Our night on the quayside at Napflio passed relatively peacefully, given how crowded the town was. When we arrived we had noticed a monster expedition vehicle, a type which we come across from time to time, parked adjacent to Basil on the car park. This morning Sarah noticed it was British. I saw the person I thought was the owner standing next to the vehicle and so ambled over for a chat.
On the occasions when we see these four wheel drive behemoths parked on a campsite in France, we often think they are just a vehicle for posing in. We like to imagine they’ve never been anywhere more adventurous than Nice! This was not the case with this British one. He and his partner had taken this vehicle virtually all over the world including Iran, China, India, Pakistan, Australia, just about the whole of South America and Canada. That is just a small snapshot of the countries involved! A properly used expedition vehicle. The couple now had elderly parents and grandchildren and so were more restricted in their adventures. I had a very enjoyable half an hour chatting with them and hearing some of their fascinating stories.
Today we have spent the whole day travelling north. Our speed was not helped by SatNav taking us into the tiny streets of Argos when looking for LIDL which I knew was somewhere on a main road. We eventually found it and did a shop.
Then, while navigating the outskirts of Athens on a motorway and I didn’t trust SatNav’s instructions, which is a problem when you start to second guess a computer, and ended up heading to the south of Athens rather than the north. Looking for somewhere for lunch we saw an empty LIDL car park, with a nice area of shade and rather cheekily parked up for a quick sandwich.
Finally, after nearly six hours of driving, we crossed over, by bridge, onto Greece’s second largest island, Evia. We had realised that tomorrow is a bank holiday in Greece, as 1stMay is in most of Europe, and we hadn’t got any bread. So we happened to see another LIDL and made it three in a day!
Basil and SatNav showed us two potential overnight stops and although neither was ideal we have plumped for some rough ground, next to a beach, with a view over to the mainland (38.389741, 23.801808). We are on the edge of a town called Eretria, which is quite a holiday resort, by Greek standards. Most Greek seaside towns we have seen so far have only had small family run hotels but Eretria has a couple of larger establishments and the whole seafront is lined with tavernas.
Tomorrow our aim is to head to the north of Evia for a bit of an exploration over the next couple of days.
In her spare time Sarah has been crocheting a Springer Spaniel from her book of patterns she received for her birthday. She is now complete and taking pride of place on our dashboard.
