The big balkan cycle adventure

I woke earlier then my alarm clock. But would only be really awake when a MF dog surprised me when I was 30 minutes cycling on a small road. The lady-hotel owner was really motherly when I said I did not take a breakfast (at 8 euro not really market conform) and  gave me a fruit juice and, some cake and 2 boiled eggs. I saddled Black Horse and started cycling passing the 3 lazy hotel watchdogs . I cycled to the beach and had a cake and 2 boiled egg breakfast.  Not a lot happened today except that the cycling today was great. I did 130K , of which a big part on small unpaved roads and no people to be seen. The first 50K was somewhat flat afterwards I had to cross the mountains to reach the coast. Luckily I passed a small town before so I had a sandwich and bought some cookies as lunch. The unpaved roads, often with steep climbs, where challenging but really great. The views well… Plotting a route on a map involves always some unknown factors : roads that only exist on paper, a ...

When I woke up today the sun was hiding behind the clouds, it would stay there for the rest of the day. The advantage being that it was some degrees cooler then the day before, better cycling weather. Eventually I decided not to take the taxi through the Preveza tunnel. The taxi man, understandable,  wanted to know less or more the exact time when I would be at the tunnel otherwise he could not promise when he would be available when I called him when I arrived at the tunnel. I plotted a route from Mesolongi through the inland some 120 K north to the coast, to place with a hotel, it turned  out to be that this would be Menidi, a tiny place at the coast with an available / affordable hotel. I left my vintage hotel and went in search for a breakfast, once found I hit the road and left sleepy Mesolongi via a kilometer-long boulevard which was build by someone with great ambitions but which never crystallised. Contrary to the salt which is produced in the nearby lagunas. Some kilo...

Today was a combination of following coastline, mountains, flat roads, cycling the inland, small roads, smaller roads, national road, some traffic, no traffic, tiny villages, big cities, good roads, bad roads, asphalt, gravel, climbing and descending….I would have said that  the weather was the only constant but also the weather changed during the day. From the morning till around 14.30 it was a clear sky, sunny and around 28 degrees, After 14.30 clouds appear and the temperature dropped a couple of degrees. Until Patras I followed mainly the coastline, cycling parallel to the highway. The Eurovelo designers had done  their best for the route to avoid as much as possible bigger and busy roads. I often had the impression there was no activities in the places I passed but that was mainly due that I was send over backstreets. I passed 3 other touring cyclists but besides a polite wave no further social interaction originated…  In Patras the Poloponessus is connected by the f...

Last evening I spend a great evening with George talking about the past and future. I said George goodbye later then my normal bed hour…so waking up in the morning took more time then usual…. I took Black Horse out of the basement with the help of the super friendly hotel owner , packed and was ready to ride out around  8.00. I had to cycle around 15 K across Athens to get to the short ferry which would bring me to the small Island Salamina. The weather was such that a T-shirt a 8.00 was all I needed (together with pants, socks,…) , today temperature would be around 28 degrees.  I was expecting to have to cycle busy roads until the ferry but most of the time I cycled narrow, quiet,  streets. Sometimes with a steep climb (and descent) and an encounter with a aggressive Greek car driver who stepped out of his car as I was blocking his way. Eventually world peace was re-established and I could continue my route. My friend George would have said, what a malaka…. In one of the...