Cable ties and gaffer tape

Wednesday 21st May.

Tonight we are parked up between Simitli and Razlog in Southern Bulgaria. Another campsite that has seen better days and is just about closed but for ten euros we can park in a meadow and we have water and electricity and a nice elderly gentleman who wanders about smiling and waving at us. Apart from us there's not another soul for miles so it's peaceful and it's not raining. Peaceful is good; of the twenty places we've stopped at since leaving home, ten have been next to railway lines. Being in a remote location like this means, of course, that we have no WiFi or 3G so when it gets dark we read, listen to music and argue over the best version of "This Is The Way we Make A Broken Heart". I reckon Rosanne Cash nails it but Phil prefers the Ry Cooder version. You can vote in the comments if you like. Or even suggest any other versions.

We left Breznic this morning, the resort that I am convinced is a loss making and money laundering enterprise by the local Mafia, after applying gaffer tape to augment the cable tie repair to the rear of the van. Last night as we pulled up a junior Mafiosi dude backed me in, looked at the van, pointed and said to Phil "Lady, you have problems". Like we didn't know the van looks like it's driven over Bulgarian roads. At least the gaffer tape is a similar shade of grey to the trim. When we get to Greece I know I'm going to find the best bodywork repair guy in the world and we will become friends for life.

So tomorrow I'll diesel the van up with our last 42.5 Lev, it's about one pound a litre here and I'm sure it will be more than that in Greece. Then we'll set of for either Thessalonika or Asprovalta. A campsite with a washing machine is required urgently or we'll be recycling clothing items you really don't want to be recycling.

We've travelled 2368 miles so far and I reckon another 50 will see us to the Greek border and then, surely, we must meet some more motorhomers. Driving through Belgium, Germany and Austria we saw loads but we haven't seen another motorhome now for two days. Apart from a dead one in a scrap yard. We're ploughing a lonely furrow here at this time of year.

No WiFi means no new photos but here's one I took at Baile Herculane, especially for Bernd who we nearly met there. Hope you're still following us Bernd.

Pat

Thursday 22nd May

We are parked up this afternoon on a campsite in Kavala in Northern Greece. We had plenty of cheap or free overnight stopping options but we pushed on to this campsite so we could use their facilities and have a couple of days just chilling out. However, the WiFi is "broken", the washing machines are "private", the showers are tepid. So Phil did a bit of hand washing to keep us going for another couple of days. The weather today has been glorious, warm and sunny so as soon as she hung out the washing it started raining. Well, good days and bad days eh? Although we don't really have "bad" days, just not such good ones. Driving through the valleys between the mountains seperating Bulgaria and Greece was something special this morning and cresting the hills surrounding Kavala and looking down at the sea and the island of Thassos was a great moment. So now we have the awning out and despite the rain it's still very warm. When it stops raining I'll stroll down to the office where there is WiFi, allegedly, and see if I can post this

Pat

 

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