Crete

Sunday 31st May. Stavros 35.59159 24.09132

We are parked up this afternoon at the beautiful beach at Stavros which is almost the most northerly point in Crete. A tiny bay, one taverna and a couple of houses and that's about it. There is another beach around the corner and we may investigate that later.

We left Camping Gythio yesterday morning and drove to the port to park up and wait for the ferry to Rethymno. The ferry arrived on time and only a few passengers boarded; three motorhomes and a half dozen cars. By this time I had realised that the cup final was on Saturday and not Sunday so the first job was to locate the bar and a television. "Television has problems" I was solemnly informed by the barman so I purchased four hours of "high speed" internet for six euros and a few hours later settled down on the shady deck with a bottle of Mythos to watch the match. If you can imagine watching a screen through a fish tank you've got an idea of the quality of the picture. Somewhat miraculously we had a clear crisp picture when Sanchez scored his wonder goal and then it was back to the blur. Last year we watched the Cup Final in Hungary and the picture wasn't much better there. I wonder where we'll be watching it next year?

We docked at Rethymno at 11.30pm and our plan was to park up for the night on the dockside but the port was larger than we expected with a security presence and it became apparent that parking dockside was not an option, unfortunately we didn't have a plan B. We followed the traffic through the very busy roads circling the harbour and I noticed a few streaks on the windscreen that I thought were water, I put the washer/wipers on and the screen immediately smeared leaving me a small crescent to see through if I hunched down and squinted through the headlights of the oncoming traffic. Not only did we not know where we were going but we couldn't see where we were going! The traffic was crazy with nowhere to pull over and clean the windscreen and it was a bit scary on occasions but eventually we found ourselves in a small village where we pulled over into a closed service station, spent twenty minutes cleaning the grease, or whatever it was, off the screen and got out the maps. Once we determined where we were we couldn't see anywhere to stop for the night so headed back down to the main Northern highway and headed west. Eventually we came to a lay-by about the size of a football pitch and decided it was the best we could find. There was an artic trailer and we took shelter behind it from the road noise and fell into bed. This morning, with the benefit of daylight we found a small road leading to a headland which would have made a lovely stopping spot. We drove toward Channia and there were lots of good overnight places on the beach all the way along the road!!

Anyway, we are at a lovely spot now and I think we'll stop another day rather than drive through the bank holiday traffic tomorrow. We found a resource on the web where a couple of motorhomers had detailed all their stopping places when they over-wintered here a few years ago so now we have quite a few recommendations and some good looking places to stop.

Ferry with a busted Telly.

The beach at Stavros.

 

Pat

 

 

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