The Greece Beyond Reach

A Lament by Barry and Margaret Williamson

On the Isle of Skye

September 2020

Introduction. Since we can't travel to Greece by motorhome at the moment (or indeed for many foreseeable moments), we can at least reminisce about the many times over the last 33 years we took that enormous privilege for granted!

The First Time. This was in 1987 when we used the week-long Autumn half-term holiday to fly to Corfu with our bicycles to ride round the island, including the road to the summit of its highest mountain, Mount Pantokrator at 906 metres or 2,972 ft. With time in hand, we took the ferry to Igoumenitsa for a 2-day ride on the mainland, feeling as if back at infant school as we deciphered road signs letter by letter.

The Second Time. Our second visit to Greece was in the summer of 1989 when we cycled from the UK to Istanbul, riding through every Iron Curtain country except East Germany where it was verboten. The route started via ferries from Harwich to Hamburg (a ferry long since gone), Germany (Travemünde) to Denmark (Gedser), Denmark (Copenhagen) to Sweden (Malmo) and then Sweden (Ystad) into Poland (Swinoujscie on the East German border). We cycled southeast through Poland (our first visit to Auschwitz), over the Tatra mountains into Czechoslovakia (as was), then Hungary, Romania (not long before the  Ceauşescus were shot), Yugoslavia (as was), Bulgaria, Greece (a night in Alexandroupolis) and so into Turkey with time to visit Gallipoli and Ancient Troy. After that 2,500-mile (4000 km) ride, we flew back to the UK from Istanbul in just 4 hours! The full story is within our Newsletter of 1989.

The Many More Times.

In 25 years of full-time motorhoming from 1995, we have travelled to and from Greece many times. Our routes are summarised on the map above which we made back in 2010, as part of a longer detailed article on our website 'To Greece by Sea or by Land'.

Although we have wintered in Spain, Portugal, Sicily, Morocco, Tunisia, Turkey (and on three round-the-world journeys in the Southern Hemisphere, where our winter is their summer), our favourite winter destination remains the southern part of the Greek Peloponnese. We have probably cycled, motorhomed, motorbiked and driven cars and vans on just about every road in the Peloponnese, as well as on most of the roads in the rest of mainland Greece and 21 of its islands. We have cycled over all the major mountain passes in the mainland, the highest being the Katara Pass in northern Greece (see above, with a warning sign in Albanian) at 5,594 ft or 1705 m, and climbed on foot to the highest point in the Peloponnese: Mount Taygetus (there are various spellings) at 7,887 ft or 2404 m.

The Most Challenging Time. This is the journey we made between March and May 2000 which included a tour of Cyprus, Israel and four of the Greek Dodecanese Islands. To summarise: with our bicycles we took a train (as was) from Gastouni (in the northwestern Peloponnese) to Piraeus near Athens; a flight to Cyprus; cycling in eastern Cyprus; ferry from Larnaca to the port of Haifa in Israel; cycling the route Haifa-Nazareth-Tiberias-circuit of the Sea of Galilee (on Margaret's birthday)-Jordan Valley-Jericho-Dead Sea-Jerusalem-Bethlehem-Jerusalem-Haifa; ferry to Cyprus; cycling in western Cyprus including the Troodos Mountains; ferry to and between the Dodecanese Islands of Rhodes, Kos, Samos and Chios with a cycling circuit of each island; ferry to Piraeus; train back to Gastouni and the waiting motorhome. The total distance cycled was 1,338 miles or 2140 km and a very full account of the journey can be found here on our website.

Marriage Time. On the 7th of July 2004 we were married in the upstairs town hall office of the mayor of Methoni, a fishing village at the tip of the Messinian Peninsula in the far southwestern corner of the Peloponnese. In the presence of five friends (two of them acting as witnesses), the mayor read from a small well-thumbed book for about ten minutes, occasionally pausing for us to say Ναί (Yes). Theophania (literally 'Spirit or Manifestation of God') was seconded from her post as manager of the municipal campsite to provide a loose translation; so loose it was only later she explained that we had agreed to have many children and bring them all up in the Greek Orthodox faith. We said that we would at least try.

The Last Time(?) 2019 began and ended in Greece although we were at home on the road in 19 other European countries in the course of that year, motorhoming and cycling as far as the Easternmost and the Northernmost (right) points of the mainland European Union. 

2020 began well enough with the New Year celebrated three times on the overnight Minoan Lines ferry across the Adriatic from Greece (Patras) to Italy (Ancona). The first celebration was for the Greek ship itself, its crew and passengers. An hour later there was another shindig for the Italian passengers and an hour after that, as the Greeks and Italians slept, there was a final quieter ceremony just for us.

The Present Time. Since returning to the UK there has been little but confusion, uncertainty and incompetence by a UK government smugly focussed on Brexit and then totally unprepared and ultimately engulfed by the coronavirus pandemic. We have been locked in, locked down and almost locked up as borders have opened and closed with quarantine and isolation variously threatened, relieved and re-imposed. Only four mainland countries are now linked to the UK by passenger ferry: the Netherlands, Belgium, France and Spain. These are all countries with restrictions on entering and leaving their bordering EU and Schengen countries, as well as penalties awaiting those returning to the UK.

We have just managed to escape England over the border into Scotland at Gretna Green. This is where people still flee to be married as the blacksmith's hammer makes sparks fly from the anvil. A prescient for the state of marriage itself!

Time to Read and Look. For fifty articles about motorhoming and cycling in Greece, click here. For many photographs of motorhoming and cycling in Greece, browse here.

Time to Write and Plan. The article On the Road Again? on this website describes how we came to have sixteen wheels ready for the re-opening of roads, borders and countries: a newer motorhome, the smallest of cars and four bicycles.