Twenty Years on the Road 

In the Argolid

Greece

25 March 2015

Dear friends

Today is a public holiday in Greece for Independence Day. Ceremonies and marches remember 25 March 1821 and the beginning of the 'revolution' against nearly 400 years of Turkish occupation. The process did not end for another hundred years; it wasn't until 1922 that Greece gained its present-day borders. In the final Greco-Turkish war, perhaps 250,000 Greeks were killed and 1,500,000 expelled from Turkey.

Today is also an occasion for our own celebration as we remember the morning of Saturday 25 March 1995. Twenty years ago today, we locked the front door of our house in Huddersfield for the last time, started the engine on what was then a new American Ford E350-based Four Winds motorhome and began the journey which continues to this day.

Three motorhomes, one Australian campervan, two vans, three caravans, one motorbike, two replacement touring bicycles (from Paul Hewitt), numerous hired cars, four hired motorhomes, countless ferries, trains and planes, three one-year round-the-world journeys and two websites later, and perhaps a little wiser, here we are still on the road.

As part of a day devoted to reminiscences, and a celebratory taverna meal, we looked up our account of that first year on the road in 1995. Among much else, we cycled 38 Alpine passes totalling 150,000 ft (45,500 m), an average of 3,950 ft (1200 m) per climb. Seemingly, we started as we meant to go on, with lots of ups and downs.

Here's to the next celebration, ours and that of the Greeks marking their independence from Germany's economic hegemony!

Go well on your journeys, whatever form they take.

Barry and Margaret