Home of the Gods

15.05.2013
The joy of being best friends with caravanners is that they have a car to transport you to the supermarket which saves time as you don't have to stop in route.
So we popped into town to stock up on essentials such as ouzo and found a very drinkable CDR Villages at a mere €2.99 in Lidl.
Easy drive to Plaka which is close Mt. Olympus but no sign of any gods let alone Zeus. May to sacrifice a virgin or two as Bob feeling distinctly under the weather and has now taken to her bed. Is it serious ? Its in the lap of the gods.

All's well.....

14.05.2013
Puncture repair only took half hour but they got lost trying to remember where they'd left us......
On the road  and arrived KASTRAKI BY 13.00.
Fairly spectacular drive into mountains with lots of hairpins. Weather not good but cracking group meal in restaurant. Fairly refrained drinkers and ONBF not quite of the usual standard.
Trip by coach to monasteries perched high on mountain crags very interesting. 7 of us elected to walk back to campsite as weather stunning, views magnificent and finished up at a taverna for lunch.
Everybody out for evening drink and things loosening up nicely. Bob is not well having found a cold somewhere and feeling below par last couple of days

Off to Greece...first calamity

10.05.13
The meal was very good and a motley crew has assembled who are well travelled, interesting and not taking things too seriously which may prove a problem for our revered leader sometime in the future. We have made instant friends with one of the 2 caravanners  Geoff & Sue who are parked next to us, arrived at the same time and seem to be on our wave length..... and may prove handy for transport with their car.
11.05.13
At leisure. Into San Marino by bus (with a crowd of fellow tourers) which is not so much a country as a shopping mall and pizza parlour. Pleasant enough place with great views but little to warrant lingering. Nice lunch with our new best friends .
12.05.13
Left campsite at 9am  for run to Ancona (119 km) where we boarded ferry overnight to Igoumenitsa  in Greece. Farcical loading procedure involving much shouting and swearing which could have been avoided by simply explaining where they wanted each unit to park instead of assuming we were mind readers. Left port at 14.00 - ETA 08.00/09.00 depending on who you ask. Bob not feeling too well.
Food & drinks on board Minoan Lines extremely expensive - 42€  for dinner for 2 indifferent plates and 2 drinks. Good chat with Geoff & Sue, now officially  our new best friends ( or Onbf ) sitting on the deck in glorious sunshine as we sailed the Adriatic. Passable night in cabins as the camping deck was full . Times all to cock as Greece is CET +1HR  and the boat operates on Greek time always. So up at 06.30 but docking was 09.00 and not 08.00 as we had been told so a lot of sitting around.
When we rejoined vehicles Geoff found flat tyre on caravan ( double axle jobby.... V.expensive on toll roads). Managed to reinflate and we followed them to nearest fuel station ( diesel 20c cheaper than Italy so everybody needed to fill up) where nice man got in his car and led them off to a tyre shop. We stayed at fuel station and are waiting for them to return as I type..(unless they've been sold into slavery already)

The merry band assembles..

9.05.2013
From Bellinzona to Parma was uneventful apart from chaos at the Italian border where one or other of the customs were on a go slow. Fortunately I spotted a seemingly empty lane for caravans, overtook 2 lanes of stationery traffic for 500 metres and whipped through without anyone seeming to notice or care if they did. We were probably caught on CCTV and have a European arrest warrant out. The mirth was short lived as we ran into hell on earth transiting the Milan tangential or the product of the M25 and. spaghetti junction.. Chaos was a polite description. Then on to Parma and a very pleasant little campsite in the countryside at Tabiano, a thermal spa town.
10.05.2013
To San Marino by 1pm and meeting up with the rest of the group who seem a happy bunch. We have drinks and a meal this evening and and no doubt there will be more to say on group dynamics in a while.

Into Switzerland...

07.05.2013

A good run through the Vosages after a brief but unnecessary detour into Nancy for supplies of bottled water and red wine ( I wanted to make sure that we had plenty of the essentials on board as Greek wine is crap and Turkish is expensive and Italian supermarkets not as plentiful as elsewhere so as we were heading into Germany via Switzerland  decided to stock up asap on French wineboxes. We had to cross the centre of the town at 9.30  ... And I mean centre... to find the Auchan S/M which was not good and expensive and then discovered lots of better options on the route.....) Anyway, we are now sorted . Spent the night at Bad Sackingen in aire @ €10.

08.05.2013

Great run down to the Italian border, with stunning views of snowcapped mountains (Bob was most upset when I discovered that the pass over the St. Gottard was still closed)  stopping at incredibly expensive Swiss campsite which is OK but close to motorway and noisy. Bob did the driving from Bad Sack.. down to Kussnacht and managed to negotiate gods own traffic jam round Zurich and roadworks from hell on the only single carriageway joining two motorways between Schwyz and Altdorf that was twisty and narrow which she loves.....not. It took ages to find anywhere to pull off and changeover and when we finally did it was only 1/2 mile from the next motorway.....hey ho, all good experience but I did have to change my trousers.
Queued for an hour to get through the stacking for the St Gottard .....strangely busy for a Wednesday I thought....and then took the pretty route to Bellinzona where we  stopped at the extremely expensive TCS site near the noisy motorway.
Original plan to have tomorrow as rest day has been  altered and we shall head to Parma to ham it up.
......later......have discovered after a walk that the noise is not the motorway but the raging Ticino river just over the bank so apologies.

The adventure begins....

May 6th 2013
Spent the night at Gravelines and left at 9am in glorious sunshine.....  just the ticket for the start of an adventure. As we are fulfilling my desire to follow the crusader trail we have adopted the personas of a knight and his squire and the Gf (courtesy of Blackadder) is now referred to as Bob ...(to whom I find myself strangely attracted when we wrestle like lads do..).
Bob decided to do driving on this trip in case of emergencies like P&M in Croatia last year and before we left drove down to Somerset for the service and most of the way back. All that remained was to get her (him) driving on the continent which has happened for nigh on 40 years.....so after the morning tea   stop, Bob took the wheel for a couple of hours thro Belgium and down to Luxembourg. In his (her) defence, the roads in Belgium are now the worst in Europe with potholes the size of dustbin lids which have to be dodged constantly whilst trying to avoid being rear ended by Lithuanian maniacs delivering Russian prostitutes by the lorry load to paedophiles in Belgium and then having 30 miles of roadworks with lanes so narrow that traffic was moving in sequence to avoid side swiping.......and the lane markings were non existent in places where we had to switch motorways so it was a bit fraught.....but Bob coped well and I only screamed once.
So well in fact that we made Luxembourg ahead of schedule and merely stopping to refuel at £1 a litre, pushed on to Metz by 3.30. We intended overnighting at an aire by the river Moselle but it was overflowing(campsite, not river) so we stopped at the camping municipal next door which was very pleasant. 5 main walk into town which is well worth a visit and the cathedral is most impressive with stained glass from the 13th.C to Chagall in the 20th.
Very buzzy city. Good place to visit.

On the road to Turkey

More than 12 months ago I saw the chance to join a group on a trip to Turkey and persuaded the Gf that despite her trepidation and misgivings  this  would be fun.  So after a great deal of planning and research we are sitting in aire near Calais on a very pleasant sunny evening (which happens to be her birthday) contemplating a thousand mile journey to San Marino where we shall meet up with the other 10 vans in 5 days on Friday 10 May before heading across the Adriatic to Greece and on to Turkey. We've been vaccinated against hepatitis despite my protestations that I didn't share dirty needles or bodily fluids with homosexuals and tetanus despite my assertion that I had bad reactions to it ( and subsequently had a very uncomfortable 4 days). The van has been serviced and prepared so tonight -in  true Crusader style - will be spent in prayer as we prepare to take the Cross and meet the infidel at gates of Asia. We are looking forward to a great adventure.