Peelies travels

O Leaving Gjirocaster, the Ottoman style old town, the huge castle and the stupendous views across to the mountains over the valley, we re-traced our steps south for a few kms and then headed west, into low mountains. The road was not particularly steep but it was narrow and this accentuates the gradient. It's a route that plenty of vehicles take, motorhomes included of course; they just take their time. The road goes to a large town called Sarande and this is an Albanian holiday destination, that is clear. The place was very busy, with lots of people on the beach. We managed to find a parking space on the road above the beach and dived into a modern cafe to grab a coffee. As we were beginning to find, surprisingly due to our (incorrect )preconceptions, there was a good internet connection here. This has been the case throughout Albania. Sarande is the day-trip target for holidaymakers to Corfu. It's only a few minutes by fast ferry from there. Indeed Corfu is ver...

I'm going to try to explain what it's like to visit and drive around Albania. Every country has its contrasts and in some they will be more marked than in others. We haven't specifically searched for the modern Albania, however any thoughts that it is somehow stuck in the past are wiped when you see the quality of the campsites, the industriousness of the people and the number of Audis and Mercedees on the road. However, for every Audi A7 or Land Rover Range Rover, there are two donkeys or mules pulling carts.  For every car repair establishment, there's someone walking a cow along the road.  One thing will come as a surprise. They have more car washes than you have ever seen. It might have been opportunistic Poles who setup hand-wash stations for cars, all over the UK, but here there are Lavazh everywhere. I mean every few hundred metres there is a sign and a guy ready to jet wash and vacuum your car. The Albanians might have taken over the car wash sy...

It's worth saying that few if any people we have met so far have expressed any enthusiasm for Albania. Certainly the Greeks were very surprised that we would be travelling there, just as they also expressed disapproval of Macedonia, in fact I was corrected in a friendly way for referring to FYROM as Macedonia when it "should be Skopyj". Macedonia is the area near Thessalonika. However a plan is a plan and we weren't to be deterred. Internet searches show that there are tourists, it isn't third world and it's also very beautiful. So off we went, pushing north towards more high mountains. The startling aspect of the first sight of the country was a sudden change in the landscape as the mountains changed at a stroke from forest and bush to completely open slopes. I can only assume that a considerable amount of de-forestation has occurred. We reached the Greek border and had to mingle in the short queue with foot travellers. Here's Dawn getting...

"How better to complete our tour of Greece than by a couple of nights at a city that we've never heard of? We journeyed west from Meteora to Ioannina, which is a university city in the west of the mainland. We approached it through high mountains, managing to avoid the new motorway with its many tunnels and instead we followed the old road, twisting and turning. The reward was marvellous views of 2,000m+ mountains, with the only issue being the debris on the road consisting of anything from small stones to large rocks. So you need to be constantly on the look out for obstacles. Ioannina is on the western side of a large lake and we arrived from the northern side, looking for the one and only campsite that the map showed to be on the southern side. It meant driving through the middle of a bustling old town, only to discover that there was no campsite there. It was only then that I remembered a feature of my satnav that I had discovered just before leavin...

What can I say? I have never seen anything like it. In the mountainous middle of Greece, close to Kalambaka, there are the biggest rock outcrops you can imagine. They are a collection of individual stone pillars; narrow and tall. Perched on top of several, are beautiful monasteries. This is the view from the campsite, Camping Kastraki: The monasteries are perched on several of these pillars, just a few minutes drive from Kastraki. They are insanely situated, with walls that are pushed right out to the limit of the width available. So most walls continue sheer down the rockface. Amanda asked in a comment about the climbing here. All I can say is that it was a little hard to imagine any climbing (and there was no sign of climbers during our visit). This is because of the lack of obvious belays at the top. The pillars appear to be smooth and rounded. Maybe this is climbing with bolts, because as I followed possible routes up some of...