Ancient sites and mountain gorges

 Van trip to Greece 2023.

Tuesday 18^th April.

Van packed, hoping we haven’t forgotten anything of major importance and leave Northumberland for our 3 month trip to Greece. The first stop on our journey is Sunderland, which may not sound that exciting bearing in mind our destination but it is exciting to us as we are going to see our first live music gig for a while – the rather spectacular DakhaBrakha. They are a Ukrainian band that Geoff has been interested in for some time. They only play a very small number of concerts in the UK so we never thought we would see them live – but here they are - playing in Sunderland - we couldn’t quite believe it! And it was a truly incredible concert. They were superb. There were quite a few Ukrainian nationals in the audience so the whole evening was rather an emotional rollercoaster. I later find out that Sunderland is a ‘city of sanctuary’, welcoming people fleeing violence and persecution.

Wednesday:

We stayed overnight with our friend Mike and Geoff spends some time playing Mike’s rather nice selection of guitars before we head to Dover and park up in a field a few miles from the ferry port, ready for the 8am ferry to Dunkirk.

Thursday: UK, France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany

Leave Dunkirk, heading towards Brussels. Stop at a service station and Geoff rather fancies the ‘Lekker Snaken’ on offer, but at 18 Euros makes do with a sausage roll. Circumnavigate Brussels (not surprisingly pretty busy), into Luxembourg where we fill up on the (reportedly) cheapest diesel in Europe and then into Germany where we park up for the night. 5 countries in one day, but thankfully no border crossings so it all goes fairly smoothly.

Friday: Germany

Lovely park up spot- cold overnight but the sun is rising as we leave. We are planning to get beyond Munich but want to stop at a museum in the Hohle Fels area where we are hoping to see a bone flute, which is thought to be one of the oldest musical instruments ever discovered. It’s around 40,000 years old and was made from the wing bone of a Griffon Vulture.  It seems that making music was as important 40,000 years ago as it is now.

Sadly the museum is closed but we did explore the Hohle Fels plateau to get an impression of where the flute was found – it is mountainous and wooded and rather nice.

Bone flute image from internet as we didn't get to see it in person

Drive on, past Munich and book into a campsite next to a lake. On first impressions it seems OK – it’s quite expensive and there’s not a lot of space as it’s squeezed in between the lake and a road but it does have fantastic showers where they play upbeat euro pop and there’s a nice sunset.

Saturday: Germany, Austria, Slovenia

Noisy night – road busy and big guns (no idea what they were) going off from 5am. Try to empty our toilet cassette but they have a new fangled machine we have never seen before. After much faffing and help from a nice German guy we discover it is not compatible with our cassette so can’t empty it.

Toilet Cassette cleaning machine

Beer bottle top sums up our thoughts of the Chiemsee campsite!

Call into a nearby service station for fuel and to buy the vignettes needed to travel on Austrian and Slovenian motorways.  Basically you pay a fixed amount which allows travel on any motorway for 7 or 10 days. The guy in the service station is very helpful and we apologise for the fact neither of us speak any German – we have spent the last couple of days apologising but people have been very gracious.

Into Austria and stop for a break at a service station in an incredible location surrounded by mountains. The inside is very spectacular too – swish self service restaurant and shop. Purchase a small bottle of cherry schnapps (well, when in Rome...) and carry on our journey. 

We have driven through a few mountain tunnels today but the last one we go through is 5km long – we enter the tunnel in Austria and exit in Slovenia. Make for a campsite which is in a lovely, lush green valley and run by a very welcoming, helpful family - just what we need for a couple of nights respite from travelling.

Sunday: Slovenia

Stay put for the day – walk around local tracks, meadows, woods with beautiful flowers and the sun is shining.

Community medicinal garden

Campsite 

Monday: Slovenia, Croatia

Have a little explore of a nearby nature reserve before carrying on our journey. It is a nice place, surrounded by large fields that are turned over to growing hops but not a lot of wildlife to be seen it’s drizzly.

We check Google maps for a route to our next destination, in Croatia. The quickest route is via the motorway but it’s a long way round so Geoff decides on the more direct route. I’m unsure as although it’s more direct and shorter in distance, the map is showing that it takes longer which suggests the roads aren’t the quickest. And they certainly weren’t. Geoff does love a back road but even he had had enough by the time we got onto the main road. Slovenia is beautiful though and I would definitely visit again.

Cross into Croatia and as Croatia joined the EU in January this year, there is no border crossing. It is not as I expected and I can’t say I’m overly enamoured– it feels rather bleak and the torrential rain and rather grim, unwelcoming service stations don’t help with the vibe. However, I’m aware that there are some beautiful places to visit and driving through flat plains on a motorway doesn’t give the best impression of a country.

Get to the camping spot we have identified not too far off the motorway and although it is clearly a big concern – chalets, restaurant, riding stables, it is completely deserted. A young girl appears out of nowhere and with the help of Google translate, we explain that we want to stay the night. She rings the owner who tells us to park up and pay her tomorrow.

Croation Campsite

Tuesday: Croatia, Serbia

Leave the campsite after running the gauntlet of a few dogs as I try to find the owner to pay. Onto the motorway, stop for fuel and a delicious spinach and feta pastry before arriving at the border crossing into Serbia. This is our first border crossing since leaving the UK. Get shouted at by a border crossing police woman as we inadvertently drive past her window but fortunately no problems as our documents are checked, vehicle looked at and passports stamped. Into Serbia and onto another motorway.

Turn off towards a campsite we are making for and straight into a Lidl to stock up on provisions. Get to the campsite and it’s lovely. The Serbian owner invites Geoff in to his house for a shot of the local speciality - plum schnapps, which Geoff later describes as plum rocket fuel.

As we sit in the van that evening, with a Miles Davis tune playing, the local Nightingale seems to be singing along.

Camping Plum - home of the Plum rocket fuel

Wednesday: Serbia, Bulgaria, Greece

Leave early and pick up fuel locally. Geoff has an interesting ‘discussion’ with the petrol station  guy who doesn’t speak any English and he doesn’t speak any Serbian but they both keep talking in the hope that the other will understand and eventually they do seem to impart the information needed. Later on we stop at a service station to buy a vignette so we can travel on the Bulgarian motorways. We are dealt with by a very curt, shouty lady but we don’t take it personally – it’s probably just her manner!

Leave Serbia and enter into Bulgaria. Fortunately, all pretty straightforward – not too long a queue, border guards accept our documents and have a look in the back of the van before letting us go through and onto the motorway. Again, not the best way to experience a country, driving along the transit routes.  No where really to pull up along the route so stop on a lay by on the side of the road with traffic thundering by for a coffee before carrying on and getting to the border with Greece.  It’s a bit of a free for all and as we drive towards the border crossing a large truck comes straight towards us. Fortunately we manage to pull over as the truck wasn’t going to stop.

We arrive in Greece and are pleased and excited and rather relieved. I’ve been filming the journey through the car window –there’s lots of film of my feet and the inside of the van but hopefully some footage will be good enough to make it into the public domain, once edited.

Get to a park up by the side of Lake Kerkini and it’s gorgeous. We are greeted by flocks of Pelicans (2 different species) and Pygmy Cormorants. Geoff sets about filming and recording for the evening.

Thursday: Greece

Fresh snow overnight on the mountains but as the morning progresses it starts to warm up and by the afternoon the snow has disappeared. It really is a lovely spot and in addition to splendid birdlife, we also see families of water snakes, terrapins, dragonflies and butterflies. It feels as if spring has arrived.

 

Spend the next few days exploring; visiting different parts of the lake and meeting people who are keen to share their knowledge of the area including a guy called George who lives locally and visits the lake every morning before work, to check what is about. He and Geoff have hit it off and he takes him to see a Grey Headed Woodpeckers nest. One morning Geoff goes out early to record and as he is standing still he feels something grab his leg. Dog? Jackal?  But when he looks down, he discovers it is a juvenile Green Woodpecker - although a juvenile, it is still pretty chunky. Geoff is wearing camouflage trousers and suspects the woodpecker mistook his leg for a tree!

We walk tracks into the woods, see various flowers, a wild cat, glass lizard (large legless lizard that looks like a snake), water buffalo (they are farmed in the area) lots of storks nesting on telegraph poles, birds including Little Bitterns, Bee Eaters, The Levant Sparrowhawk.  Geoff comments that I have a great list of birds spotted for a non bird spotter! One night when we are staying out in the van we hear a very eerie sound - it sounds like wailing babies but it is in fact packs of Jackals, howling across the lake as night falls.

We also see wild tortoises, pooteling along the side of the road. Geoff tells me the tale of Aeschylus - a Greek playwright from 500BC who met a tragic death one day. An eagle that had just caught a tortoise mistook Aeschylus’s bald head for a shiny rock. Eagles drop tortoise onto rocks to break them open to get to the flesh so it proceeds to drop the tortoise onto Aeschylus’s head, killing him instantly.

One morning we visit- a monastery in the hills – the Monastery of Timios Prodromos. We are greeted by very nice nuns who offer us strong coffee and biscuits before we wander around. It’s stunning - the photos don’t do it justice. After a while things start to get really busy (it’s a Greek public holiday) and just as we are leaving Geoff is enlisted by a family group to be their  official photographer. They are very friendly and tell us that the area we are in is very near the birthplace of Alexander the Great and is the ‘real Greece’!

 

Unfortunately there are no campsites in this area so we have 2 nights wild camping followed by one night in an Airbnb room. Our van is quite small, has a sink but no shower and over 8 days we stay in 2 lovely places with great showers and a place to wash and dry clothes which works really well.

On our last night in this area, we stay in our wild camping spot next to the lake as the following morning we are going on an early morning boat trip out onto the lake. Just as dusk is falling, Geoff goes for a look around and meets up with a Serbian guy who asks Geoff to film him walking to the lake. It turns out he’s an Instagram ‘influencer’ and shares his details with me, so now I am following the Serbian influencer known as ‘Mr Click’!

The next morning we go out on our boat trip. It’s a small boat with only one other person on the trip who is a photographer. It is absolutely magical. The weather is grey and overcast but there is no wind so the lake is very still and calm. It is so atmospheric. It is a wonderful way to end our visit to this area as we are moving on. We feel a bit sad to go as it has been such a great experience and we have met some lovely people but the Nestos Delta (with it's fair share of mosquitos no doubt) beckons.