Mid to End November – Meteora to Alendroupolis

Our first night in Meteora was in the 3 star Lonely Planet recommended place. We had thought we’d only be there one night and we can’t justify camping for one night when it takes over an hour to set up camp and about 2 hours to break it. It was a nice place, friendly hosts, but not incredible value for money. Anyway, it had an en suite bathroom and that is something not to be sniffed at on this trip. Two major things happened that night – 1. We heard that Tara and Dave were coming to join us there the next day, hurrah, an unexpected chance to meet up with new friends. 2. I discovered that the kids had lice. Time stops, mind freezes, mental panic. MY KIDS??? Lice????? That evening dragged into an eternity as i waited for the next morning and for a pharmacy to open. Pieter was immediately sent off to purchase anything and everything the pharmacist recommended while i fed the kids. He returned and everyone was lotioned and potioned and showered to within an inch of their lives. I then felt we needed to return to said pharmacy to purchase more of this stuff to go through the same procedure a few days later and be sure the blighters were dead. Pharmacist found my over reaction hysterically funny and said that we should think of our new friends as a little “souvenir from Greece”. Strangely i had sense of humour failure at this point. I felt sure that our new visitors were due to Euan’s cuddling of every stray, however the pharmacist declared this was definitely not the case and they would have come from other children – Greek children. “There is nothing strange in this” she claimed, “all Greek children have lice at this time of year”. My mind jumped back to our 2 separate nights in the one bedroom apartment in Athens with Ioannis and family.....ick ick ick.
So crisis averted (or overcome) we made our way to the campsite in Meteora to set up camp and wait for Tara and Dave. Sadly what was to come became our only bad experience of Greek people to date. The woman at the campsite was a horror who took pleasure in screaming at our children, frightening them half to death, blaming them for the shit that was floating in their dirty toilets, for things that were broken in the toilet block, for playing on their bikes, etc. All three kids had nightmares due to this woman and if it hadn’t been for the great company of Tara and Dave we would have left after one night. Exploring Meteora was amazing, check out this link for some amazing pictures meteora. Little monasteries and nunneries perch on the top of these weird rock formations and we visited 2 and around the mountain passes to see the others. We had great evenings, drinking too much wine, eating great meals that Dave prepared for us, chatting and appreciating the company.
From Meteora and our farewell to Gerty the motor home and her inhabitants, we drove as much as we could in one day and got to Kavala on the North Eastern coast by nightfall. We popped our heads in on a 4 star hotel to get a quote and fell over backwards to discover that B&B in a 4 star hotel was going to be cheaper than any of the other 3 nights we have had in paid hotel-type accommodation where we have had barrack style beds, plastic furniture etc. Well, that’s us got another new rule for the trip – when we need accommodation we’ll get a quote from a 4 star place first!! It was a lovely room, LOVELY bathroom with huge shower and plenty of space for me to set about attacking the kids with the pharmaceutical concoctions for killing unwanted guests (which were probably long dead but i am paranoid). A lovely breakfast the next with an amazing view and we left to drive on feeling rested and clean and pampered. Ahhhh, there is nothing like a splash of luxury after weeks in a tent. So we drove on to Alexandroupolis, the town nearest the border with Turkey and where we knew there was another campsite open. And this is where i type from – a gigantic campsite where we, once again, are the only visitors! This is our third night and we have had 3 days of rain and the weather is like Scotland in October. Mud everywhere, wet tent, clothes that won’t dry and no washing machines. The boys fell in the mud 3 times this morning which now means that every pair of shorts they possess is hanging on a line with little chance of drying. Euan is playing in his swimming shorts and Archie is in the one last remaining pair of long trousers and banned from leaving the tent. The upside of course if that my hands have never been so sparkly clean after all this hand washing. We have at least had company until today – Rachel and John going from London to Istanbul on a tandem and Peter and Agnes who are driving to Jordan in their motor home.
The campsite has the obligatory contingent of stray cats and the supermarkets have the obligatory number of stray dogs who loiter in the hope a shopper will give them food. There is not a lot to do in this town so Mara and i had a girl’s afternoon and wandered round the town at leisure yesterday – it didn’t take long but we found a cafe to sit and treat ourselves in and i found Zara – yes, a real and honest to god fashion clothes shop. Mara was dragged in and i found a pair of trousers – hurrah – now i have a second pair which means my jeans can walk themselves to the laundry room and get clean at last.
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