Greece

---

The original trip had no plans to visit Greece.



From Istanbul plan was to head north into Bulgaria, visit Dracula's castle then head north through Romania etc to UK. But think this was too risky, bandits in the area not after U'r blood anymore just everything else, and Bulkan mountains are quite high in central Europe, cold, wet, probably muddy and icey, not a good combination for a single motorcyclist. The KTM shop in Istanbul suggested a jolly across Greece, with a ferry to Italy, then north through Alps, little bit more maritime climate, certainly a safer route.



So Heather had a KLM plane ticket and transfer to the correct airport at lunchtime, only ticket holders can get into a Turkish airport, so I took off at 8am heading west, in heavy rain. It soon dried out to a nice jolly 700km across Turkey to Igomistra on Agean coast, well this was obviously not quite enough challenge, so ended up on mountain roads chasing a few bends, Greece has quite bit of bendy roads, but I'm too short of time to find them all. Almost 26000km on clock so far, when my original estimate was 20k back to UK, must be all the extra bends!





The A2 motorway is fairly new runs door to door across Greece, with maybe 30 tunnels and some pedastle sections, quite hard to see in dark. Is a toll road, maybe 6 booths, less than €10 to pay is cheap. Where as Italy charge €43 for same distance on Interstrada, really not so cheap ~ effectively doubles fuel cost!



Bike did run out fuel and engine stalled on motorway, Oops, but by jerking brakes on managed to shift enough fuel arround in tank to the pump, so continue 5km to next garage, filled 31ltr. Watch it at high speed 140kph it sucks up 6.6ltr/100km, maybe 4ltr/100k at 100kph.

---

Photos

North coast Maramara sea.
Bit wet, but traffic eased out of town.
I like an obvious land mark, it helps navigation.

Highway A2 or an unknown mountain?
Plovdiv ski area is just over boarder in Bulgaria.

A closer look looks fun.
But hard to get a photo of a twisting road in scrub trees & bushes. It is all there to investigated.

Xanthi
Fun narrow streets, not sure the restaurant round corner was so pleased with my passing.