14th June 2012

Up bright and early to get packed for our 4.5 hour trip to the Amalfi coast, actually we’d started packing last night and were also updating the blogs before we put them on the Tumblr website, I kept checking the time on the computer as dinner was arranged at the farm for 8pm.. What I hadn’t considered was that it’s UK time on the computer, so at 8.45 we’re running down the road like loonies and despite explanations and apologies were greeted with a ‘certain stiffness’ from Mama. Ho-hum, in trouble again!

Back to the Amalfi trip - Man, was it hot! According to the temp gauge on the bike it reached 34C. So there were frequent stops for cold drinks until we eventually got onto Amalfi and I noticed that according to Dolly (sat-nav) it would take an hour to do 20 miles? Surely not..  then we ran into the traffic on the coast road - hundreds of nutters on scooters (each with his obvious desire for an exciting but very brief life), cars, buses, coaches, delivery vans, all infused with the unique Italian spirit of competition and absolute belief of immortality. The road itself is a switchback of blind twists, turns and tunnels that rarely allows higher than 2nd gear, to watch the locals at play explains the scarring on their vehicles!  Suffice to say that it took us almost 90 minutes..

The view from our bedroom patio doors.

The hotel was wonderful, perched on the rock with stone steps down to the crystal clear turquoise sea, our air-conditioned bedroom had a small but private patio with lemon trees almost growing through the French doors, Debs thought she was in heaven!

Who's a happy girl then?

After a shower we decided to descend the steps for a quick dip, it wasn’t until I found I was absent -mindedly counting that I realised that there were 212 of the damn things - No problem going down but the ascent was quite another matter.
After that a visit to a bar was essential.







To be truthful that was about it, we thoroughly chilled for the entire day, the hotel staff and service were superb, the food delicious ... but I wasn’t looking forward to the coast road tomorrow.

                              15th June 2012

Just bumming around with old friends

Steve: We woke early at 6am and opened the French doors, flooding the room with sunlight and the beautiful aroma of lemons from the trees edging the patio, and then (I’m not ashamed to admit) that we just lay there and lazed, chatting about the trip and reminding each other that we really should get up - which we did at 8.25 for a leisurely breakfast taken on the terrace overlooking the azure Mediterranean sea. As an aside, Debs assured me that she wouldn’t mind a permanent change to our lifestyle if it meant we could live like this..

I know I said that I wasn’t looking forward to the coast road, but it was actually not too bad - still very narrow, winding and tricky, but without the scooters that had it such a nightmare previously, but the Pan was still a handful and with the weight of luggage onboard the sharp bends had to be taken with care.. especially as Debs was recording some of it on the camcorder and I knew I’d be accountable later!

Debs:  During our honeymoon 3 years ago we visited Pompeii and Vesuvius, and as we skirted Naples on our ride to Bari we recognised the majestic outline of the volcano some 20 miles to the west, and a similar distance to the east was a long ridge of hills which at first looked as though they were covered in small bonfires but they actually turned out to be geysers, plumes of hot steam shooting out like Indian smoke signals, and really quite a spectacle. We were not aware of so much activity nowadays, although it is apparently overdue for a cataclysmic eruption - I’d be grateful if it waited for another few weeks yet please!

The rest of our trip from the Mediterranean coast to the Adriatic was quite calm and uneventful. The scenery changing from tree-covered hills to vast plains of wheat stretching as far as the eye can see. The temperature climbing the further east we went, finally settling on a balmy 34 degrees.

We arrived in Bari at 3pm and boarding of the Superfast Ferry began at 4.45. Our tickets allowed us to travel in the sleeping lounge which was kitted out with reclining airline type seats - we could have booked cabins but at £85 per person they were far more expensive than any of the hotels on our trip!
This side room of 120 seats should be just the ticket, away from the bar and coffee lounges, curtains all drawn and night-lights ready to be switched over for a calm relaxed sleep.. oh what deluded fools we were! Our numbered seats were 1 & 2, directly in front of luggage shelf space and almost under a 92” T.V. screen which was permanently tuned into Euro 2012. We asked if the T.V. would be turned off later and was told by the brusque female Receptionist that it would not, but that it may have the volume turned down a little, eventually. Although irritated by her attitude I politely asked if the room was all sold out and would it be possible to move from our original places. “Seats 46 and 47” she barked at us, so off we went to investigate. Ahhhhh.. Great improvement - 5 rows back and dead centre to the screen.. Thanks.

It does seem that every ferry that I’ve every been on have a company policy for the largest screens showing wall to wall football, and this one appeared to comply in every respect!
Steve went and spoke with the purser who was willing to take about 30 euros off the cost of a double cabin, but at135 euros I still felt that was too expensive, so we decided to move to the very back the room and try to be invisible. The Purser had told us this would be fine as only 70 of the seats were reserved and there should be no problem.  As it transpired this was not such a great move as 3 families decided it would be nice to sit near us, with one young Dad boasting that his little girl, aged 3, never goes to sleep until about 3am, and how right he was. She ran around for hour after hour with Dad happily asleep on his lilo in a corner and Mum smiling at her child as if she had achieved something wonderful.
Steve meanwhile was happily plugged into his I-pod and snoring gently. I had taken a sea sick pill which normally knocks me out, but this time didn’t even come near. At about 11.30 I could take it no more and called to the mother to do something with her noisy child, so that the rest of us could get to sleep.
I threw my jacket over my head as the lights had not been dimmed, and then noticed that not only could I hear the football but piped jazz muzak over the loudspeakers. Did the mother sort the child out? Oh no, she picked her up and walked around the room to point out the other 2 sleeping children, this just made her shout and wriggle to get free, so off they take her for a walk around the ship and on return let her run amuck again!
Evil Englishwoman sits up and does the ‘Wrath of God’ look, so they make another attempt at controlling what was essentially a very clever little girl who had her parents wrapped round her little finger.
It was all too much so I took myself off to a brightly lit coffee lounge where I managed to squeeze onto an end of a soft sofa with lots of other happy sleeping passengers, and fell asleep for 2 hours until a fight broke out between a Russian and the man making the coffee, so I bought Steve a cup of tea and went back to wake him gently, nice person that I am!

                              16th June 2012

Steve: Hoorahhh.. We arrived at Igamanitsou in Greece at 5am (an hour early) so we were off the ferry and had bike reloaded to be on our way to the little island of Lefkada about 2.5 hrs away, and by 6am it was already 23 degrees so we knew we were in for a warm day.


The Island of Lefkada is south of Corfu and Kefelonia (the island of Captain Corelli and his merry mandolin) and is reached by a small bailey bridge.
We wound our way along the east coast passing some very pretty little coves until we reached the cove of Poros, which is about half a mile long with a dozen or so small blocks of apartments and several fish tavernas (to whom we later made frequent visits). Could this get any better?

Our view of of the window at Captain Nick

Arriving at ‘Captain Nick’ we were greeted by the elderly owners and shown our room and balcony, overlooking a tiny picturesque bay with a little stretch of beach at the bottom of the garden.

Ooh that's so nice!

Our motor bike gear was immediately tossed aside in preference for our swimmies and off we went for a dip and a morning of relaxing on the deserted beach, and it was still only 9.30am
The little beach was dotted with rock pools, and we played around like  kids for ages watching the water sloshing around and bringing shoals of tiny fish into the pool for our amusement. We found ourselves in deep concentration for ages finding the various sea life, from what Debs called ‘spiny Norman’ (a slowly creeping sea urchin) to a superbly camouflaged baby rockfish and lots of infant fish in all types and colours.

By 1 pm we were feeling a bit peckish so headed for the restaurant opposite, where two beers, a plate of small fish and a huge Greek salad was found to be just what we needed, but within two hours our sleepless night began to catch up on us so we sloped off to bed ‘for half hour’.  Two and a half hours later we woke to find the sun still hot and the place jumping….well, two fishermen had returned from their morning fishing, two yachts had arrived and dropped anchor and about a dozen butterflies were busy about their business.

San Nicolas Resort Hotel

Time for a little drink on the veranda where I spotted the top of a sun brolly along the rocks past the harbour so we dressed and went for a walk to investigate. Wow.. what a find, a wonderful hotel called the San Nicholas, which I had looked at when booking but decided £100 a night was too much. They had a lovely café bar with decking for sun loungers and brollies along the bottom of some steps which dropped onto a secluded little bit of beach. We were informed that non-residents were welcome and there was no charge as they hoped we would use the café. There was also a virtual pool and bar above which we were also welcome to use, so plans were laid for the following day.,

All that exercise meant we were ready for dinner, so returned to ’our’ restaurant for more small fish, some chunky bread and a carafe of chilled local white wine.. Absolutely delicious!

                              17th June 2012

A wonderful nights sleep in our mozzie free, air-conditioned room, and we woke to the ‘phutt putt’ of the small fishing boats returning from their nights fishing with what later transpired to be our supper.

Our lazy day at San Nicolas hotel was heaven. There was only room for about 8 couples and everyone very quiet either reading, or in mine and Steve’s case ‘snoring‘. We feel you can never have enough sleep and relaxation in between our long bike rides.


We sauntered back to our room at about 4.30 and sat on the veranda with a nice cold beer enjoying the usual busy view and contemplating dinner, before finding ourselves at ‘our’ restaurant again with big fish and salad, chunky bread and more cold white wine.. It's getting to be a very pleasurable habit!

                              18th June 2012

Debs: We have a minor problem, perhaps because of the current problems here no-one accepts any sort of credit or debit card, it’s all cash only.. So an early start was made for the trip to Lefkada town (the capital of this little island) which is only a 25 minutes ride.

We set off at 8.30am all togged up in our mesh bike gear (purchased specially for this trip) with shorts on underneath as the thermometer already reading 23c but by 9.30 it had climbed to 32c and we were melting! We fortunately found the Bank pretty quickly, but by the time we got back to our room we were ready to drop.





 So far the trip has gone pretty smoothly with hotels, routes and timings all pretty spot on, however today we realised there’s been a ‘hiccup’ in our calculations. Tomorrow we leave for Delphi which I was sure it was a 2.5 hour trip, but when we checked up with Dolly sat-nav she informed us it's actually 5.5 hours. Whoops!



The remainder of the day was sun,sand and snoozing, plus of course regular portions of fish and wine as evening drew in, but it's going be such a scorcher and a very long run, so looks like an even earlier start tomorrow…

                              19th June 2012

Steve: What a way to start the day.. I woke at 5.15am  and after gently waking Debs with a cuppa we loaded the panniers and by 6.30 we quietly took our leave from the gorgeous Poros Bay - We had a great time there and will definitely return one day soon..

Thanks to our boo-boo on the timing we had found ourselves with a 5.5 hour trip to Delphi, and with the temperature in the mid to high 30’s I thought it would be a trip from hell. From our journey down I knew that it would take us about an hour to get off the Island of Lefkada across the bailey bridge onto the mainland, and that the first part was also very twisty roads with poor surfacing so there was little to be achieved by trying to push on through this section.

So it was just before 7.30 that we hit the mainland but the ride up through the Island had been wonderful, the air was cool and fresh, carrying the scent of wild herbs blending with the unmistakable tang of the sea.. Beautiful,  I could have ridden like that all day, except that it was now 32C and climbing.


Our route took us mainly off-motorway and alongside the Corinth Canal, which may sound a little unglamorous - it’s anything but...

The road is well surfaced (for Greek roads) and runs for miles sweeping from one bend to the next where, without the very obvious Police and camera presence. consistently low and changing speed limits you could wind through here in the high 90’s. As it was my sat-nav was wailing almost constantly with camera warnings, and I saw 3 speed traps.. Not fair, I wanted to play!

The food and coffee was good too..

We ensured that there were plenty of breaks for water and snacks, as dehydration in these conditions would be all too easy, and found a really nice coffee shop alongside the canal with beautiful view..

OK I give up, just have a look at the photo..





Eventually we arrived at the craziness that is Delphi, it reminded me of Skegness in high summer -  loads of souvenir shops, snack bars, dreadful parking and too many coaches, but we found our hotel and after booking in we went to find a cold beer!




One great feature about the place is that it’s so high up in the mountains that everywhere has a superb vista, and our bar was no exception, you just can’t encompass the immense view in one go.

Seriously chilled we sauntered down to the site to visit the museum, I’m not really into such things but this was impressive with artefacts over 3000 years old that had been recovered and placed on display - wonderful.






It was still extremely hot and although very enjoyable the ride had taken its toll so we arranged to do the site trip in the morning, and went into the town for some food and wine.
Unfortunately the wine was a little too pleasant for Debs, and by the time we got back to our room she warned me that the curtains just wouldn‘t keep still!

                                   20th June 2012       

Steve:  Another ‘let’s get up early and pack day’ except this didn’t happen, we kinda wandered into breakfast and then onto the archaeological site where we  slogged around the sanctuaries of Apollo and Athena at Mount Parnassus, the centre of the world in Greek mythology and home of the Omphalos - the seat of the prophetess Sybil (there was a prophetess Sybil in the film ’The Matrix’, just for movie buffs).


I have to say that the archaeological site was very impressive and magisterial.. Still damn hot though!

Back to the hotel to change and head off for Athens where we’d booked a little hotel in the suburbs. Now this is a 2.5 hour ride that actually took nearly 4 hours. Just  the mood that day I guess, we chilled man..

See you tomorrow..