Last night Team Basil tottered over to our hosts’ cafe and sat outside in sub-optimal temperatures in an attempt to eat and drink enough to pay for our parking costs. That was easily done, we found out, because there was no menu, no prices and when we got the bill the individual prices of dishes were a little more expensive than normal in a taverna. Never mind, the food was excellent and although it rained a little we were put under a large veranda so we were not really affected.

In the morning I paid our bill and picked up one and a half litres of their own olive oil. It had been a pleasant place to stop, but we reflected afterwards that in all probability we could have parked outside any of the other nearby tavernas for free if we had agreed to eat in their establishment. This is a common arrangement out of season between motorhomers and taverna owners.

We had planned, as you know, to visit the rack and pinion railway up to Kalavryta in the mountains today. Well, in fact, we had decided to delay it a day because the weather is still overcast and we wanted the best views when we travelled on the train. However, as I went to pay for our overnight stay the owner told me the railway was closed for at least the next two days due to a rockfall and their need to carry our some blasting to prevent further falls.

So we had a quick conference and decided we would head down the Peloponnese’s West Coast today instead. Our journey to Patras was very quick due to the new motorway that SatNav still knew nothing about. It caused us some mild amusement to be told that we were breaking the speed limit of, what SatNav thought was, 31 mph while we were actually travelling at 70mph.

Once past Patras we were on the main coast road. There is a strangely Greek phenomena on this road. Although it is only a two way road, the road has been provided with a small breakdown lane, but the Greeks have decided that the best use of this breakdown lane is to drive with one half of the vehicle in the breakdown lane and the other half in the main road. This provides a de facto third lane in the middle of the road where cars travelling in either direction can dice with death and overtake slow coaches like us.

Another Greek phenomena which I haven’t commented on previously, but which we have noticed everywhere, are the enormous number of petrol stations. There are probably two or three times as many petrol station for any given length of road than you will find anywhere else in Europe. How they all make a living is quite beyond us.

For a overnight stop I had picked out an isolated little spot next to a sandy beach which had good reviews in all my apps. When we arrived at lunchtime it did indeed look idyllic, but we also noticed , tucked in amongst the trees, a small car packed full of young men. As we started eating lunch we could hear loud music and shouting coming from the car. The first rule of wildcamping is if you don’t feel comfortable move on. We had a brief discussion and because there was only one other motorhome we decided we would find another spot. After lunch we drove back past the car and six men had somehow managed to spill out of the car and were dancing and drinking. They would in all probability have caused us no trouble, but that is the beauty of a motorhome, there is always somewhere else.

Basil took us 15 miles or so further down the coast to another lovely spot, just behind the sand dunes of a very long and sandy beach (37.874347, 21.107677). We are near a town called Kastro, which as the name suggests is the site of a very large castle, which we may explore tomorrow. Our current spot is a wildcamping location of multiple nationalities. We have a total of six vans and one car staying overnight representing Germany, Holland, France, The Czech Republic and the UK.

The weather has been very strange today. Warm at 20º C or so, but overcast and with a very dark sky. For some reason there is a very large amount of sand/dust in the air. When we have had any rain, which has been infrequent, our windscreen has been covered in a layer of mud, so that Basil currently looks as if he has just completed a mud bath. I’ve told him its good for his complexion.

The forecast tells us things should get better tomorrow. We have booked into a campsite for the forthcoming Greek Orthodox Easter weekend. In the end we decided that instead of going back to a familiar campsite we would try a different one. There’s not much point in travelling if you keep going back to the same places, while there are still new ones to try.