After crossing the border we had
forty kilometres to ride to Alexandroupoli, a large seaside city busy with
tourists. We now have the euro, one
Australian dollar is only worth 65c, it was 70c last weeks but the dollar has
lost ground. As we walk around things
feel familiar. Brands we recognize,
people dressed casually, women riding motor bikes and driving cars, we feel
very happy to be here. The shops close between 2pm and 6m, reopening until 9pm.
Everything is closed on Sunday except the bars and restaurants. Graffiti, which
is not seen in Asia, Central Asia or Turkey adorn buildings. Along the roads
small and large Greek Orthodox shrines honour deceased persons, after so many
months in Muslim countries it takes us by surprise. Supermarkets had a larger variety of foods
than we have seen in a long time, Mike was very excited to find Heinz baked beans
on the shelf. Heather no longer feels
like the invisible person in the room when Mike is talking with men and is
included in the conversation, such a great feeling but taking a little while to
get used to. Tea is no longer the go, coffee is the favourite, so now there are
coffee bars everywhere.
We visited the foreign police but
they could not/would not help us with Heather’s visa extension, their advice is
to wait until it is nearly run out and apply in whatever country we are in for
the extension. We will try again in
Athens.
At our hotel we met Tom, a young
English man doing the North to South ride from the tip of Norway to the most
southern part of Spain. We met Tom along
the way a number of times as he had the misfortune to have many punctures
which held him up. He would pass us and
a couple of days later be behind us again. We have not seen him for about a
week so we assume all is well with him and he is many days in front of us.
We were headed for Thessolonika.
When we stopped for lunch at Kavala, we were approached by two reporters who
asked if they could interview us. Lots
of people do long distance cycling but it was our age which interested them. A
couple of days later a couple in a car stopped to talk to us, they had seen the
article in their local newspaper. We had
a repeat of this in Katarini, so we have been in two newspapers now. Perhaps
the captions read “two crazy old Australians on bikes” Our route is along the coast passing many
seaside resorts with umbrellas and lounges on the beaches. The houses are typical Greek, white with
terra cotta roof. It is still hot and
while not huge hills like Turkey we are constantly up and down all the time.
Take away food is everywhere, cheese pies, souvlaki, gyros and pizza. When the
road goes up into the hills we ride through country towns, crops of cotton,
almonds, apples and peaches abound. People in the country towns are very
friendly. There are a number of businesses closed down everywhere we go. Restaurants
are very quiet, tables all laid out but no one sitting at them. Greece has proper camping grounds on the
beach and we have been using them, putting up the tent and going for a swim to
cool down. The water is not cold or deep and has no waves, it is like swimming
in a large pool. The Greeks are very
proud of their beaches but we find them full of rubbish, cigarette butts in the
sand and most have pebbles not sand.
Ten kilometers outside of
Thessalonika we took a wrong turn and ended up on a freeway. We had to ride twenty kilometres before we
could get off. We were hot and tired and the thought of finding the right road,
cycling back twenty kilometres, then finding the right road into Thessalonika
and riding another ten kilometres did not appeal. We were on the road to Athens and decided to
keep going in that direction. The roads in Greece are not very well signed, the
two maps we have are often incorrect, roads that do not exist appear on the
maps and over the next two weeks we have had to double back a number of times
because the roads lead to nowhere. It has been very frustrating. The main arterial road through Greece is the
national highway, a freeway, which we cannot ride on. Everyone uses this road and we can see why.
It is so easy to go many kilometres out of our way trying to find a road
leading to Athens. The signs on the
national highway indicated five hundred kilometres to Athens from Thessalonika , taking the
smaller roads, after riding three hundred kilometres, we still had three hundred
to go.
In the country olives are grown
everywhere, in every front yard. It does not rain here all summer and the land
is very dry and dusty. We stopped for lunch in a small country town where we
spoke to a couple of young men, who lived in Adelaide for five years when they
were younger, university students unable to find work over the holidays and not
happy about it, both their parents we working but were not confident about the
future. We had lunch here, no takeaway, so we went to the baker to buy bread,
the small general store to buy cheese and the outside bar to buy a drink and
eat our lunch. While we were eating the proprietor dressed a carcass of a sheep
for a festivity scheduled for that night, we had been invited to go by the boys
but declined, and the local men sat drinking beer. We left here with almonds, peaches and sugar
melon from the proprietor’s garden. Later on the same day we were invited to
join a group of men having a beer after work at an outside bar, they were all
working and telling us not believe what we hear about the Greek economy, they
were all working and happy with their lot. But at other times people tell us
things are not good, they are not spending, just in case, and expect it to take
twenty years before Greece is back on it’s feet and that Greek people will have
to make changes to work habits.
Heather had her second puncture, the last one
was just before Perth. We were just
about to descent into the port town of Volos, so Mike repaired it by the side
of the road. We had a rest day here,
hoping to catch ferries and island hop, but the ferries just went out and came
back, they did not go from island to island. Mike’s bike had a rear wheel
bearing wear out so that was replaced while we were here. We have now ridden
14,000 kilometers since we left Cranbourne and the bikes have given us very
little trouble so an occasional puncture and a worn wheel bearing are minor
hiccups. At the harbor a replica of a fifteen hundred BC craft was moored. A
wooden vessel with oars, the Augo, said to be used by Jason to return the
golden fleece with his crew called the Augonauts. Leaving Volos we continued on the coast road,
again badly signed. We stopped to ask
directions and locals told us we need to use the national highway, the roads
were difficult to negotiate, there were no signs saying no cyclist and we
should just go on the road, all the police can do is ask us to get off. So we took their advice and went on the
national highway but after only thirty kilometres we were then asked to get off by
the national highway authorities. Fortunately, the exit took us to a road leading
to a ferry which we caught across the bay to Agiokamio, and from there we rode
to Rovies, a quiet little coastal town.
The next day was Father’s Day so we decided to give Mike a break and booked
into a hotel. Not a busy hotel so no hustle and bustle, a
garden with large shady trees to sit it, and a room with space to unwind
in. We have had very few days off in
Greece, there have been no major attractions, we bypassed Thessalonika,
focusing on getting to Athens which has taken us longer than we expected so we had an extra day here, enjoying the break.
No comments:
Post a Comment