janesadventures

  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 frie...

  Sunday Up fairly early and I walk along the beach while Geoff is recording the Little Terns. Back to the van for breakfast then we leave the Mediterranean coast for Ribaute. It is a small village about 40 km inland, with a lovely river for swimming and when we were last there you could camp by the river if you went to the local Mayors house and asked permission. Well, not surprisingly it has changed somewhat – the river is still as lovely but there’s lots and lots and lots of people. It is a Sunday and it is hot but we are quite surprised how many people there are. It’s probably featured in the guide to ‘The top 10 wild river swimming spots in France’ or something similar. Nevertheless, the swim was lovely. As we leave the river, I try to recreate a photo taken in 1985 of Geoff sitting on the bridge. After a bit off faffing and strange looks from the local youth, I take a couple of photos but when we compare them to the one we are trying to recreate, we realise it is the wron...