ANNUAL NEWSLETTER 1998

MEDITERRANEAN ISLAND HOPPING

Barry and Margaret Williamson

In 1998 we returned to the UK by motorhome from a winter in Greece via Italy, Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica and Switzerland.

Greetings to you from the Road to Morocco as another year ends and another newsletter takes shape and heads back to you, carrying our best wishes for the year-to-come, the last of the millenium. We have been living and travelling in Rosie our 27 ft, 6 ton Four Winds motorhome for nearly 4 years, following Barry's early retirement from Huddersfield University and Margaret's resignation from the FE College. Our account of this life on the road is to be published in the New Year as a series of articles 'The A to Z of Full-timing'.

From the days when they crossed their enormous continent in covered wagons, the Americans have always known how to take their home with them into the wilderness. Today, a million motorhomes roam the roads of America giving the freedom of long-term travel. Rosie is described as 'The Ultimate Camping Machine' by her American makers: she has her own gas and electricity supplies, generator, solar panels, hot and cold running water, shower, toilet, fridge and freezer, microwave, air conditioner, multi-standard TV, video machine, central heating and basement storage. We have no telephone or letter box - we get a package of mail Poste Restante every month or so courtesy of Margaret's brother, Alan. But Rosie does move, now and again, giving us a mobile base for travel and exploration on cycle, foot and motorbike.

4 newsletters have taken us to Prague, Verdun, the gorges and Cathar castles of southern France, a summer of cycling in the Alps, travels in Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, Austria, Germany, Switzerland and Italy, months of exploration in the Peloponnese (southern Greece), Crete, Turkey, and northern Greece where our last newsletter left us among the Monasteries of the Meteora high above Kalambaka. For the last Four Seasons we have been carried along by the Four Winds, living and travelling in Greece, southern Italy, Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica, northern Italy, Switzerland, Germany and Belgium, ending with a short visit to the UK. Here, season by season, is a brief account of our travels in 1998.

WINTER: From Kalambaka in late November we drove south through the Thermopylae Pass where Leonidas faced the Army of Persia ('Go, tell the Spartans, thou who passest by, That here obedient to their laws we lie') to a campsite in the northern suburbs of Athens. We found golden syrup, iced our Christmas cake, raided an English-language bookshop, filled up with gas, dodged a eucalyptus tree felled by a gale, death-defyingly motorcycled into the city centre and visited the Acropolis, the old Turkish quarter, the Roman city and the magnificent National Museum which held (among many treasures) the gold face masks from Schliemann's excavations at Mycenae. Finally, we escaped over the Corinth Canal for a Christmas in the peace of the Peloponnese where the orange harvest had begun.

For a month we based ourselves in the Argolid, cycling and motorcycling to visit and revisit ancient sites at Mycenae, Argos, Corinth, Nafplio, Asine, Tiryns, Epidavros, Akronafplia, Dendra, Midea and Lerna. Christmas passed on the beach at Kandia, far from the nearest village and surrounded by fields of lettuce and artichokes. As an appetiser for Christmas dinner, we cycled 20 miles in shorts and T-shirts, climbing 1,500 steeply-twisting feet in glorious Greek sunshine to a tiny deserted church in the hamlet of Kanapitsa. At Epiphany, golden crosses thrown into the sea were retrieved by eager young men at every beach and harbour as richly dressed Orthodox bishops blessed the waves for another year of safe sailing and fishing. We joined in to ensure that ferry boats were included in the prayers.

At the end of the Halcyon days (4 weeks with no rain), a route through Sparta (with cycle rides high into the 8,000 ft snow-capped Taygetos mountains), Monemvassia, the mountains of Lakonia and Arkadia, Gythion, around the Mani Peninsula, Kalamata, the Messenian Gulf Road and the sulphur springs of Zaharo led to our favourite winter haunt - Ionion Beach Camping on the Glyfa peninsula opposite the island of Zakinthos.

For a month we enjoyed this warm retreat, walking down the beach to visit old friends Mick and Flo (in their Kontiki motorhome), Stan and Celia (in their Tabbert) and Johannes and Hertha (from Vienna in their Hymer) - all wintering at Aginara Beach Camping. In late February we left Rosie for a week and cycled 350 miles in the mountains of the northern Peloponnese, setting out through Pirgos and ancient Olympia; returning through Tripoli, Corinth and Patras. In early March we drove to Patras for a smooth 14-hour crossing of the Adriatic to Brindisi, camping on the open deck of the good ship 'Afrodite'.

SPRING: On the quay at Patras, we met Steve and Glen from Keighley in another American motorhome based on the Ford E350. Theirs was only the 3rd Ford E350 we had seen in over 3 years! They were also catching the 'Afrodite' on their way to Sicily after travelling for a year in Eastern Europe, Turkey and Greece. This was a rare meeting with fellow spirits, albeit younger and speedier than ourselves!

We had been warned of the dangers of travelling in southern Italy because of the large numbers of Albanian, Kurd, Tamil and other refugees who were then flooding ashore. But we found that all was peacful: the roads were smooth, the signposts legible and we thought the Italian motorists most courteous - which shows how long we had been out East!

Initially, we very much missed Greece; leaving was like the end of a long intense affair, but we were soon seduced by the 'European' charms and comforts of southern Italy. Near our first campsite (Onda Azzurra - Blue Wave) were the remains of the ancient Greek city of Sybaris (origin of the English word 'sybarite' or 'person who loves luxury') with a helpful curator and an excellent modern museum. A little bit of Greece in a corner of a foreign field. It made us nostalgic but we knew that these 8th century BC ruins were better cared for and interpreted in Italy than any we had seen in Greece itself! Though not quite as old, we sybarites hoped that the same could be true for us.

We crossed to Sicily, the Mediterranean's largest island, on the ferry from Villa San Giovani to Messina. We had been here before - between Scylla, home of Odysseus's monster, and the whirlpool of Charybdis. Between a rock and a whirlpool, not knowing which way to turn. We spent our first night among lorries on the autostrada services high above the mêlée of Messina before deciding to turn left towards Camping International Amoetia at San Marco.

We visited Taormina with its wonderful Greek theatre, climbed both sides of nearby snow-capped 11,000 ft Mount Etna (one of the world's most active volcanoes) as far as the roads went using our over-worked little motorbike (meeting snow on both occasions) and travelled over quiet mountain roads to Milazzo on the north coast to explore the running of ferries to Stromboli and the surrounding volcanic Aeolian islands.

Moving on to Syracuse, we met 3 American 'Seniors', Dick and Audrey from Florida and Sally from San Francisco, in their 18 ft German Hymer motorhome. They were great buddies and wonderfully full of life. We learned a lot about motorhoming in America (where they live in a 36 ft Fleetwood Bounder), while seeing Europe afresh through their eyes and wry intelligence. We travelled with them for the remaining part of our 46 day clockwise tour of Sicily, visiting Catania, Syracuse, Noto, Pantalica, Palazzolo Acreide, Marina di Ragusa, Cava d'Ispica, Modica, Piazza Armerina, Enna, Agrigento, Eraclea Minoa, Selinunte, St Margherita di Belice, Castelventrano, Scopello, the Zingaro Nature Reserve, Erice, Segesta, Palermo, Monreale, Soluntun and Cefalu. The highlights were all Greek: the wonderful legacy of temples and theatres on splendid sites, almost always on hills and headlands, overlooking the sea and floating in their own sea of wild Spring flowers.

At the beginning of May we sailed overnight between Sicily (Palermo) and Sardinia (Cagliari) to spend 3 weeks travelling up the east coast (we knew the other coasts from previous visits with bicycles). It was a sharp contrast to Sicily: quieter and greener. The Greeks didn't settle this far west so we were free to visit some of the 7,000 Nuraghi (Bronze Age) tombs, towers and fortifications, the best of which were the fortresses at Su Nuraxi and the so-called Giants' Tombs in the north-east of the island.

We settled for a while on the millionaires' Costa Smeralda while another layer of rich black undercoat was added to Rosie's underside and Barry's topside. Such is life on the road.

SUMMER: We landed on French soil at the end of May, making the one-hour ferry crossing from Santa Teresa di Gallura at the top of Sardinia to Bonifacio at the bottom of Corsica. The weather was good, the phones worked, the shops were stocked with many of the things we'd been looking for, the campsites were open and we could speak the language. If all this had come at Greek prices and with Greek attitudes it would have been paradise! There were more tourists than in Sardinia (which was remarkably quiet) and we were told that prices would double in August when Italians and Germans occupy the island (just as they did in 1940-43, so there's little sympathy for them!)

Graffiti, bombed-out holiday homes and French road signs peppered with shotgun shells hint that quite a few Corsicans are not as keen as us on the Frenchness of everything and haven't been since 1769. One campsite Patron spoke with irony of fighting in Algeria on the side of the French (he deserted)! However, Napoleon, Corsica's most gifted son, did join the colonial oppressors, as so many others have before and since.

After Bonifacio, we settled on a quiet farm site half way up the east coast, amongst the vineyards, between the hills and the sea. The island is the 3rd biggest in the Mediterranean after Sicily and Sardinia, but it is the highest and most geographically diverse its granite mountains rising to over 9,000 ft, the realm of red kite, eagle and Alpine chough.

Later, we spent 10 weeks on a splendid campsite at 2,800 ft, set in a forest clearing, high in the mountains and in the centre of the national park, the largest in France covering 1,000 square miles (about a third of the island). The views from our door were of snowy peaks beyond the forest; we were 2 minutes' walk from the tiny station at Tattone on the single track railway (Le Petit Train) which crosses the island from Ajaccio to Bastia and the nearest village was 5 miles away. 2 long-distance hiking trails provided excellent day-walks; forest tracks and gorges could be followed and there were mountains to climb. The roads were steep and quiet for cyclists who like hill-climbing and we used the motorbike to gain access to trails from ski stations, on the high cols and in the forests, building up an intimate knowledge of the terrain: gorge, col, scree and summit. Boots were regularly glued and stitched after hard days on warm granite as our stamina stretched to 10 hours and 4,000 ft climbs, meeting wonderful people living their dream in the high, clear air.

Still cyclists at heart, we believe that the bike should carry the luggage and downhills are for freewheels. Empty minor roads and tracks snaked high through granite rocks, the scented maquis (an impenetrable scrub of rock rose, gum cistus, yellow-flowered brooms, mastic, alder bushes, myrtle, rosemary, thyme, tree heather and strawberry trees, covering half the island) and tall forests of eucalyptus, Corsican and Aleppo pine, cork, fir, sweet chestnut, beech and oak, full of pigs and boar, wild and free. Regular rides up to 4,500 ft on the nearby cols of Sorba, Verde, Vizzavona, Erbajo and Bellagranajo kept us fit, but the highlight of our Corsican cycling was a ride of 100 miles in 2 days with 10,500 ft of climbing over 8 mountain cols. Our confidence was greatly increased by the new, Made in France, Michelin tyres we were able to buy for the cycles and motorbike, welcome replacements for the ones we bought in Greece labelled 'Fung Woo Rubber Company' and 'Precious Horse', tyres that were tired before they met the road.

The whole summer was hot and dry, so much so that washing dried on the line before we had finished pegging it out and our greatest fear was of forest fires - lightning set fire to trees high on the side of Monte d'Oro, 7,800 ft above the campsite and 3 aircraft made 9 sorties, dropping great arcs of water across the flames until the fire was out.

AUTUMN: Reluctantly after 2 postponements, we left Corsica in mid-September, sailing for 8 hours from Bastia to Genova in northern Italy. A slow drive past Milan and Lake Como led to the car park of a Swiss cheese factory at Airolo at the head of the valley below the St Gotthard Pass. There we paused for few days' cycling, hesitant to cross the Alps.

It's always been hard, returning to northern Europe after a long absence on the shores of the Mediterranean. Once north of the Continental Divide (the Alps, Pyrenees, Carpathians), the sun retreats, days shorten, light fades and colour loses its hegemony as skies and people turn grey. The sounds of sea, wind and birds are replaced by the noise of internal combustion; fruit disappears from roadside trees and reappears in plastic skins on hypermarket shelves; in the absence of any competition, cars run wild like rabbits swarming across Australia and people retire to warmed rooms behind doubled glass to stare out at the world through the blunt end of their cathode-ray tubes.

The 10-mile long St Gotthard Tunnel is long, warm, seductive and free, the easiest way of slipping from South to North. Further on, deep into Switzerland, Interlaken showed on the signposts with its promise of Grindelwald, the Jungfrau and the Eiger. Requiring no persuasion, we turned and manoeuvred our way to Grindelwald's Camping Eigernordwand (Eiger North Face), cold, damp, empty, but with the most famous of all mountain views.

The Jungfraujoch rack railway climbed 5,000 ft in 40 minutes to leave us alone at the deserted 8,000 ft high Eigergletscher (Eiger Glacier) station. The thin crisp air was filled with wolf-like howls from the nearby husky kennels as we set off on the recently cut Eiger Trail which disappeared across dark rock, climbing briefly, then contouring for nearly 3 hours across steep scree below the 5,000 ft high rock and ice-fields of the North Face, just below the snow line (the closest view possible short of actually climbing to the 13,000 ft summit) before dropping steeply down to Grindelwald. By early afternoon we were back home, Barry re-reading Heinrich Harrer's classic account of the first ascent in 1938 - 'The White Spider' - looking out of the window to check the route, and dreaming!

Next day we cycled 20 miles up to Große Scheidegg at 6,500 ft for our farewell to this wonderful corner of Switzerland. But still we could not hurry further into the cold and the dark of the north. The road out of Switzerland at Basel is squeezed between the Rhine and Black Forest and we were tempted into the trees to search for the source of the Danube among the valleys, pines and cycle paths of Donaueschingen. And we did find it in a magical place, a spring high on a ridge near the Rhine/Danube watershed. On one side lay the 1,776 mile course of the Danube through mysterious Balkan lands to the Black Sea; on the other the 820 miles of the Rhine's familiar course to the cold North Sea, our route.

After a brief stay in the UK for repairs, servicing, MOT, accessories, restocking with books and familiar foods, we are now on the road to Morocco, the promise of a warmer sun luring us south through France, over the Pyrenees, into Spain and Portugal, listening for the siren song of the ferry from Algeciras to Tangier. It's good to stay in touch, however vicariously, and we hope that you let us know something of your news, of your travels - we have recently been reminded that not all travel, exploration and experience involves movement!