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Friendly Greeks

This is not about another encounter on a gay beach. I have been in Greece for over a week, at first I didn’t meet many people and when I did they didn’t seem to be all that friendly. But thinking back people have been friendly all the way through. Firstly there was the bar owner who let me camp behind his bar for three days for free. Then last week when I arrived in a camp site in Halkidiki, I met a group of Greek people who were on holiday there and began talking. We went for a coffee, then I joined them for lunch where they paid for my meal in exchange for my travel stories.

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Then I had my first couch surfing experience in Thessaloniki, I stayed with Lara for three nights and had a great time. We spent the day time relaxing and then went out into the city in the evenings. She was a very friendly person and I’m sure I was lucky to get her as my first host.

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After I left Thessaloniki I headed up into the mountains near Mount Olympus. It was quite late at night when I arrived in a small village called Petra and began looking for a place to stay. I started talking to a few local people who were sat outside their house. They didn’t speak English but called someone who did and they translated. I explained that I needed somewhere to sleep and they said I could camp in the church yard. Just as I was finishing setting up my tent a lady came to me with a tray of food she had made me. There was a cheese omelette, some thick slices of home made bread, a big home grown tomato, a small block of cheese and two slices of home made cake. I thanked her and she left, I returned the tray before I left this morning.

Today I rode to Volos and at some point I developed an electrical fault on the motorbike. Most of the displays on the dash have stopped working along with my brake lights and my indicators. I have arrived in this city a day early so have nowhere to sleep. I stopped in Starbucks to use the internet to look for a place to sleep and also check for repair advice. While I was talking to the guy behind the counter he mentioned that he had the same bike as me. I asked him where he would go for repairs and he gave me an address to try. I then told him about my trip and mentioned that I was looking for somewhere to stay as my couch surfing host isn’t expecting me until tomorrow. He said he knows about couch surfing and offered to let me sleep on his couch tonight. Awesome.

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Week 8: Greece

My eighth week of travelling has come to an end and I am still in central Greece. I have been in Greece for a little over a week, slowly travelling along the coast, sleeping on the beaches. This was not just because the beaches are beautiful but also because there is a lack of cheap accommodation. Although the camp sites are very well set up with bars, cafes and plenty of people to mix with.

I have found that the most cost effective way of eating is to buy things from the supermarket, this means I have been living on croissants for breakfast with bread and pate for lunch. Evening meals are mostly pasta.

Following the coastal roads has been rewarding, especially the less popular dirt track roads. These roads are mostly used to access some old ruins along the coast but you can use them to travel from town to town. There are loads of beautiful little beaches where you can sleep if you have camping equipment.

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The last two nights I have been staying in Thessaloniki. I managed to arrange my first ever Couch Surfing experience here and it is really good. I will try to arrange more of them in the future. Yesterday evening we went down to the sea front and drank some beer next to the sea while we listened to a band who ere busking. It was a great night.

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Sleeping on Greek beaches

I’m about half way through my eighth week of travelling and I’m about half way through Greece. I have been working my way along the coast from East to West, camping on the beaches. The first few nights I managed to find a bar owner who said I could camp at his bar for free.

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Then I set off west looking for a beach and restocking my supplies in Xanthi. I have been managing to avoid paying the expensive prices for food and drink by shopping in supermarkets for the majority of my supplies. I managed to find a place to camp close to Xanthi in a town called Avdira. While looking for a place to pitch the tent I saw my first wild tortoises.

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The next morning I set off towards Kavala, picked up some more supplies and camped on a quiet little beach with only a few people on it. Only after I had already set up tent, eaten and was sat reading a book and relaxing on the beach, was I approached by a guy. After some very strange conversation I found out that this beach is used as a hook up point for gay guys. I politely explained how uninterested I was and then kept myself to myself. This morning I set off from that beach and am heading down to a piece of land to the South of Thessaloniki, which is kind of in the shape of a trident. I will camp around that area for two nights before I head up to Thessaloniki for my first couch-surfing experience for Friday and Saturday nights.

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Week 7: Awesome beaches, Rejection and Greece

I left Romania last Sunday and headed into Bulgaria where I stayed in a hostel in Varna for two days. Varna is a very popular beach destination but was not really my kind of place, there were too many tourists and pub crawls. But I’m sure that foam parties, pub crawls and people getting so drunk they get naked are all very pleasurable in their way. The hostel itself was really cool, there was a nice outdoor area with a bar, another bar downstairs in the hostel itself, a cool chill out room and a couple of terraces as well as a great atmosphere.

After leaving Varna I headed south towards Burgas in an attempt to find Irakli beach. When I found Irakli I was a little disappointed at first, I had turned down a small road which was in a state of disrepair and drove down to the beach, so far everything was looking ok. Then when I arrived at the beach I found a hotel with a private camping area and a beach with tables and chairs, I had been expecting a hippy beach. I got off the bike and walked along the beach for a while when I spotted a lot of tents at the southern end of the beach. I got back on the bike and headed back along the badly kept road, then took a left onto an even worse road. A little way along this road I saw a dirt track leading off towards the beach, I took it.

As I drove along I started to notice that ever so often, in the trees, was a clearing with a few tents set up and a camp fire. I followed the track, looking for a place for me to camp, when I saw a few cars all parked together so I parked the bike and decided to look around a little. It was at this point that I met John, a German guy who was travelling around Europe with his friends Ben and Leon in a VW van, he was looking for a place to camp too so I decided to join them.

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We followed the track further along the beach and found a perfect camping spot under some trees with a fire pit already made. We set up camp and headed down to the beach to swim and relax in the sun. The sea here is amazing, it is quite shallow for a long way out so the water is really nice and warm, it is also very clear, so the snorkelling equipment was put to some good use. The south side of the beach had some tents on it as well as there being tents up in the trees.

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When the sun started to go down we headed back to camp to eat some food and have a beer. The following day we followed this same schedule only we had more time at the beach as we had already set up camp. The second night I slept in my hammock which was awesome, I should do it more often.

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On the third day I decided to head down to Turkey so I set off around lunch time taking the coastal road as far as possible, then taking a small road through the hills to the border, there were lots of really nice looking spots for camping along this road (the 99 from Tsarevo to Malko Tarnovo) but I was hoping to get as far towards Istanbul as I could that day so I passed them by. I finally arrived at the border but after about 30 mins of trying to communicate with the border guards who spoke really bad English, I was refused entry as I didn’t have my logbook for the bike. This document was one of the documents stolen in the Netherlands, I now have a replacement but it is in England, I will be receiving it when I get to Spain.

Feeling quite frustrated I headed back into Bulgaria, on the way back through their customs, the guards recognised me and asked what had happened, I told them and said that I was heading to Greece instead, they suggested I drive back to Burgas and then down the main roads to the Greek border. I looked at my map and could see a road which cut the corner but the guards said it was a very bad road and I shouldn’t take it. I thanked them and drove off, I decided that a very bad road was just what I needed to take my mind off the refusal of entry so headed towards this ‘very bad road’. As I got to the start of the road there was another police man, he waved me on but I stopped to check my directions, again he advised me not to take the road but I said that the bike would be ok so he gave me the directions on the bad road and I set off.

The road wasn’t actually all that bad, there were some big holes in it and it was single track all the way, it was getting dark and in some places the trees completely shadowed the road anyway so it was very dark. The road stretched on and on through the hills with no signs of any villages or towns and my petrol was getting low. For a little while I was worried that I would get stuck somewhere out there and be stranded for days, but my worries were unnecessary and I emerged from the other side, found petrol and continued to my destination, a small town called Elhovo. I had only picked this location because it was about half way between the place I had tried to cross the Turkish border and the Greek border.

So I arrived here in Elhovo yesterday and today I’m heading to the Greek border to explore some of Greece for a while, Turkey can wait.

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Week 6: Vama Veche and Bulgaria

I spent most of this week camping on Vama Veche beach in South-East Romania. Vama Veche is the most fun loving beach village in Romania, with lots of freedom to enjoy yourself. Nudism, Cheap alcohol and the occasional smell of marijuana. As we were camping on the beach I was a little worried about getting robbed, I managed to find a hotel who would let me leave my motorbike and bags at their hotel for safe keeping. The beaches are full of cool people, hippie, punks, rockers, motorbike gang members and naked people.

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We camped a few meters away from the shore and spent our days swimming in the sea and enjoying the sun. In the evenings we drank cheap beers and vodka while listening to rock music in the beach bars. The bar where we spent most of our time had huge speakers on the roof playing music onto the beach, if you are on a budget you can go to the mini market behind the bar and buy your beers for half the price then sit on the beach with everyone else.

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This morning I left Romania after an amazing 3 weeks and headed south into Bulgaria. It felt really strange leaving Romania, I had really got used to being there, its strange making friends and getting to know places only to leave them without knowing whether you will return. I’m staying in a hostel in Varna for a night or two before heading further south to check out a wild beach called Irakli.