Skip to main content

Balkans 2023 - yes it is going to start

We are almost ready for another trip to begin. This is the one that was going to be in late Spring but was postponed, as we couldn't get away in time to avoid the heat of the Summer. We made a promise that instead we would try to visit Greece in the late Summer / Autumn and so the idea of a two trip 'season' was born.

As a particular treat we have booked the Hull - Rotterdam ferry, which means we have a lovely 80 mile Sunday afternoon drive to the port, rather than a 5 hour drive to Kent.

The route is roughly the same as the one we took on our return trip from Greece in 2015, which means crossing the Alps in Austria and Slovenia, before taking the coastal route down through Croatia, Montenegro, Albania and into Greece.

We had considered taking a ferry from Italy to Ioannina but the Dalmatian coast is quite a draw, in-spite of us never having driven past Emilia Romagna in eastern Italy.


Of course the Landy has needed plenty of attention and is still refusing to allow sign-off, with an annoying spill rail leak that refuses to be sealed. A snorkel has been fitted and a replacement rear exhaust. The footwells and floor plates have been sound-deadened and the window blinds are getting improvements made by the interior designer / fixer. So we will be ready. Only four more sleeps.







Comments

Charlie said…
The Landy is looking ravishing! Have a brilliant trip
Mark M. said…
Wishing you safe and enjoyable travels.

Popular posts from this blog

On y va

Hooray. We are off. The ferry was booked a few weeks ago and the pressure was then on to get all sorts of jobs finished on the house and Landy. Major cosmetic work was to cover the grey front doors with paint that matches the rest of the vehicle. On the engine a coolant leak had developed behind the water pump and so the P gasket and adjacent core plug were renewed. Also a cheapy head unit from those Chinese people replaced the old Sony fm radio. Now we have opened up the wonders of Car Play and all that comes with it. Finally the 9th gen iPad with WiFi became a 9th gen iPad with WiFi and ‘cellular’. This means we can use OsmAnd Maps which need no data and get their gps position off the ‘cellular’ chip in the iPad. More on this useful map in subsequent posts. We headed towards Portsmouth for a mid morning ferry via our old neighbours in S-I-V. There we had a great few hours updating each about our families and then proceeded to save the NHS, the country and the world too. I mean why no...

Onwards

You can’t visit a classic car enthusiast without admiring their car and we got our timing right, as it was the monthly club meet on Sunday. This was held at the Hippodrome in Maisons Laffitte, so it was just up the road. The definition of ‘classic’ here is 30 years and so many of the vehicles there looked very familiar to us 😳. TR5 and TR6, MGB, RR, BMW, Maserati, of course the Jensen Interceptor that our host drives, 2CV, Caterham 7, a beautiful Austin Healy 3 litre and then this… This is identical to mine, a Fiat 850 Sport Coupé, that I owned from 1978-81. Seeing it, brought back memories of welding, brazing, stripped driveshaft splines, clutch on the M1 and many miles of amazing touring. We drove around France on a camping road trip for all of September 1978 and the following year did the Ardennes for a month too. Here’s Nige’s Jensen… Maisons Laffitte is a very nice area to the west of Paris centre. The mansion is now owned by a trust I think and is a beautiful building. All we ne...

Burgundy

We thought that after the descent from Col du Galibier, we would be done with cols. They are brilliant to drive but hard work. The narrower the road the harder it is, especially at hairpins. These are almost always steep and so the vehicle speed and engine revs need to be correct before the turn. If it’s a right hand bend then the driving line is obviously on the right part of the corner which is always the steepest. It’s all about teamwork, especially as those bikers love the roads and like to be close to the middle. A Land Rover 110 needs a wide turning circle and so we have to look out sideways and either up above or down below to see what’s coming. After Galibier the road finally descends to the ski area of Valloire and on to Col du Telègraphe, which from the south isn’t much but those ascending from the north will feel the height gain. Then down to the Maurienne valley and we think we are done with hills. However there’s one last surprise as we turn right off the motorway route to...