thrace

You can tell you’re back in Europe when the weather decides to play a large (and largely unwanted) role in your touring.

I was pretty sure, heading west from Alexandroupoli on Thursday, that I’d be able to update you on southern Bulgaria today. The weather was nice, the road was good, and the hills weren’t too big and threatening:

Xanthi on Thursday, then Drama on Friday, and Bulgaria on Saturday. Not even stupidly long days. Should have been easy.

And Thursday was fine, with the exception of a nagging headwind. More of a head-breeze, really, so not a major problem. The sun was out, the birds were singing (there seem to be a lot more birds here than in Turkey, for some reason), and all was well.

I even found that ultimate mark of civilisation, a Lidl supermarket, when I got to Xanthi. It was probably the busiest shop I’ve seen in Greece so far, which may be an indication that the Greeks’ economic woes are not yet all in the past.

My usual weather check that evening was where things started to go a bit sideways. A huge blob of slow-moving rain was due to cover pretty much the whole of northern Greece (and southern Bulgaria and Macedonia) for about 36 hours from yesterday afternoon (Friday).

This was unfortunate. You’ll be aware of my enthusiasm for getting completely soaked from previous posts. And this blob of rain had all manner of online weather warnings attached to it, so it looked like the internet didn’t think it was just going to fade away, either.

But you never know with weather forecasts. It’s not like they’re never wrong, is it? And this is Greece. And it’s almost summer. Surely it couldn’t rain that much?

So, proceeding according to plan, I twiddled away from Xanthi towards Drama. But it was already clouding up by the time I hit the coast at the Beach of the Giant Pineapples (above). It’s not really called that, by the way. And I’m pretty sure it’s actually some sort of palm…

I decided not to stop in Kavala, despite its impressive old town, complete with ancient castle and aqueduct (above – you might have to squint a bit to see the acqueduct).

I’d get as close as I could to Drama before the rain came. And hope that I didn’t get stuck in no-man’s-land between the two big towns. So, pausing only to have a quick look at the monastery at the top of the hill out of Kavala, I ploughed on.

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And duly got stuck in no-man’s-land.

Last night was a bit damp. Today has been wet in an English summer sort of way – pouring with rain one minute, drizzling the next. Miserable. And not entirely helped by being stuck in the sort of village where a car driving down the main street would be a local talking point for weeks afterwards.

It’s my own fault. In retrospect, I could have got to Drama in the dry quite easily, but it just didn’t feel that way at the time.

If I’d been here a thousand or two years ago, things would have been different. Where now there are just a couple of villages, separated by the fairly large hill above, there was once a Greek / Roman city called Phillipi (roughly; the spellings, and even the name, have not been particularly consistent over the years).

It was on the Via Egnatia, which was the Roman ‘motorway’ between the western and eastern parts of the empire. And it was, by all accounts, a busy place; an administrative centre and a military site. It was also, apparently, the first place in Europe where St Paul started spreading Christianity to the Romans. Then it was abandoned. Pretty thoroughly. And used by the Ottomans as a quarry, according to Wikipedia.

So an interesting past, and a desolate and rain-soaked present. I do hope that’s not some sort of metaphor for the rest of my journey!

It shouldn’t be. The bike’s had a clean and fettle today, so I’ll be ready to head on to Bulgaria whenever the weather clears. Which will hopefully be tomorrow.

If there are no more dramas. Except for Drama, finally…

It’s a little bit of a shame that EU border guards don’t stamp EU passports when you pass the border.

I’ve pedalled my little heart out, uphill and down, into the wind and through the hellish blue skies and sunshine of early summer. I’ve crossed from Asia to Europe (geographically). And then, I’ve crossed from Turkey into Greece.

And all I have to show for it is one smudgy exit stamp from the Turkish border this lunchtime. Well, that and several shops full of tzatziki (and other assorted dips that I don’t like) around the corner…

I caught sight of Europe on Sunday morning. I was lucky it was a shortish ride, as the headwinds were really giving me a kicking, for the third day in a row. The incessant whistling in my ears was doing my head in. As well as making the riding much harder than it needed to be. I needed some good news.

And then, the headland I was slowly rounding (above) curved south to form the eastern edge of the Dardanelles strait. That landmass in the background, which is part of Europe, was only a couple of miles away.

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I found the ferry, and prepared to hop across the narrow waterway to my final continent of the trip. Of course, it was also my first continent, and I still have to cross pretty much the whole thing to get home…

The boat was a nice surprise. Somewhat bizarrely, there’s a charge for cars, a charge for trucks, and a charge for pedestrians. But, apparently, no charge for cyclists. You can’t get better value than a free intercontinental cruise!

And so I landed in Europe. At Gelibolu, on the peninsular of the same name. For the British, and more especially, for Australians and New Zealanders, the English name is more significant – Gallipoli.

During World War One, the British Empire (as it still was at the time, including British, Indian, Canadian, Australian and New Zealand forces), and the French, decided to attack the Ottoman Empire (as it still was at the time), which had joined the war on the German side. Somehow, this degenerated into an eight-month stalemate. Presumably, they weren’t expecting the Ottomans to fight back. The invasion never got far beyond the beaches, and by the time the Allies withdrew, there were a total of nearly half a million casualties.

Which, along with the rest of the First World War, is an astonishing waste of life.

In any case, from Gelibolu, it was just a gentle day-and-a-half’s riding to the Greek border. Up the peninsular, and across eastern Thrace. The wind finally shifted to a slightly more sensible direction (much to the dismay of a French tourer who I met going the ‘wrong’ way yesterday; he was trying to wrestle a tandem through the wind by himself, aiming to meet his girlfriend in Izmir). So it was a reasonably gentle run for me, spoiled only by a valve problem on one of my inner tubes, which is now forcing me to pump the tyre up every 90 minutes or so.

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This afternoon (Tuesday), feeling reasonably fresh, I arrived in Alexandroupoli. It’s a pretty standard seaside town nowadays, but, like Gallipoli, its short history is a reminder of what a turbulent part of the world this has historically been.

The town was founded by the Ottomans, only about 150 years ago. Since then, it’s been controlled by the Russians, the Ottomans again, the Bulgarians, the Greeks, the Bulgarians again (World War One), the French, the Greeks again, the Bulgarians again (this is now World War Two), and finally, so far, the Greeks. Amazingly, it’s not suffered any significant damage through this whole period.

But those shifts of control have shaped the history of the whole area I’m now moving into; the Balkans. Empires have washed over this region from the dawn of written history, from Alexander the Great onwards, leaving a bewildering mixture of ethnic, religious and cultural influences behind.

The next couple of weeks should be fascinating, as I head north and west. I’m having what feels like a well-deserved rest day tomorrow (Wednesday), trying to finalise a sensible route through the region.

But I think it’ll be interesting, whichever way I go…

The Unknown Around The Corner

Tim's Global Bicycle Trundles

No Drama

The Last Continent (and the First)

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