Greece - Just the northern bit - Day 384 (27,634 miles)

We've now made the decision that we will definitely be home by mid September at the latest and with that in mind our route through the remaining countries we hope to visit will be based more on what can we see that is roughly on the way (rather than zigzagging around). We will still stop and take a look around but we don't expect to explore these countries as fully as most others we have visited.

Getting out of Turkey brings John to his knees! We mentioned that getting the bike imported into Turkey was a bit of a palava as there is an X in the reg. When we tried to leave the country it was no different! They couldn't find an entry on their system so they weren't letting us out. Luckily the third official to get involved thought to try a search by John's name and there is was! The import officer had entered an S instead of a X as a workaround. So if you are trying to import a vehicle into Turkey with an X or W in the reg we would suggest you plan ahead and have some plates and fake papers made up with S as an alternative!

To digress, I was unsure how to spell palava so Googled it and found a site called urbandictionay.com the definition read
'A term used to express what a load of hassle a task or experience is/was. Usually used when quite pissed off or on verge of giving up.'
This absolutely must have been written by someone who has taken up the independent import/export challenge!

How gorgeous is this! I keep telling John we've no room for anymore bikes, but I could make an exception.

Very nice too.

We took 3 days to poodle along the Aegean coast stopping at Alexandroupolis, Xanthi and Asprovalta, all perfectly nice little seaside towns that for some reason had many fur coat shops! We were stuck in Asprovalta for 5 nights, illness? mechanical failure? no just liked the place. We found a nice apartment with a balcony and a kitchen so we could cook basic meals for ourselves. It was a 2 minute walk to the beach so we swam early mornings and late afternoons and lazed around a lot.

Our next stop was a perfect place if you fancy a holiday on the Greek mainland that combines the beach and mountains (and boy do they need more tourist Euros). The little town of Litochoro was very pretty, 10 mins by bus to the sea although we didn't bother having just had 5 days along the coast but the town itself was lovely and there was fantastic views of Mount Olympus.




One day we did a 200km loop around Mount Olympus (2917 m and the highest mountain in Greece) and the surrounding hills, the peaks are big lumps of rock rather than jagged peaks so not as dramatic as many ranges. It kind of reminded us of Scotland, especially those big black clouds!

Nice winding roads.
On the way down (a descent of around 4oooft) the back brake stopped working, after some fiddling and cooling with water John got it working again. Later on that day he found it was probably due to the rear brake pedal sticking after the steep decline.

Apparently they are about and........

they like to eat these.

Another day trip took us out to the lovely Prespa lakes area, the main lake is at the point where the borders for Greece, Albania and Macedonia meet and apparently there are buoys on the lake marking the borders.

In all our miles/km's on this trip this is only the second XTZ 660 Tenere we have actually come across on the road (the 1st being Stew our nephew in Oz). We had a great chat with George from Athens he's a big Tenere fan and told us about some nice places to visit in the area.



The lakeside at Psarades.

Heading towards Kastoria.

Our last few nights in Greece were spent in Florina which we chose just for it's close proximity to the Macedonian border. We turned up with no idea where we would stay but a couple of locals in the town directed us to a large hotel on a hill above town. As we pulled up in the car park in front of a row of garages a guy walked past and said " you can put it in the garage if you want" the offer of secure parking is always good to hear and came from the hotel owner Tony a Greek/Aussie who rides a Honda CBR 1000 Blackbird. We had some good long chats with Tony about Greece, Oz, bikes and life in general . He and his wife Maria run a great place, like most people on this type of trip we don't stay in many 'proper' hotels so it was a pleasure to find somewhere affordable but really comfortable with good facilities, a great place for more chilling.

Florina had some lovely traditional buildings. We wandered down the hill to this part of town and ate in the same restaurant 3 nights running. Well, they gave us complimentary chocolate pudding and desert wine so wouldn't you?

The road to the Macedonia border? not sure we've got this right.