My trip to the Pilion Centre, near Volos, Greece. May 2007. Starting
out on ferry to Calais. Dale, V and me, first day on our way to
Reims. Me and bike are passengers in Dale's camper. Hotel in Reims
for night and on to South of France. Sunny till we get close, then
it starts raining.
  We stay at V's friends for 2 nights but it keeps on raining. We start out for Italy, raining, past Nice, Marsalles and Monaco. Monaco looks like a Lilliput land from motorway. Van begins to judder, we stop to replace missing bolt and re-pack CV joint but no improvement. We camp on beach campsite near Genoa, still raining. I jump ship and next morning bike off in direction of Ancona, Italy. In Genoa a thunder storm and roads flood. Armco lined rings of motorway ramps running like rivers are frightening on a bike. Then the nightmare motorway bit begins. Two lanes each way with Armco both sides, first through a tunnel where all I can see are the lights on the other vehicles. Can't see the road, the walls, nothing, only the red lights to guide me and the little hole at the end. I'm just riding on the assumption everything is where it aught to be, scary! The hole grows and I'm out onto a viaduct across a deep ravine 300 feet below. Armco is only waist height so it might stop the bike but I'd go sailing over. Plus cross winds and lorries; I imagine numerous ways to die. This is repeated for around 50 miles. I'm a nervous wreck by the time the motorway returns to 'on the ground'. I head for Farenzi which I later find out is Florance. A massive traffic jam round Florance and by the end my clutch hand is just about giving up, even though I'm using the motorcycle lane between the cars. On to Arezzo where I find camp site and have pizza and beer, wonderful! In the morning I get a text from Dale who'd driven slowly, under the judder speed, through the night saying leave three and a half hours for road over the mountains to Ancona. Lucky because it didn't look that far on the map. I set off and take best part of an hour just getting out of Arezzo. On a bike there's no one to look for signs and tell you the way so I got lost countless times. Then the wiggliest road in the world. It just wiggled and wiggled and wiggled for ~ 60 miles over hills. As it straightened out on the other side I got stopped by cops for speeding. "I'm English, do you speak English?" He looked at me frustrated and gave me the one word he knew, "Goodbye." Phew! Got lost again in Ancona and arrived 10 minutes before the ferry left. Buy ticket. Can't find passport. Last time I remember it I gave it to V for Calais ferry. Argh! they've got it. Visions of being stranded with them on way to Greece. I ring Dale. "Dale I'm at the ferry," "I know we're looking at you from the sun deck." "You've got my passport!" "No I haven't." I look again and find it 'my other safe place.' Buy ticket with minutes to spare, drive to join the que of one remaining car. I ride on and ferry leaves before I've sorted the bike out. Dale and V find snug place on deck on my camping mat and I have a seat booked. Totally uncomfortable and by midnight I, along with all others are trying to sleep on the floor. Except for a drunk German. He asks if I'm English and tells me all his friends think the English are shit but he likes them. I eagerly shake his hand. He spends the next 2 hours going in and out doors and turning the lights on and off. The sun comes up as we get onto Ignomitsa dock. D  ale sets off for Ionenna and I go for petrol. The motorway lasts for 20 miles, rest unfinished. This is Greece. I'm dumped onto country roads for the rest of the way. I stop for a breakfast Coke at Ionenna and head for the pass across the central mountains. The road is 80 miles of beautiful sweeping bends, I learn a lot about cornering. No traffic and lorries easy to pass. Fabulous!   Back on the east lowland I turn a corner and in front of me is Meteora, a cluster of rocks several hundred feet high with monasteries on top.  A  blast along a motorway I get to Volos. All that's left is a trip over a mountain to Pilion. But Volos is a massive sprawl on a grid pattern with no road signs and it takes me well over an hour to find the way out. Up and up winding and slippery Greek roads, for miles! At the top there's a ski resort. On and on along winding roads not really knowing if I'm going the right way I find Anilion, the village where the Pilion Centre is, but no signs. I text James to come and find me. He replies and 15 minutes later he and Rick walk up the road. I follow them and park. We walk past a house, across a narrow path, then down a track AND I'M THERE!!! 2,000 miles!! It's in a very lush part of Greece south of Thessaloniki and the place is covered in thigh high grass.    ale
and V arrive a couple of hours later having worked out the problem
is old tires deforming when they get hot.      Dale and I had to put up a gutter on the roof but it was above another angled tile roof. Problem; how to support us to do it with no decent timber around? After much thought we settled on using the dining benches but we couldn't destroy them. OK make a long bar of 2 upturned benches screwed together and supported by branches resting against the frame of the other building. Then a third bench with extra legs screwed on so we could move it to any position along the other two. Worked great! Barbara gets picked up by taxi to catch her plane. We watch Liverpool lose at the local taverna, me with only one eye for the second half; too pissed to coordinate both, and the next morning I set off alone for home. 
The
weather is rainy over the local mountain but clears up and I head
for Meteora and the high pass. The road is flat, straight, one
lane each way; the sort of road that doesn't take prisoners. I
stop for a coffee in the middle of nowhere, one of those junctions
on the plains with nothing but a sleepy cafe to mark it. I strike
up a conversation with three Greek guys, our only common language
being football player names. One looks surprisingly like Hose
Marenio after several very hard nights out. We agree Liverpool the
better team, Gerard hero and Kaka devastating. I begin the bendy
road I loved on the way out. I overtake a lorry and in a moments
panic think I'm not going to make the next bend. I could have
easily but it just shows what panic can do. I looked at where I
'didn't' want to go and went there. I entered the ditch at
approximately 1mph and stopped. No problem. But each time I tried
to get out I slipped further in; well stuck. A few minutes wait
and 3 jolly German
bikers came round the corner and pulled me out. After convincing
them I hadn't had a 'real' accident, just a moments stupidity they
wished me luck and continued on their way with an amusing, if
confusing, story to tell. The high pass looks more like Alpine
pastures with snow poles each side of the road to guide the snow
ploughs. Down into Ioninna for a bite to eat at 'Mister Food' and
on to Ignomitsa to catch the ferry. On the dock, mercifully a
warm, dry evening, I oil the chain and check the bike over. A
voice asks "Want some water?" My hands are greasy and a
German truck drive, size to match his truck, is offering a wash.
He's come from Istanbul on his way to Sweden. He says Greek roads
are so slippy empty trucks wheels spin going up hills, and tells
of Turkish bribery reducing an E1.5 million customs tax bill to
E100 in the pocket. I pack away and he continues listening to
German heavy metal. He has a Yamaha R6, a very sporty bike, and
says he's a Yamaha man. He rolls his sleeve up to reveal a 4"
tattoo of three tuning forks. No CBR's and GSX's for this guy. The
ferry looms into view out of the black bay 10 minutes before it's
due to sail. It performs what can only be describe as a perfect
handbrake turn to arrive at the pier back end first, just meters
from the concrete dock. We load and it departs on time. I find a
perfect spot to sleep; on the soft carpeted floor under a stack of
luggage shelves. Only 2' head room but that's fine for what I
intend doing. Then a beer and I begin to put 2 and 2 together.
Shouting, scarves, the day after the Athens Euro final. How would
you get from Athens to Milan and Liverpool overland? The ferry was
full of Milan and Liverpool supporters on their way home. I retire
to my perfect spot. One problem. The luggage above me belonged to
a dozen young Milan supporters who had no intention of waisting a
night on the high seas in sleep. All night they were back and
forth finding huge enjoyment keeping the old itinerant biker
awake, until comatisation finally overtook them thankfully.At Ancona it was 'they' who were bringing the cup back to Italy. It was they who had taken the free kick and beaten Liverpool, and they who were being jubilantly received by the three people on the dock. It was 12.30pm and my aim was Milan, around 300 miles. I decided to stop every 100 miles, approx one and a half hours. The first was fine, the second slower because of a massive traffic jam round Bologna. By the end of the third I was rounding Milan. The main problem with riding a bike is there's no one looking at the map and telling you where to go. So numerous instant decisions are wrong and I'm either on the wrong motorway or lost in some back street sprawl. I finally hack back onto the motorway I want and turn off to Busto Arsezio to find a camp site. It's the same with camp sites; by the time you find one you're hopelessly lost again. I eye up some waste ground alongside a golf practice range. It may not be 'proper' but at least I know how to get back to the auto route. I am totally fucked from lack of sleep and food. Ham and cheese from supermarket and pitch the tent. The soil is thinner than Astroturf on concrete, so when the wind blows up the pegs ping out and the tent shows every intention of flying away in a mess of poles and, well whatever they make tents out of these days. I drag it under the shelter of some trees where the soil is thicker and park the bike on the windward guy. It now begins thunder and lightning which makes my choice of position a bit dicey. Did I mention it was also raining heavily. In the tent I eat and get my sleeping bag out. Then I put it away. My disheveled tent is leaking like a sieve. I decide to sleep in my waterproofs instead. After a couple of hours it quietens down and I spend the rest of the night in my sleeping bag. Between showers in the morning I pack up and head for the Simplon Pass over the Alps. Through several long, thankfully well lit tunnels I end up in the longest, wettest valley I've ever encountered. 30 miles of undiluted moisture! It takes around three times the concentration to ride a bike in the rain and five times if you add cross winds and lorries. 
The
pass finally begins and I'm climbing out of Italy into
Switzerland.
The road winds ever upward for about 15 miles. The thing about r 
eally
really big mountains is that they don't look any bigger than big
mountains, it's just that the houses and villages get smaller and
smaller. Across the valley a 10 story block of flats looks like
it's made for ants. The top of the pass must be around 6,500 ft,
twice as high as Snowden, and even at the end of May it's cold and
the peaks are covered in snow.Another 15 miles down and I'm in Switzerland in Brig for a cake and coffee. A window is slightly open in the cafe and a small bird comes in, scavenges the tables and flies out to feed its open mouthed young outside, time after time after time. Another long valley but thankfully dry this time, then the motorway to Laussane. I manage to glimpse the beautiful views over Lake Geneva before turning off towards Bern. Then off the motorway to a small village, Cossonay 'I think' is in France. I stop for a coffee and a look at the map. I leave money in Euros but later realize I'm still in Switzerland which still uses Swiss Francs. No wonder it seemed expensive. In the way out of the village a Harley joins me at a T junction. I ask him the way to Besancon He is big, has black helmet, black lensed glasses and black scarf; not an inch of person showing. He says a name, I don't understand. He repeats it, I don't understand. He stabs it out with his finger on my tank. I understand. Well I don't really, I pretend, on the assumption this black invisible man may start writing it on me with something sharper than his finger. He signs to follow him till he turns off and I'm to go straight on. He leaves me with a friendly wave and I go 80 miles to Besancon along wet twisty A roads in the rain again. I get lost coming out of Besancon, find the motorway and in a few miles stop for petrol at beautifully laid out services near Dijon. All of a sudden I realize I've reached my limit, I'm totally exhausted and my brain is fried; any further and I'd be dangerous. I've done over 300 miles over the Alps in mostly horrible conditions and I've just turned 64. Eat that you Milan punks who probably went home tucked up in the back of a coach. I find a spot shielded by some trees near the exit and hope nobody sees me. I practice what I'll say if they do. "Exhausted, dangerous, old, demented." And if that doesn't work, "English." Tent up right this time and I get a good nights sleep. It's still around 400 miles to the north coast so I'll just go as far as I can. It starts wet but a 100 miles on it turns dry and I do a steady 85mph in the quiet Sunday traffic. After 300 miles I begin to think I could make Zebrugga for the night boat at 7pm. It begins raining again and that plan goes out the window. I settle for Calais. Knackered again I drive onto Calais dock elated that I've survived! Off the boat and I'm dangerous again. I head for Ashdown and a B& B in the pouring rain. I get directed to a Premier Travel Lodge and they apologize they only have a smoking room left. I'm delighted. The room is bliss; better than a Beverly Hills mansion. I'm in love with it, I want to spend the rest of my life with it. A McDonalds, a shower, a TV and a double bed. And I can smoke in it. Heaven. Just 250 miles to Sheffield and I'll be home. How wrong was I. Black skies, cold rain and side winds and I 'had' to stop in Dartford just to get warm and weld my nerve back together. The spray meant I could hardly see and the winds threatened to push me under lorries. This was going to be a hard long slog. I manage Luton for my next hot coffee stop, then Northampton, then Nottingham. The rain stops but the winds are dangerous and after a particularly close slue towards a lorry I vow to not overtake another the rest of the way. Off the M1, through Chesterfield, round the roundabout, past Abby Lane and into Holmhirst Road. And home. 3,280 road miles and a total journey of 4,400 miles. Apart from a worn out back tyre my Yamaha didn't miss a beat. And my beautiful Barbara gave me a heroes welcome, which I have to say I was. The journey, particularly the weather, had pushed me to the limit and tested my nerve, my endurance and my skill, and I DID IT! When I get back there’s a strangeness. Not in people but the overarching media consciousness. The news is an assembly of people’s mind stories, their intellectual constructions. It’s as if there is a reality yet people are making up their own for reasons of their own. The gulf seems clearer and the reasons, but the futility of doing it is more obvious. I enjoy animals who respond only to the reality they are in. They do not dream of their five minutes of fame or mounting the foothills of opulence with a sofa from DFS. The adverts sell these unrealities, our distractions, and Big Brother shows unformed children excited by the confirmation that unreality exists. Politicians and presenters expound their unrealities with some assumed confidence that what they think exists, exists simply because they think it. “I think therefore I am” has become “I think therefore I am what I think.” Each turn and twist builds further their mountain of misunderstanding, confirming and substantiating it. And those that are successful in this scheme are the failures; those that are more convinced and convincing than the rest of some unreality and able to spread their conviction and profit from it. The richest are those in greatest need of the consolation of riches, who need to build their nest into a palace of suffocating comfort to shield and protect its unreality. The days where life and death coexisted as close as motorway lanes has expunged these tales of unreality. Life became avoiding death, keeping dry, warm and fed and all that that entailed. A taste of trench warfare where the men came back, shocked yet simplified. |
