Onto the Peloponnese

Sat - Mon 30th Sept - 2nd Oct

We had given Albania a chance but were disappointed that it doesn’t seem to be improving. It is a busy place, lots of bustle, plenty of activity and interesting (to me) car and lorry repairers.

The mountains, which we hardly touched, are excitingly remote and I can see the attraction, walking in that corner of two or three countries.

Greece is nice and we enjoyed a coastal drive towards the Gulf and the bridge over to the Peloponnese and Patras. There was a slight concern over the English sign for one of the road tunnels but fortunately it wasn’t as described.

The toll, €22, at the bridge over the Gulf of Patra, came in a bit steep (and was charged based on a cursory glance at our height, I think). It’s a very long way round though.

The ease of a Saturday drive around Patras was not for me. I decided to check the Camping Gaz stockists that were listed as being in the town.

I had to drive on some very narrow, one-way streets only to find that one place was abandoned and the other was a massive electrical superstore; definitely not a gas outet.

So on we went, to the west coast and we left the thunder behind too. Dawn has picked out a campsite with nothing but excellent reviews and so we are here, at Camping Ionion Beach, which has to be the best we have been to, in recent memory at least.

The toilets have Grohe fitments and it is all finished beautifully.

The owner told me his parents started to build-up the site when he was young, in 1979. He has worked here ever since completing his National Service. For the record, he is 52 years old.

I really did give great feedback because it’s fully deserved, even more so that with our

ACSI card, we get a low season discount and it’s only €21 which includes electricity. We take this when we can in order to boil the kettle. Gaz is expensive and that’s when you can find an outlet.

OK, so you so the place is full of German speakers and only a handful of other nationalities (CZ, NL, UK) and wow, these people spend money on their motorhomes. There are even bigger ones here and many are towing large trailers with quad bikes in them.

So you see Herr und Frau jumping on and going for a drive from the resort to the local village. Meanwhile, us frugal Brits used Shanks’ pony to do the same.

I honestly don’t need to fret about my 29mpg Land Rover when we have such a low overall consumption of other items. These people have a huge carbon and resource footprint.

We can understand now why the ferries to Italy are full or the remaining fares expensive. Just a few of these oversized travellers would easily fill a freight deck.

The morning walk to the tiny village of Arkoudi was only about 4km on the road, alongside melon fields that are past the harvest and lying fallow and being cleared of debris.

Some of the ATVs sped past and we did receive quite a few “hallo” calls from the mainly electric bikes that also came past.

We had Sunday morning coffee in the café closest to the water. Unfortunately the cake promisingly listed on the menu was ‘off,’ so my consumption in that area was down.

It’s a stunning place with only the sound of an under school age child throwing a tantrum, to disturb the tranquility. The views are over to Zakinthos, which might be the same island as Zante.

We returned by walking along the seashore, a safe prospect in these no-tide waters. They could do with a community clean-up on the beach as there’s lots of flotsam and jetsam.

This pic is entry number 17 in the photo competition for “Most unusual item found at the waterline”.  It’s a strong contender i think.

Then it was back to the pool, a beautiful one with at least 30m length of really nice cool water. We racked up a number of lengths and felt much better for the effort.