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We came…
We swore…
We conquered!
We knew from Anne Mustoe that Northern Greece was mountainous, though we didn’t quite realise just how mountainous it was!!! Even poreing over the map didn’t give us any clues. In fact we would say that it was harder than the Alps as we climbed over at least four mountain passes over the last four days, altogether climbing 4000m with loads of ups and downs. The highest of these was the Katara pass (1690m) and the second highest was at 1370m. Not forgetting the numerous 600-900m summits sprinkled along the way. Mind you what goes up must come down and the swoop down to Veria (on the Thessaloniki plain) was heady and Nic surpassed his personal best maximum speed…. now at 118.4 kph. Whooooooooooooooo Hooooooooo… Though Nic wanted to do it again he was not that eager to go back up to the top again!
This marks the last mountain range to traverse in Europe , leaving us the more gentle hills towards Turkey and Asia. Despite the hardwork and red faces, we loved the Greek mountains which contained some of the best views of our trip so far. Thankfully neither of us suffer from vertigo otherwise we would have had a problem with the hundreds of metres drop only a few metres away.
The only thing we didn’t enjoy about the mountains were the stray dogs that bark at the first sign of us, often leading to a whole valley full of dogs barking (not unlike the Swiss yodelling of olde). As we had been caught in a sudden mountain storm which resulted in our Dazers (dog deterrent) not working, Nic developed a new technique for dealing with agressive dogs! On one occasion Sedef was being chased by a pack of five dogs on an empty road, Nic who was infront did a swift U-turn and headed at full speed into the pack bearing his teeth and barking at the top of his voice. Sedef almost fell off her bike laughing at the sight of him, while the dogs ran away. This technique (now pattented and available from Zuraw International :p) has the unfortunate side effect of making Nic sound like a transvestite when practiced too much! Nic when asked what he thought of this stated ‘No comment!’.
Other things that will always remain with us from this particular chapter of our trip is the rather large rock pillars known as the Meteora and the monasteries perched on the top of each of them (truly magnificient!) and the rather large fly Nic swallowed (truly disgusting!). Not to mention the fact that Sedef dropped some thing into a Greek toilet and had to fish it out! Picture now on sale on eBay :p
Oh and Nic finally managed to find Galaktoboureko (Greek custard pie) in Varia. He is now refusing to leave until the whole towns stock has been eaten, Sedefs only concern is that once Nic has finished eating it all he won’t be able to cycle (or walk for that matter!!!). The Greek Red Cross has been put on red alert as we all know that Greek plumbing is not very good!!! :p
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