Day 123: Saturday 19 July – Bulgaria, Early, by Ken

Our intended destination today was Panteleimon on the coast and close to Mount Olympus. It was a drive of not much more than 130km so we were in no rush to set off.

A further message arrived late yesterday from my friend Kunal P. at TomTom. He was offering 1 Year Free Live services for Europe as compensation for the hassles I have had with the satnav.  We already had the live traffic updates on the satnav Adam obtained for us and I wasn't interested in the other services such as weather and fuel prices. Also, they had no record of me purchasing two copies of the Europe Camper map. I started to draft a reply but didn’t get to the paragraph telling him where to stick his Live Services offer. Kunal wanted a screen print showing there was only the Morocco maps installed on the old satnav so he could take the problem of it being apparently constipated with data to his technical people. I connected the satnav to my laptop and was amazed to see it must have had a laxative because there was now hardly any data on it. I started reinstalling the Europe camper map and, unlike the many hours spent previously trying to upload the map it was all done inside 25 minutes. It appeared we now had 2 working satnavs. I delayed my response to Kunal waiting to see how the satnav performed.

After a leisurely breakfast and a visit to the well stocked camping ground shop for supplies we went through our usual pre-departure routine of emptying the grey waste tank and filling Mabel’s fresh water tank. It was also time to empty the toilet cassette again.

Our route backtracked that taken on Monday following the coast to Volos and through the town's winding streets. There we caught up with an ambulance. The attendant was sitting in the back with one arm hanging out of a wide open sliding window, he was making a phone call. From Volos a dual carriageway took us back to the E75 motorway. Just before we reached it we hit the section of road with a ride like a roller coaster. This time there was nothing ahead of us to give a warning, Mabel pitched down into a trough and we felt Smarty bucking on the back as she followed suit. Jane slowed right down but, even so, Smarty continued to give the tow bar a good workout.

The ride improved significantly once we were on the motorway and Jane soon had us back to our usual 90 km/hr cruising speed. There seemed to be much more interest than usual in Smarty. Looking in the door mirror I noticed a large Audi saloon slow as it drew alongside, then drop back next to Smarty while the occupants stared at her for a while before the car accelerated and rapidly disappeared in the distance. I think there must be something about the drivers of large Audi saloons, they all drive extremely fast. Another car was flashed by the following driver as it repeated the same manouver. Later, a car passed tooting with the driver giving a thumbs up through his sun roof. The occupants of lots of other cars passed us with their necks craned looking back at Smarty.

I attached the original satnav to the bottom corner of the windscreen in front of the co-pilots seat. As far as I could see its display mirrored exactly that of its replacement.

Co-Pilo'ts Satnav Seemed To Be Working Perfectly

With the exception of a two lane stretch of road that wound its way through a narrow gorge the motorway took us all the way to Panteleimon where a very impressive castle overlooked the town. The strip between the beach and the narrow local road we joined seemed to be made up entirely of camping grounds. We pulled in to the entrance to Camping Poseidon Beach that Jane had selected from her ACSI guide App. It had good reviews and, unlike other camping grounds in the town, there were photographs. It looked good. The reality was somewhat different.

Castle At Pantelemeion

The woman from reception showed me the only two pitches that were available. They were cramped. She suggested we had a walk around to see if we liked the place, I think she knew we probably wouldn’t. The camping ground was somewhere between a refugee camp without a Red Cross tent and a shanty town. It was comprised entirely of caravans and tents that were extended to enclose the full area of each pitch by awnings, often makeshift from Warehouse tarps, or similar. It was a long walk to the beach passing dozens and dozens of shanties. The beach was heaving, lots of people on loungers under umbrellas. Walking back to Mabel we decided we should move on to our next planned stop. In any case, Jane wasn’t sure what we would do at Panteleimon apart from the beach as a visit to Mount Olympus entailed a long walk and the mountain was shrouded in cloud. As we climbed back into Mabel another woman approached and asked what we were doing, she tried to persuade us to stay but we didn’t have any trouble resisting.

Camping Posidon Beach

Getting out of the camping ground wasn’t easy. The only way was to do a circuit round the grid of roads that bisected it. The roads were narrow, not designed for large camper vans. We had to ignore the first two roads we came to because of cars and bikes parked in them. The third was clear but we couldn’t make a right turn out of it because of a parked Bulgarian registered car. Its occupants were busy establishing their tent and extensions. A man shifted the car for us, the turn was very tight with Mabel’s top front left corner very close to an overhanging branch and her right side very close to lanterns hanging on a pole. Another man kindly pulled the pole over to help us get through.

Couldn't Get Out That Way

It was my turn to drive, we now had well over 200km to travel to our planned stop at Zografou on the middle of the three ‘fingers’ projecting from the Halkidhiki peninsula south of Thessaloniki. Fortunately, most of the route was on motorway. Satnav showed an ETA of 17:00. We stopped at a motorway service area for our lunch of Greek salad and bread and to refuel Mabel.

As in the morning there was more than the usual level of interest in Smarty. Lots of car passengers looking as they passed, a car tooted and the passenger waved as it overtook. At one point the motorway ran parallel and close to a local road. A car on the road kept station with us while everyone in it gawped.

Garlic

During the course of the day we stopped at many toll booths. There was inconsistency in the tariff that was applied. Sometimes we were charged as a truck, once as two cars and sometimes as a truck and a car. At one station the young attendant was clearly unsure what to charge and we could see her talking via a microphone. A man in a hi-vis waistcoat turned up and had a look at Smarty, said something to the woman and we were classed as a truck and a car. That’s a bit steep we thought, but the swings and roundabouts gave us a pretty fair deal overall. 

Toll Attendant Awaiting Instructions As To What To Charge Us

Negotiating toll booths in Mabel requires a lot of concentration getting her close enough for the co-pilot to hand over money but not so close that her door mirror clips one of the many obstacles or her body catches the high concrete plinths that the booths stand on. Pulling away is particularly tricky as Mabel’s body behind the back axle swings left as she is steered to the right departing the booth. After paying our last toll of the day I managed to graze Mabel’s hip (where she bulges out behind the cab) on the concrete plinth. There was just a faint noise as we pulled away. Subsequent inspection showed a few shallow scratches that I’m confident will come out with cutting paste.

A Grubby Mabel's First Campaign Wound

At Thessaloniki, Greece’s second largest city, we left the motorway and took a ring road that went not so much round as through the city’s outskirts. It was a mess with many kilometres of work in progress to widen the road. While the very busy road was in need of improvement, the temporary arrangements were a mess. Sometimes there were two lanes much too narrow for trucks and Mabel. Often one lane would peter out without warning. We were very relieved once we were able to get onto another motorway heading south from the city.

We changed drivers again once we left the motorway at Nea Moudhania. Initially, the two lane road had long straight stretches allowing following cars, ‘ducklings', as Jane calls them, to overtake. Then the road climbed into hills where the going was slower and overtaking opportunities fewer. Jane could see she had collected ducklings but it was a while before she found somewhere to pull over and let them pass. There were a lot and it seemed an age before the road was clear again. Shortly afterwards we caught up with her followers stopped at traffic lights in a town. It was quite an impressive sight.

All These Cars Ahead Were Jane's Ducklings

The road took us to the east coast of the middle of the three peninsulas. The scenery was very much like the Bay of Islands with pine covered hills forming a backdrop to many bays with lots of boats at anchor.

We Could Have Been In The Bay Of Islands

Both satnavs took us to the turn for Portoelea Camping near to Zografou. The approach was along an unsealed road that wound its way along cliffs and descending to the sea. The beach came into view. It looked idyllic in a small bay in which boats were anchored. The beach looked sandy with loungers under umbrellas.

Beach At Camping Potoelea Seen On The Way Down

We were in luck. There was just one pitch available. We set up Mabel and then went to explore. Virtually all the cars and a camper van we were parked next to had Bulgarian registration plates. It seemed we had arrived in Bulgaria earlier than planned! Perhaps that wasn’t surprising as we were only a few hundred kilometres from the border with Bulgaria and for a lot of Bulgarians the beaches of Greece would be a lot closer than those on the Black Sea. I thought Bulgaria was a poor country. If it is, then the lucky few were in a camping ground. Parked next to us was a huge Mercedes and there were a number of Audis Volvos and BMWs close by.

The camping ground had a bar by the beach and a taverna set in trees some way back. We checked out the taverna’s menu, it looked good and we thought we would eat there later. In the event we changed our minds, we were both feeling tired and I combined the remainder of Jane’s potatoes and peppers with tomatoes and pasta for our evening meal.

Bar At Camping Portoelea

I had an early night and didn’t have any trouble getting to sleep in spite of a lot of noise coming mainly from Bulgarian children.

Today's Trip (359 km)
B = Pantelemeion, our original destination