ANNUAL NEWSLETTER 2003

IN THE BALKANS

Barry and Margaret Williamson

At the beginning of the year we returned to the UK from New Zealand and the USA at the end of our second round-the-world journey. We then used our motorhome and bicycles to make a journey from the UK right round the Balkans. The route took us through France, Italy, Greece, Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia, Italy and back to Greece.

NUMBERS In our 9th year of travelling following early retirement, 2003 saw us ending our 2nd round-the-world journey and planning a 3rd while circling the Balkans. We celebrated a collective 120th birthday, travelled in 13 countries, attempted 10 languages in 3 alphabets, flew 12,000 miles, stayed in 110 different places and followed 7,000 miles of roads variable enough to challenge the 12 wheels of our experienced 27 ft Four Winds motorhome, 2 bicycles and 1 small motorbike.

NEW ZEALAND We spent a quiet pre-Christmas period at Ohakune, beneath Mt Ruapehu, a 9,179 ft snow-capped volcano (aka Mt Doom) in the centre of New Zealand's North Island. On Christmas day, we ended a 1,500-mile bicycle tour by riding 50 quiet miles to the Maori town of Taumaranui from where we caught the train to Auckland. By 28 December we were in Los Angeles.

USA 2003 caught us at the Comfort Inn under the flight path of Los Angeles International Airport, before we flew to San Francisco for a week with Dick and Audrey Valentzas at their home across the Golden Gate Bridge, in San Rafael in Marin County, the birthplace of the mountain bike.

ENGLAND In late January, we flew to Manchester via Los Angeles and a few days in New York, to work on our plan for a spring and summer of travelling in southern and Eastern Europe. The motorhome again started first time after its year in store near Preston and we drove it to TB Turbo, diesel engine specialists in the county town of Lancaster. 10 days later, it emerged with a full service, an MOT, a new alarm system and a working steering damper from the USA.

We used TB's courtesy car, and then the motorhome, to visit relatives near Blackpool and friends in Huddersfield, Sheffield, Brigg, Beverley, Pickering, Glyn Ceiriog, Llangorse and Bournemouth. Thanks to all of you for your hospitality, your patience in listening to travellers' tales and for the insights we gained into life in contemporary Britain. Pausing to buy a digital camera, a long-held ambition fulfilled, we sailed Brittany Ferries from Poole to Cherbourg at the beginning of March.

FRANCE We follow a different route every time we cross France. This time we joined the Loire at Orléans, left it at Digoin and headed through Mâcon and Chambéry before passing under the snow-clad Alps through the narrow confines of the Fréjus Tunnel.

France always has something to remind us of the miracle of the EU. On a 30-mile cycle ride on tracks through the forest near Sully-sur-Loire, scattered under the tall pines at the Carrefour de la Résistance, the remains of a dozen members of the Resistance lie buried where they fell in 1944. Nearby, a mass grave holds the bodies of 60 civilians from nearby Lorris. The Maquis died in ambush; the civilians were shot by Germans in reprisal. Back at the Caravanage de la Fôret, as dusk fell, the gardien asked if we'd seen any game - deer, wild boar? No, but there were ghosts.

ITALY Suddenly emerging from a hole in the mountainside, there is a completely new world of sun, brown earth, gesticulation, vowels and appalling driving. We compete to find an Italian word that doesn't end in a vowel. So far, we have found con, which seems appropriate.

At Torre del Lago, near Pisa, we crossed paths with Martin and Clare who were returning to the UK after a brief motorhome foray into southern Italy. Later, they were to be robbed while sleeping in a layby over the border on the French Riviera. In Rimini, in the Gambalunga Palace, in use as a public library since 1619, we read and sent emails in style and for a princely 1 an hour.

We have made many journeys in Italy by motorhome and bicycle, from the Dolomites to Sicily and from the Lakes to the Heel, but our favourite sight is still Ancona where the ferry leaves for Greece.

GREECE Landing in Patras in late March, we moved 40 miles further into the Peloponnese, to our winter base: Camping Aginara Beach. We learned that it had been the coldest, wettest and stormiest winter for 50 years or in living memory, whichever was the shortest. A local earthquake left some old houses so badly cracked that they were condemned (to fall down). Sadly, these included our favourite yoghurt and cheese shop and its neighbouring greengrocer's in nearby Gastouni.

Aginara regulars Mick and Flo had been kind enough to buy themselves a digital satellite system, enabling them to give us their old and slightly rusty analogue one. This coincided with the beginning of the War of Liberation, which we watched through the narrow and selective eyes of BBC World, courtesy of the Hotbird Satellite. The German Deutsche Welle and the French Channel 5 gave us a different spin; the Italians continued to play their endless quiz games in short skirts.

By mid-April, we were moving slowly south, down the west coast of the Peloponnese, enjoying some splendid cycling high into the mountains which parallel the sea, including one 50 mile ride, climbing 4,000 ft on empty roads to the Temple of Apollo Epikourios at Bassae.

Later, there was excellent cycling around Finikounda in the south-west corner of the Peloponnese: west to Methone and Pylos; east to Koroni; over the hills to New Koroni; over even more hills to Evangelismus and north, into the wide blue yonder. Leaving the motorhome in Finikounda for 8 days, we cycled a 400-mile route round the southern Peloponnese - Kalamata, the Mani, Gythion, Glykovrissi, mountain tracks to the sea at Leonidio, up to Kosmas, down to Sparta, over the pass to Kalamata and home. Staying in a mixed bag of rooms, we climbed 19,000 ft - enough to ensure our fitness as we went on to cycle and walk in the Taigetos mountains, still snow-capped above Sparta.

We felt fit enough in early June to take on the chaos of Athens, in its perpetual dust cloud as it prepares for the perpetual dust cloud of the Olympic Games in August 2004. We had never 'done' the capital's major sights - the Acropolis, the Classical Agora and Roman Forum, Parliament, new underground Metro stations with their archaeological layers exposed - but now we have.

The islands of Poros, Spetses, Hydra, Aegina and Evia were added to our list as we skirted the Peloponnese and headed north from Athens, although it's a hopeless task. There are over 3,000 Greek islands, mainly in the Aegean, with nearly 200 of them inhabited. So far, in 8 years, we have managed only 21, at great expense of pension, time and patience with the ferry 'arrangements'.

Our journey through northern Greece, along the borders with Albania, Macedonia and Bulgaria was new to us and very absorbing. The Macedonia of Alexander the Great, long occupied by the Turks, was divided between Serbia, Greece and Bulgaria after the Balkan Wars of 1912/13. One part is now independent and the area resounds with debate over names, flags, language and reunification. Greece, Albania and Macedonia meet in the middle of Lake Prespa, over 3,000 ft above sea level and we camped nearby for several days, safely parked outside a friendly Greek army border post.

At Lake Kerkini, on the Bulgarian border, we camped again while huge black flocks of pygmy cormorants swept across the water. We also recognised squacco herons, spoonbill, pelicans, egrets and grebe. Cycling round the lake, a tortoise crossed our road, but we were stopped by a rarer sight - a piece of cow-dung rolling along the asphalt, propelled by a large dung beetle, taking it to make a nest in which to lay its eggs. Following tracks round the east side of the lake, we passed Greece's only herd of water buffalo, wallowing to keep cool, guarded by a Bulgarian herdsman.

In the village of Kerkini, a funeral cortège passed by, the priests walking in front of the hearse with the whole village on foot behind, watched by storks nesting on top of every pole and chimney. From our safe harbour we observed a grey heron bullying his smaller cousin, our friend the night heron, to drop its catch - a tasty frog. Finally, a purple heron flying over the lake completed the list of herons ticked off in our Birds of Europe book.

TURKEY On this visit to Turkey, arriving in the heat of early July, we explored the Gallipoli peninsula, cycling and walking along the coast and ridges where 36,000 British, Australian and New Zealand soldiers died between April and December 1915. Their vain attempt to establish a bridgehead for an advance on Istanbul, to control the Black Sea and a supply route to Russia, is chronicled in 31 beautifully maintained Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemeteries.

The epitaph of Private Anderson, age 19, of the Army Cyclist Corps reads: 'From the ground there blossoms Red life that shall endless be'. Other Australian inscriptions: 'One of the best, was Sandy', 'Another Hero's Part is Done, Another Soul Gone West', 'He has changed his faded coat of brown, For one of glorious white', 'Our Fred', 'He Died like a Britisher', 'His last words, Goodbye Cobber'.

At Camping Fifi, in the beautiful city of Edirne near the border with Bulgaria, we met Ian and Judit. They were camping alongside their lwb Land Rover, en route to Mount Ararat, the Iranian border, Lake Van and back home to Budapest - in 3 weeks. Ian, a Yorkshireman retired from being SmithKline Beecham's Malaria Man in Africa, runs an outdoor equipment shop and works with Judit in graphic design. Judit told us something of life in her native Hungary today, on the verge of EU membership; among much else, Ian demonstrated his hand-held Magellan GPS receiver. Meeting people like these is what makes travelling worth its tribulations!

BULGARIA To pass from Turkey to Bulgaria is to pass from Asia to Europe, Islam to Orthodox, Latin to Cyrillic, Turkic to Slav, rolling steppes to steep mountains and valleys. The transition itself is marked by 2½ hours of chaos and uncertainty. The lane labelled BUS was closed, the EU lane was for buses and the other 2 for whoever could get in them. Posing as an EU BUS, we managed to confuse our tormentor, an unofficial official without badge, uniform, language or courtesy, by entering the country twice. We were easily pacified by a fill of duty-free diesel at 21p a litre.

Heading west, we drove through countryside and villages as poor as Turkey. The crops included tobacco, sunflowers, vines, cotton and ever-present watermelons on sale at the roadside. We saw plums being gleaned, storks in their nests on electricity pylons and many donkeys and donkey-carts, immediately distinguishing Bulgaria from its horse-drawn neighbours.

In Plovdiv we climbed cobbled lanes between the brightly painted facades of restored Bulgarian Baroque houses and churches, built by prosperous traders in the 19thC. Below lay a large Roman Theatre, still in use. On the hilltop were the scant ruins of Eumolpias, a prehistoric Thracian settlement, from where the panorama over the old city contrasts sharply with the view across the Maritsa River to a scattering of Communist-era tower-block workers' flats.

Heading north after Plovdiv, we passed through Stara Zagora and then Kazanlak at the eastern end of the Valley of Roses. Here 80% of the world's attar of roses (for perfume, rosewater or Turkish delight) is produced, by a 300-year-old labour-intensive method requiring 2,000 dewy petals to be picked at dawn to make 1 gram of the oil. Anyone looking for seasonal work?

After Shipka, the road climbed for 9 miles, zigzagging through the forest to the summit of the Shipka Pass at 4,310 ft, as the air cooled and freshened. We first climbed the pass from the northern side on our bicycles in the summer of 1989, en route to Istanbul from the UK, crossing the ridge of the Balkan Mountains, which form the backbone of the country. Not much had changed since then.

At the summit, the empty car park of the Shipka Hotel was our home for 3 nights while we explored the high ridges and climbed 1,057 steps to the top of the Shipka Monument Tower. After months in the dry Mediterranean heat, it was delightful to walk in the shady beech forest, opening out onto green fells, among elder bushes, wild strawberries and harebells with the scent of catmint underfoot.

Nearby, another deep gorge held a monastery, a museum and the Bacho Kiro Caves. A self-guided tour cost £1 each, search and rescue extra. We followed the Yantra River through wooded country to Veliko Târnovo, Bulgaria's capital from 1185 to 1393. Its history is long and turbulent: occupied by Thracians, Romans (Emperor Justinian built a 4thC AD fortress here), Slavs, Byzantines and, finally, the Ottomans in 1393. Now, Veliko is occupied by its many lively university students.

By early August, we reached the border town of Ruse and saw the mighty Danube reduced to a low muddy crawl after the long summer drought. We crossed the river and the border on the iron (and ironically named) Friendship Bridge, which carries the railway below the road. It was used in the film of John le Carré's 'Spy who Came in from the Cold' and we could easily imagine Michael Caine lurking there, collar turned up, on a dark wet night.

ROMANIA The well-remembered sign: Drum Bun (an odd mix of Greek and Latin meaning, literally, 'Road Good') greeted us as we emerged from only 3 hours of bureaucratic border haggling. We were lucky; Ian and Judit were to spend 11 hours there in impatient queues. South-east Romania is as poor as Bulgaria, the people thin and shabbily dressed, walking or travelling by horse and cart. Women sold tomatoes at the roadside, free-ranging fowl pecked the verges.

Bucharest has wide tree-lined boulevards befitting a capital city and, with little Sunday traffic, we soon emerged unscathed, heading for its one campsite: the well-equipped Casa Alba (White House). Alan and Kaye emerged from their 25 ft Welsh Hobby motorhome to greet us. They had been travelling for 2 years, recently coming east through Hungary and Romania, heading for Greece via Bulgaria and Turkey - their first visit to Eastern Europe. We had a lot to talk about!

Bucharest interested us for its modern history: on 21 December 1989, Ceausescu made his final, fatal speech to the booing crowd from the balcony of the HQ of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, in what is now called Revolution Square. Just 2 days later, he and his wife Elena were summarily tried and executed, two of the 1,000 people who died in those momentous events.Driving north, we crossed the Carpathians on a road climbing gradually to the Predeal Pass (3,310 ft) which marked our entry into Transylvania. Zigzagging steeply down, our neighbours on Brasov's campsite included a French trio, who had seen a family of bears hunting for food behind workers' flats in Brasov and an elderly Swiss motorhomer, who had once climbed the Eiger.

The Gothic Schwarze Kirche (Black Church, built in 1477) lies inside Brasov's once massive walls. We joined German-speaking Saxons for a Sunday evening recital of Vivaldi and Bach on the 4,000 pipe organ. Priceless Anatolian rugs (spoils of war from the Ottomans) hang from every wall and gallery. While we were away, a convoy of 13 Italian motorhomes slipped into the campsite.

We went in search of Transylvanian castles on a short circular motorbike ride from Brasov. Rasnov lies 10 miles away with a splendid 13thC hilltop fortress, entry fee 90p. Bran, 6 miles further on, has a less dramatic but better-known castle, originally built in 1378 by Saxon merchants. The many souvenir stalls reflect its current association with Dracula, even though it is unlikely that Prince Vlad 'the Impaler' Tepes (the inspiration for Bram Stoker's tale of Gothic horror) ever set foot there.

Turning west, we met the Trans-Fagaras Highway, another expression of Ceausescu's insanity. It crosses Romania's highest and steepest mountains and is now a spectacular tourist road, switch backing up past waterfalls to a tunnel at 6,600 ft. It meant great cycling, motorbiking and walking.

We camped in remote Transylvanian villages, visited the Saxon towns of Sibiu and Sighisoara and finally reached Arad, the last town before the Hungarian border. There, we were reunited with the Fizedean family - Teodor and Lucretia, son Dan and his family, last met in 1990 when we took aid by the truckload to Romanian orphanages in Moldavia in the remote northeast of the country. The Fizedeans had given us a welcoming break in Arad during each of the three long drives from the UK, and a great insight into life in Romania, before and after Ceausescu.

HUNGARY We crossed the border at Nagylac/Nadlak, our 14th entry into Hungary, now the crossroads of central Europe. Smooth roads, clear signposts, campsites and supermarkets in every town - all the signs of a developed country - did little to ease the regret we felt at leaving the Bulgars and the Romanians to their much simpler life behind well-guarded frontiers.

In Budapest, we met Ian and Judit who handed over our hand-held Magellan colour GPS. Using at least three of 24 US satellites, it gives a position accurate to 3 metres. Inbuilt is a map of Western Europe and more can be loaded from a CD-based contoured map of the world. Waypoints can be set and routes planned, entered and followed. It gives: distance between any 2 points; altitude; speed, average and maximum speed; distance covered; latitude and longitude; time and date; bearing of the sun, moon and way-point; ferry routes; heading; ETA, ETE, EPE, XTE, VMG; sunrise, sunset and moon phases for any place in the world on any date, past or present. It leaves a track on the map with profiles of the track's altitude and time - how did we ever travel without it?

Keszthely on Lake Balaton was our home for a few days: its name comes from the Latin Castellum, as the Romans camped here in the 4thC AD in a vain attempt to stop Asian hordes getting to Italy, through the gap between the Lake and the mountains of Croatia, 40 miles to the south. Lake Balaton, 50 miles long and 5 miles wide, is the largest fresh-water lake in Europe. We used its extensive network of cycle paths to visit Roman camps, Europe's largest thermal lake at Hévíz and the extinct volcanic cone and vineyards of Badacsony. This was splendid, quiet autumnal riding.

SLOVENIA In late September and in pouring rain, we entered Slovenia at Dolga Vas in 2 minutes flat - a quick glance at our passports and a wave of the hand! Ready for the EU in 2004, they've lost interest in the Grenzspiel. Murska Sobota, the largest town in eastern Slovenia, gave us a quiet night behind a motel. We paused at a nearby Big Bang (electrical chainstore) for a new kettle and came away with a little Swiss-made vacuum cleaner, called the 'Edel Beetle', decorated with Edelweiss.

Passing through Maribor, a winemaking centre and the country's 2nd city straddling the Drava River, we made for the capital, Ljubljana. We settled on Camping Jezica, near the only other British residents, Lancastrians Brenda & Jim, who own a caravan park on the Isle of Arran and travel in their pristine American Trek RV. Have some people got it sorted?

We walked round Ljubljana's Baroque quarter, enhanced by the Art Nouveau Dragon Bridge and mansions and the impressive colonnaded market place along the river. St Nicholas RC Cathedral was freely open with a very ornate Baroque interior, Italianate frescoes and gilded organ. A short stiff climb up Castle Hill gave us a view and a history lesson. Fortified in Celtic times, it was a Roman military post for the settlement named Ermona (until Attila the Hun invaded in 452 AD), then a medieval castle, rebuilt after the earthquake of 1511 for the province's rulers. The general style and affluence of the city greatly reminded us of nearby Austria.

The Alpine motorway, E61, carried us north-west towards Austria (via the Karawankentunnel), but we turned off for Bled, a village at the eastern end of the 2 km-long Lake Bled. Emerald-green and glacial, the lake contains Slovenia's only island. We cycled in the Bohinj Valley and walked the Vintgar Gorge but snow already falling in the mountains deterred any higher adventures.

Back on the Ljubljana ring road, another toll motorway south-west took us to the turning for the Postojna cave system, in Slovenia's extensive Karst region. A long open train whizzed us through 2 km of well-lit tunnels, the roof skimming our heads, into caverns with more stalactites, stalagmites and stalagmates than we had seen in our lives. We were walked through another 2 km of fantastic million-year-old formations, finishing by a pool with four bewildered specimens of Proteus Anguinus - amphibians, a type of salamander, totally blind, living up to 70 years in the chilly caves.

CROATIA The Croatian border lies 40 miles south at Rupa. The crossing was quick and easy, just two incisive questions from the border guard to Barry: (looking at the passport photograph) 'Are you a famous film star?'(!) - reply 'Yes, Arnold Schwarzenegger' - and (looking at the motorhome) 'Why is your steering wheel on the left?' - reply 'Blame the Americans'. We passed and were allowed in!

Another 15 miles gave us our first glimpse of the sea for 3 months - the blue of the Adriatic as we dropped down to Rijeka, Croatia's largest port, with a view across to the island of Krk.

We travelled the narrow, steep coastal road, the E65 or Jadranska Magistrale, for 500 miles south, constantly parallelling offshore islands with names like Rab and Pag. Just before the town of Senj we crossed the 45th parallel, giving us a good sense of latitude; we also got a frequent sense of altitude, the road climbing to 2,000 ft over headlands, recorded in startling profile by the GPS.

Nin, on a tiny island in a sea lagoon, is home to a 15thC arch in crumbling medieval walls, 4 little churches spanning the 9th-18th centuries and the foundations of a Roman Temple to Diana. Zadar is a lovely walled city and port with narrow traffic-free streets cobbled with white stone, polished like marble over many years of use. St Donatus, a 9thC Byzantine domed church, stands in the remains of a forum and is built of Roman stone over the altars of Juno and Jupiter. The single Corinthian column outside was used as a medieval pillory. Trogir is a medieval walled town over a causeway on a tiny island. Its maze of narrow shambling cobbled streets between tall buildings of light Dalmatian stone makes it a miniature Venice. 15thC Venetian mansion houses and the Cathedral of St Lawrence from about 1200 flank the central square, the only open space.

Split developed around Diocletian's Palace (300 AD) which contains a garrison, three temples, imperial residences, public buildings, storerooms and the Emperor's mausoleum. We wandered in amazement inside the rectangular fortress, finding its four gates and two roads that intersect in the peristyle (colonnaded courtyard), still the centre of everyday life.

The Cathedral was built over Diocletian's domed mausoleum and the Temple of Jupiter had been used as a medieval Baptistry. We explored the underground basement halls of the palace, undergoing excavation following their discovery in 1956. The Roman walls and buildings are still literally held up by their many medieval additions; a unique combination!

We made ourselves a pot of tea in Bosnia-Hercegovina, traversing a small enclave 5 miles long, which gives that large country its only access to the sea. The enclave isolates the southern end of Croatia but there were no formalities on passing through, just a small customs post.

In Ston, just off the coastal highway by extensive salt flats, we climbed high on restored medieval walls to look down on the gridiron street plan of the little town, pressed within its defences below.

On its first outing since Arad in Romania, our little motorbike took us from Camping Solitudo to a UNESCO World Heritage City, Byron's 'Pearl of the Adriatic', founded in 1300 by Greek refugees from Epidavros, surviving medieval fire, plague and earthquake, second world war bombing and an 8-month siege and bombardment in 1991-92: Dubrovnik. We walked the complete 1½-mile circuit of the magnificent medieval walls and forts that frame the city, the sea below us on 3 sides.

We looked down on the marble-paved squares, fountains, palaces, churches and monasteries, the broad pavement of Placa running east west between the Ploce and Pile Gates, and the grid of steep narrow lanes (all cut from the same white stone). A few houses were still damaged and abandoned but most had been restored. The interplay of sun, sea, light and stone was magical.

We spent 10 days in Dubrovnik, exploring the old town, having a motorhome service, driving 25 miles to the foot of Croatia (to its border with Montenegro) and spending hours in the internet cafe at the Hotel Kompas, researching our future options, including driving back to Greece via Albania. Of all our plans, the last one failed first - it was too dangerous, the roads were bad, there was snow on the hills, we could not get insurance. Our enthusiasm waned and we caught the only ferry out - the weekly overnight slow-boat to Bari in southern Italy, courtesy of Jadrolinja Lines and their small, ancient, rusting tub which seemed to know its way blindfold. Until then, we didn't know you could get cabins under the car deck! Or that the exit door could be too narrow to drive through!

ITALY From Bari, we drove south to Brindisi from where cheaper ferries run to Greece, like the MyWay ship we took, sharing the Open Camping Deck with several hundred sheep in their motor-homes. They got off in the early hours at Igoumenitsa; we continued to Patras where, on Camping Rion, we met Bob and Judi, round the world yachters (or 'cruisers'). They were touring Europe in a Hymer (land cruiser) before returning to their 37 ft boat in Turkey's Antalya. They had crossed the Pacific and the Indian Oceans; only the Atlantic remained! Suddenly, we felt very humble.

GREECE We returned to Aginara Beach to complete our circuit of the Balkans. We found ourselves welcomed 'back on board' the MMM (the UK's largest selling Monthly for Motorcaravans and Motorhomes) by its editor, Mike Jago. We are now their Travel Consultants for Bulgaria, Slovenia, Croatia and for 'full-timing' in mainland Europe. We are also writing some travel articles and rewriting our 1999 10,000-word, 4-part series: 'An AtoZ of Full-timing'. So we write, read, plan the next journey, develop a little fitness on the bikes in the nearby hills and await, with impatience, the delivery of our Dell laptop computer. A busy winter lies ahead, integrating our writing, digital images, GPS data and exploring cycle routes across the USA, SE Asia and India for 2004 (DV!).