This morning we again had to make a difficult decision as to whether we should stay another night at spectacular Porto Katsiki or move on. This time the choice was made for us – our second toilet cassette looked as if it may not last another day. On such mundane matters, sometimes, our path is defined.
I stole myself against the drive ahead. I knew that at least the first part of the journey would be over the same difficult roads we had travelled on yesterday. If only I had known what the second half had in store I might not have been been so sanguine.
The journey we had to make was a total of 27 miles. Not a lot you might think. Given that it took us over two hours to complete gives you some idea of the problems to come. We wound our way along the west coast of Lefkada, with some phenomenal views, at times, of the imposing cliffs and stunning Adriatic.
After about 12 miles SatNav instructed us to turn off yesterday’s path and start on a road across the island to the east coast. Lefkada is a fairly mountainous island, but it’s highest peak is is only 3,600 feet. Not too bad you might think. However given that these mountains are packed into an island only 9 miles wide, you may see how steep the mountain sides are.
The road we took, and for this I lay no blame on SatNav – there was only one road, had to get up to an altitude of of 2,500 feet or so and then back down again all in the distance of 9 miles. To make matters worse it was a road which looked as if it is rarely used. What had once been a one track road had, for most of its distance been partially blocked by olive trees protruding from their fields into the road. On top of this there were numerous first gear hairpin bends, some of which needed me to perform a three point turn in order to get Basil round.
Our journey, apart from at times being a little hair raising, was extremely slow. For each overhanging olive tree it was necessary for me to reduce Basil’s speed to a crawl and, as best I could, minimise the amount of scraping to Basil’s sides. Suffice to say that although the road surface or the hairpin bends were not quite the worst we have ever seen, overall this stretch of road was the worst we have driven on in our 35,000 miles around Europe.
We eventually realised we had reached some kind of civilization when we started to see signs for rooms to let and the road width and standard improved and we finally arrived at lovely little campsite of Camping Desimi Beach (38.672625, 20.711554 €15 without ACSI at this time of year) which is located in a tiny hamlet consisting of a small cove with a sandy beach; two campsites; three or four tavernas (currently all closed); and a handful of private houses.
It is another idyllic spot, with Basil parked up with his feet in the water licking the day’s wounds. If at least one of the tavernas had been open I think we might have stayed here a few days but with our store cupboards running low we may have to move on after a couple of nights.
* On the birding front last evening there were big flocks of Alpine Swifts flying around Porto Katsiki. These birds are very impressive, swooping and turning like swallows or an ordinary swift, but much bigger with a wingspan of over half a metre!