welcome, and to be fair they do bake some pretty good biscuits 🙂

One of the many friendly nuns in the courtyard, selling her postcards

Inside the tiny ornate chapel

Back down at town we had a wander around the harbour and the shops, stopping for an afternoon coffee. Well I was brave and had Greek coffee, Iain was wise had had tea. Its not the strength of the coffee that bothers us, its why they put half a ton of coffee grounds in the cup with it.  As usual the cafes were full of older Greek men passing their days drinking strong coffee and smoking, and also as usual not a female coffee drinker to be seen.

Many of the old town houses here seem to have fallen into ruin, but there is still plenty of Venetian architecture with wrought iron balcony railings and arched windows and doors. Down at the harbour are the biggest buildings, mainly empty now, there are old public buildings and what would have been large houses. Towards the castle are the pretty smaller cottages, called Laika or folk houses that have small courtyards but no real gardens, here the washing is hung proudly on the main street, string vests, undies the lot!

There are plenty of shops, including several hardware shops, they must be popular for some reason. Even though it was siesta time and most shops were shut they still leave everything outside, despite the poverty problems here is seems people are able to resist shoplifting from outside closed shops.

 A town of many hardware shops, colourful and trusting

As we were on our way back to the campsite we spotted a small shop that sold olives! It said closed but there was an elderly Greek lady inside, we asked if we could come in and she opened up – hurray at last we have found good local olives, expensive good local olives but they taste superb so are worth the money. As we left the shop we spotted the bakery, and very cute very old Greek lady merrily waving to us out of the window of her shop with a very fetching gap toothed smile. We just had to go in to her shop and buy a small loaf, nope she wanted us to buy the biggest loaf she had, suckers that we are we did. 

bread, olives and small bottle of Metaxa – that’s Stick sorted for food for the week

“By all means..”Socrates, Greece 5thc BC

We are ending the week exactly where we started it, still at Camping Finikes. We have talked a few times about moving on but so far that hasn’t happened.  The days have passed very quickly considering we have done very little. It is amazing that a few days sunshine has turned our heads away from all the traveling and culture plans and straight towards sitting in the sun and baking to a shade of salmon pink. We make the effort to stroll onto the beach each morning and check out the water temperature (still a tad chilly) and just spend half an hour looking at the amazing views of sand, sea and snow covered Taygetos mountains – then we really do thank our lucky stars that we here.

It is very easy to understand how people spend the whole winter somewhere like this and just amble their days away, we could do it. Entertainment each day consists of watching fellow campers, most of whom are here from November through to April, going about their days. The danger doing this being that most campers here have some great ‘boy toys’ and Iain is thinking we need to invest in some of the gadgets ourselves. The large kayak owned by our German neighbours has been launched a few times (we need one?), Pierre has what we both consider to be one of the best tow-cars we have seen, every time he starts it up Iain has the wistful ‘could I have one of those faces’ (and he has priced one on the internet). To be fair its very hilly here and there are a few electric bikes on site (on our list). We will probably need to be thinking about moving on from this site soon before we consider a 5th Wheel to tow around too as that is catching Iain’s eye daily!

 The ultimate tow-car?

Whilst it is out of season her right now there are still plenty of campsites open, just along this stretch of road there are four open within 2 km, but as we have said before there is a distinct lack of motorhomes. Campsite prices vary across the Peloponnese from €11 per night up to €22 but the facilities offered are pretty similar. We have emailed some sites to check if they are open and some come back with great offers, whilst others quote a top dollar rate which is double the price of another site five minutes down the road. Not sure why this site has more people on than any of the others, we have had a wander around them all and there isn’t a difference we can find other than people on a site seem to attract more people.

We haven’t strayed too far this week, we did walk into nearby village of Finikounda, only 2km along the beach, although we did have to cross a river by means on a fallen cork tree at the end of the beach to get there, not the best route but we made it. The village was quiet with a few bars open but as we are finding everywhere the Greek people were very welcoming. We were looking for an ATM to draw out some cash, but someone told us that’s only possible between April and October! Most of the ATM’s are closed down for the winter so we need to go to the next town where there is a bank which will have a working ATM.  The Greek people seem to us quite akin to the Italians (bet that is a very un-PC thing to say), they are loud, happy and slightly manic, everything involves big arm waving and gestures; but most of all we have found Greek people to be incredibly friendly and accommodating, nothing is too much trouble.

By this morning we were feeling like a couple of tourist slugs, just sitting around, So the bikes were dusted off and we stretched ourselves with a ride in the opposite direction of the village to Methoni, no cycle path so we took the main road but hardly any traffic so it was fine. The only concern we had was the falling rocks on the road, all the way along the road was strewn with rocks. The council here do not clear them up, so unless a motorist or farmer clears falls away the roads can be a very hazardous. What was worse than rocks for us was the hills! we do fairly flat cycling, this isn’t flat at all and I was coming round to the electric bike idea by the time we got there.

If the hills don’t finish you off the falling rocks will 

Methoni was worth every single second of effort, the view as we came around the corner to the village was breath taking. The village is set around the bay and the castle, one of the largest in the Mediterranean, spreads out along a rocky promontory. It’s not just one castle, its more like two – the main one set along the sea edge and connected to village by a bridge which crosses a vast moat. Then at the far end there is a causeway onto another fortified building – the Bourtzi, which was a prison and place of executions during the Turkish Occupation. Built in 1500 the causeway is actually paved and is like a small roadway which connects the Bourtzi to the massive sea gate of the castle. Being Greece we were allowed to wander around everywhere, climb the castle steps and walls and generally take our lives into our own hands, there is nothing stopping you falling to a certain death from the tops of the walls except your own common sense and it seems the Greeks use this rather than fences and ropes – we like their style.

Methoni Castle – first views from the National Road

the sea gate

Looking back over the causeway from the fortified prison to the sea gate

the Bourtzi – prison

One of the reasons for cycling in into Methoni was my concern that it might be difficult to park the van. I couldn’t have been more wrong with that worry, we could have parked anywhere we wanted as there were two or three tourist cars and a few cyclists and pretty much enough parking left over for a fleet of motorhomes. We treated ourselves to lunch in Methoni village square, making the basic error of not really looking at where we had chosen to eat – it was an Austrian restaurant! ok not the most authentic Greek lunch but never mind, it was all good and Iain treated himself to his first Metaxa to fortify himself for the cycle (mountain) ride home. As we left the village we spotted a small electrical shop, we have been looking for one for weeks as our kettle is on its last legs. I was prepared in advance with a translation which I gave to Iain, whilst I waited outside with the bikes. I heard Iain dutifully ask for a ‘katsarola’, then a big discussion and much opening of boxes. Turns out that I sent him him in for a ‘fish kettle’, ah well he sorted it our eventually and we are now the proud owners of something that looks like the bridge of the SS Enterprise.

A well earned Metaxa

The other piece of equipment that has now met its demise is my Kindle 😦 This is sad as I have 40’ish new books loaded to read, it becomes even sadder when our kind neighbour passed over 100 new books to add on via a plug in. We have tried all the resets, removal of battery etc – its kaput. I have downloaded a reading app onto my mini lap top so will be testing that out until we find a supplier of Kindles somewhere on our travels. On the upside I was after a Kindle Voyage so that is now on the shopping list, back to downside they are not yet for sale in Greece.

After our first two weeks in Greece our overall impression is – loving it. The concerns of coming this far with a motorhome were always in the back of our minds, our rubbish research meant we were unsure on standard or prices of campsites, what to expect in terms of roads, shops, food, people etc; yes we know it was never going to be Outer Mongolia but it was well outside our usual comfort zone.  Without a doubt the whole experience has been made really easy and enjoyable by the Greek people and their kindness to a couple of Brits with no real plans, an incredibly limited Greek vocabulary and no map! We would have to give the roads a half tick but for everything else Greece in a motorhome is so far a fabulous idea, one of those we wish we had thought of earlier :).

καλημέρα = kali̱méra = Good day (it’s a start)

Greece so far has been a revelation. Simple things such as Corfu being pretty much next-door to Albania and opposite to Italy, when we thought all the islands were down by Crete, who would have thought it? Just confirms our total ignorance of the geography of the country. I expected all the housing to be whitewashed villas with blue roofs, a bit Mama Mia really but we haven’t seen sight nor sound of Meryl Streep and now find that we would need to visit Rhodes or the other Cycklades Islands for that type of architecture. Most shocking of all – not sniff of any houmous, we have tried several shops and a couple of supermarkets and not a hint of it anywhere – the search will continue.

The weather too has been a bit surprising – for the first few days it has to be said it was cold, not only that it was overcast too, but low and behold the sunshine moved in on New Years Day, we were out with the awning and sun chairs and sat in the sun by mid morning. Since then the sun has made a longer appearance each day and temperatures have climbed slowly. We are liking here that the Greeks do not go for that pretend winter look – all bundled up in boots and big leather coats when its warm enough to sit on the beach, there were people without coats on in town yesterday and they were not tourists!

 New Years Eve – somewhat chilly, refuse to wear a coat but the hat was needed

Normal sunshine service resumed on New Years Day

It is certainly significantly quieter here than we have experienced in Spain or Portugal at the same time of year. Our campsite here, Ionion Beach, has pitches for upwards of 200 motorhomes, this week there have been between seven and ten most days, several Bulgarians, a couple of French and a few British coming and going. Everything is very, very laid back at the campsite, you just come in park up and pay when you want to leave. They don’t check you in as such, no passports or details are needed they just smile and wave a lot and leave you to enjoy it. Most motorhomes are taking advantage of the pitches right on the edge of the beach, premium pitches in high season but now just €15 per night (which is cheaper than with an ACSI discount?)

New Years Day walk – first outing for the milk bottles

The village we are staying at is called Glyfa (or Glifa depending on which sign you read on the roads), its beyond small, its minute. There is a very old fashioned shop that is as big as the average living room, four tavernas, a church and many goats dotted around in large gardens and olive groves. We are an hour and a bit South West of Patras and we are looking out over to the island of Zakynthos which is 10 miles across the sea from our pitch. It is a small tourist industry here which appears to rely on the many campsites and a few villas, we have only seen one small hotel on the edge of the village. Walking along the beach from the campsite here there are houses, huts, villas, in fact pretty much every type of dwelling imaginable right on the shoreline for at least a mile or two. Each has its own small piece of beach, the homes vary from beautifully restored large whitewashed villas to smaller fishing cottages, then right down to what can only be described as shanty shacks. Amongst them there are tavernas that look like they are just a 10 ft square in someone’s garden and a few restaurants perched out over the sea.  Not sure this is ever a hub for the mass tourism industry even in high summer, more its a little bit of 1950’s Greece stuck in a bit of a time warp, and it really is all the better for it in our opinion. A few miles up the road is the town of Vartholomio, again not really geared towards tourism but very much open and lively, plenty of shops, bars and cafes.

On New Years Day I walked into the village for some bread, one taverna was open as was the village shop but there were very few people around. The shop sells pretty much most essentials, the elderly gentleman running the shop did not speak any English so it was my three words of Greek greetings and then lots of arm waving to describe bread – its nearly impossible to describe bread with your hands believe me! In the end I tried a bit of French and he smiled and pointed me to an old wooden box which contained what was definitely fresh bread once, but probably a good 24 hours before I was in the shop. I didn’t have the heart not to buy it just because it was a bit stale, I paid my money and the fresh bread we planned to have for lunch was replaced by toast.

Everywhere we go there is a shrine, we are not talking massive here just small box like structure at the side of the road, outside houses etc. some have doors, but are never locked, others are open to the elements. They all contain holy pictures, fresh flowers, small tokens etc but what is amazing is they are not damaged, robbed or daubed with graffiti. At home I cannot believe the beautiful plaques and pictures could be left yet here there seems to be a respect that people use these shrines not only to honour the dead from road accidents but also to give thanks if someone survived an accident. For the first days it was exciting everytime we spotted one, now we realise they are every couple of hundred yards its a bit worrying just how many road accidents there must be.

First impressions of Greece, we are loving it. People are very kind and patient with us and the weather is glorious now (and fingers crossed stays that way for a while). Diesel is very cheap here at €1.11 per litre (87p) which is nearly 30p a litre cheaper than home. Food is cheap too, we did a massive Lidl shop and only stopped buying due to the size of our fridge. We stocked up on essentials and also went mad with treats and  and still only spent a few euro over our normal meager budget. We have used a couple of the local small mini-markets, just as cheap there to be fair, rice and grains are sold by the sack load so we will be sticking to Lidl pre-packed for space reasons.

We hear that Greece is facing political turmoil over the coming months, with massive 30% unemployment you cannot blame them. Whilst we read before we came about the lack of shops, food etc – its simply not something we are seeing. In the larger villages the grocers are packed full with good fruit and vegetables, there are of course empty shop units, no more than we have at home. There are beggars in the towns and villages, mainly women and young teenage children, some sell vegetables or wash windscreens, others just sit on kerb-sides and call for money. I had a few concerns that the Greeks were reported to be anti tourists from Germany and the UK, that has certainly not been the case with anyone we have met. People are very kind, polite and friendly. A young lad in the garage yesterday told us its rare to see British here as its usually German or French that visit, he was pleased to be able to practice his English. The chap that sells tomatoes on the roadside a mile past the campsite waves to us as we pass each way, the Greeks so far have been more welcoming than we could have hoped for.

We had a fright on Friday when we tried four different atm’s to get some cash out – not a one would give me any money. Our thought was there had been a run on the banks as they had a few years ago, at the fifth bank Iain went and tried and got cash no problem, so it looks like it was just my card not being liked – phew!

We have enjoyed our ‘mini break’ holiday here at Glyfa for the last 5 days, so much so we may stay for the next week too. There are some thermal springs, a castle and some Roman baths (in Greece??) we need to explore before we leave and Iain is becoming quite addicted to a couple of hours sunshine each afternoon so its going to prove difficult to drag him off to do some cultural touring. As today was a little overcast we took the opportunity to get out for a bit of a walk, with the intention of heading over to the said Roman baths, we got as far as the next village Arkoudi before we realised we didn’t actually have a map or any firm idea where we were heading. Having walked to the village along the rural road for nearly 5 miles we had seen only three cars, there really is hardly a soul on the roads. The nearest we saw to traffic was the lonely sheep herder moving his flock at break neck speed outside at Arkoudi. We stopped for a picnic on the beach, were stunned to see someone swimming in the sea (its no way warm enough for that malarkey) and found a  new friend in a stray dog who adopted us in the hope of some spare titbits (he was disappointed!). Several miles later we are back at the campsite, the sun it making its way out so that is us finished for for the weekend.

That old cliche of ‘rush hour’ but its fairly true around here

Arkoudi – the teeniest of holiay resorts

Whilst our Greek is progressing painfully slowly we are still trying. Obviously Google Translate is the ‘go to’ for any words we want to learn. I did however come across a website that showed there is room for lots of confusion using literal translations:

Greek Saying “Η ζωή είναι σαν ένα αγγούρι, ο έναs το τρώει και δροσιστείτε, και ο άλλος το τρώει και ζορίζετε.”
Literal English Translation: “Life is like a cucumber, one person eats it and is refreshed, and another person eats it and struggles.”
What the Greeks really mean: “Life is simply what you make of it.”

Week 9 – Greece, Elis Peloponnese

It all started reasonably well. The ferry was 2 hours late in leaving Ancona but as we were heading for Greece where time matters even less than Italy we weren’t too worried. The crew kindly offered us an electric hook up on the ferry, as we had very little in the fridge we declined. In our experience car decks are always freezing and our fridge stays cold enough for 24 hours, the crossing is only 22 hours so we will be fine. Once on-board we found our free cabin, on a par with Brittany Ferries, and then we went to see the purser for our meal discounts – 30% of all meals for the trip. Anek Lines and Mimoan are all one company, as they cannot offer Camping On-board to motorhomes in winter, and on a few of their ferries where there isn’t an open deck, they give a free cabin and the meal offer. Pretty amazing deal as would say that 50% of the passengers were sleeping in chairs as the cabins were coming in at nearly €200 for the night.

We were due to dock at the first port of call, Igoumenitsa, around 7am the next morning, then after unloading and re-loading a further 5 hours onto Patras so arrival eta was 3pm Sunday. We woke up around 7am to tannoy announcements for all passengers to stay seated, and a garbled message about the North Atlantic. To be honest we thought they were talking about the storm so had a lie in and wandered down for breakfast late morning. When we did we found it was  the Norman Atlantic, an Anek Ferry and it was on fire, our ship has turned back as it neared port to assist and we were the closest vessel, with ships joining the circling of the stricken ferry continuously.

Its very hard to describe watching a burning ship with smoke billowing, flames leaping out from the decks, explosions every few minutes and seeing at least 60-70 people stood on the deck waiting for rescue. The passengers and crew on the ship needed winching to safety by helicopters, incredibly the whole operation to airlift them all lasted 28 hours. Most people will have seen or read news reports of the events, so its not something I feel it’s appropriate to write too much about in a blog, suffice to say its something we will always remember and will count our blessings we happened to be on the right ferry at the right time and not the other way around.

In the middle of this Iain needed to be taken down to the car decks to get some insulin and medications from the van, as we were going to be on-board for three days rather than one. At which point he finds that this ship is not freezing on the car decks, its roasting as there is a massive generator running down there. Our fridge is turning intoa cooker and a  12 months supply of insulin is about to go off. We managed to save it by bringing it upstairs where the bar staff kept it in the fridge for us. The rest of the contents of our fridge have been disposed of, however the odour will be staying with us for some days we think. The heat was enough to actually start heating the water in our tanks to a temperature that would be fine for a shower.

We finally left the fire scene late afternoon Monday when all passengers and crew had been rescued. This meant that we would be arriving in Patras around 3am, so our plan was to stay on the dock until day-light as we had no idea on roads, routes etc. When we arrived I asked the Customs officer if we could park up until morning, he said that wouldn’t be possible. I asked where we could stay and he pointed to a carpark outside the fences. I inquired if he thought we would be safe there and he told me “no not at all, beware the Afghans”(I assumed he meant people, not dogs). Patras looks a bit like Calais, fencing everywhere as immigrants try to sneak on boats bound for Italy. The carpark didn’t seem appealing so next question was what he would suggest, I had to laugh at his response “I would drive until out of the city and away from Afghans then rest somewhere safe until daylight”. Thanks for that, we felt so much better, not! We decided to aim for a campsite at Glifa just over an hour and a half away. Out of the docks and just as we should have turned onto the motorway, we realised we had wrong slotted – right into the back streets of Patras. It is probably as safe as houses, but if you have never been there before, its 4am, you haven’t slept since the previous morning you have a general apprehension about your first visit to an unknown country then trust me it was a bit scary. All we could do was hold our faith in Sat Nav and 10 minutes later we were back on the main road out of town, both praying for an easy drive with no further drama, which luckily was what we got. We saw nothing of Greece other than very dark roads, no traffic, not even some stray dogs, it all passed by in a blur as were both concentrating on the right turns to make sure we didn’t end up off route again. We finally arrived at the campsite at 5am, parked up outside the gates, switched off the engine and were out like lights within minutes

This morning all is good in our world again, the campsite we are at is the Ionion Beach. Its’s fabulous, our pitch is within 3 ft of the beach, there are only a few motorhomes here but we did meet some Brits this morning who were heading for San Marino and they gave us loads of tips for the best shops and most importantly the nearest Lidl 🙂 We have been to the village shops and caused some chaos with shopping due to our lack of language and my weighing all the fruit and vegetables wrongly. Hieroglyphics are already seeming like the the main focus of our world. We are slightly mollified by there being translations into German on many signs – my German is even worse than my French but it looks like we could be relying on it quite a bit on directions. In terms of shopping its even worse several times when we were out today one of us picked something up and said “has this got sugar in?” or “what type of bread is this?” – we don’t know, you cannot work it out unless you learn the whole new alphabet, so yes we are going to try. As always when in Rome…. pizza is out, chick peas and goat are in, as will be ouzo! On the way back from the village I made Iain stop for our first look at a Greek Orthodox Church, sadly locked up but we made do with peering in the windows, there is going to be visited quite a few churches and castles coming up in the very near future.

As of yet the sun isn’t shinning, it will be soon we have no doubt. Its been an eventful few days, a trip of 22 hours took 58 hours but it really isn’t something we can complain about, as our ferry journey ended at our intended destination. And now we are in Greece we intend to stay for several weeks and hopefully see a lot of the country before we move on in early Spring.

Week 8 – Italy to Greece

Well Christmas Day has been and gone, and the best bit is there are no decorations or tree to take down. We had decided we really didn’t want a traditional Christmas dinner, so we went mad and got a pizza from the parlour here – the way ahead for sure, zero washing up on Christmas Day equals bliss.

Whilst technically it wasn’t Boxing Day in San Marino, for some reason all the shops were shut and there wasn’t any public transport. We guessed they were taking a sneaky extra day off as a country so we decided to up and out of there and head on with our travels.

We didn’t really have a plan of where to go or even how far, but after 10 days inland we both agreed it was time to head to the coast. The road through Rimini was quiet as the Italians had also all apparently taken up the Boxing Day idea too, in under an hour we had our first glimpses of the Adriatic Coast. There is a toll road right down the coast but we ignored that and stayed on the main road which threads its way through the numerous holiday resorts. Between the road and the sea runs the main railway line, so to get across to the sea at any point you need to go under a bridge or over a level crossing. The majority of the bridges were too low for us so we flitted in and back out from the sea at the crossings.

Overall, it’s all a bit Butlins crossed with 1950’s Bognor. It’s certainly clean and tidy, to be fair everywhere we have been in Italy has been beautifully maintained.The promenades are immaculate with good cafes and restaurants but it does lack a little of the Italian glamour and style we saw on the Mediterranean coast. The beaches were mainly pebble and the road by the sea is dotted with hotels and campsites for mile after mile. The road is much easier to drive than on the Riveriera, there is a 3.5 tonne weight restriction so no major problems with traffic and it is a much less windy route as the road is fairly straight right down the Adriatic coast. 

The campsites are in plentiful supply, hundreds of them, obviously none of them actually open as that would mean the not small number of motorhomes about would have somewhere to stay. We checked ACSI and there was a campsite open 8 km inland. Worth going for the total difference in scenery, rolling hills with olive groves and stone villas. Campsite had a gigantic welcome sign stating they are “now open all year” – but no they weren’t, everything was locked up and you could see no one had been there for months. The lady at the house opposite reception was sweeping up leaves from her porch and trying to totally ignore the motorhome parked outside her gate. As she wouldn’t catch our eye we gave up and decide to go back to the faithful sostas.

We have found that on the coasts sostas are pretty few and far between, and a bit rubbish to be totally honest. As soon as we move inland they become more plentiful and more inviting to stay on. We picked Mondavio as the village has a sosta for five vans, and its free and to be honest we wanted to recover some of the money we spent on site fees in San Marino. Less than half an hour later we were at the bottom of a steepish hill, walled village above us and we are feeling rather smug that yet again we had found ‘the most beautiful village in Italy’ (there must be a factory that mass produces that sign as they all have it). It’s five bays on a small car park below the walls, there were apartment buildings around us and a few cars parked so we felt safe enough and park up and head off for our Boxing Day walk.

Mondavio was another gem of a find, it must be that every village in this country is on a hill top surrounded by a wall and looks pretty amazing. If this were the UK it would be a tourist mecca, here there doesn’t seem to be anyone much giving it a second glance but could be its much busier in summer.  Of course there is a the medieval castle, as always, built in 1492. Remarkable for the fact that it is largely intact, the moat between the castle walls houses some pretty over the top looking battering rams and other artifacts that had some connection to war and destruction but were less easy to name. Every single building looked like it had been renovated in the last few years, more likely the village is kept in pristine condition at all times. It should be once you have seen one of the villages you have seen them all but that really isnt the case. Each one has something very different  and we could easily spend the next 10 months just visiting cutesy Italian hilltop villages.

In the centre of the square was an old church that had seen better says, from outside we could hear cheesy Christmas songs being sang, we found a door in and were in the centre of nativity scene heaven, from simple scenes made of paper right up to elaborate displays with lights and sounds and pretty much everything in between. We did walk around the town but it was absolutely freezing, our noses were glowing so we gave up and headed back for a warm up. A peaceful evening until midnight, when a stream of cars starting coming and going.  It seems we were parked where the locals come for a drive and chat late evening, no-one bothered us at all but its hard to sleep with car doors banging every two minutes. By 1am it had started raining which quickly turned to hail – things quietened down quickly then as they all cleared off home, thankfully.

The big debate on our route to Greece has now been resolved. This morning we set our nose in the direction of Ancona, being totally unorganised we had no idea where the port was, no maps and no gps but reasoned that there would be pictures of a ferry on sign posts and that would get us through. After a few tours around we found a said sign and were onto the docks with minimal fuss, a very modern little area to check in and buy tickets, not a massive old fashioned port as we had expected. The advice we had was to shop around for a good price, we tried Superfast who offered €450 including a cabin but no space until Tuesday. We were the only people at the counter and  I could see a much bigger queue at Mimoan Lines so I believed it would be a better deal. We tried there next, kerrching – deal 🙂 We can’t sleep onboard in the motorohme as its winter, so they will give us a free cabin instead – total price €259, we snapped her hand off. She then muttered price change and we thought we had looked to keen – price dropped down to €252 so we could breathe again. The price we have is €50 less than the one we have from Brindisi which is a good 400-500 km from here so we are feeling pretty pleased with ourselves, lets hope that is still the case when the ship docks and we see what we are sailing on for this bargain price 🙂

So as I type we are sat in the boarding lanes on Ancona docks. There are several motorhomes waiting in the queues, a couple of Italians, one Finn and a few Germans. We sail at 4.30pm and its a 22 hour crossing, so that is going to be fun :). The lady in the office told us to go to the purser when we get onboard and he will give us some discount vouchers for food, not sure what to expect but sure it will be fine.  We have a couple of campsites pencilled in on the map for when we arrive so fingers crossed when we get there they are actually open, failing that we might just follow one of the other motorhomes and chance our luck they know where to go.

Arrivederci Italy its been ace, too short a visit but another one that is on the list to visit again.

Even in medieval villages you get some very funnily altered road signs