Day 68. Thursday 1.6.23

Halkidiki to Ioannina, Greece.

After a lot of demand for attention from Meg and Gareth last night, I had a good night’s sleep back in my own bed.

Walking Meg along the beach this morning where she found a putrifying dead eel on the sand, rolled all over it and then picked it up and ran with it , yuck! As soon as she dropped it I threw a stick into the sea so that she got wet and hopefully washed some of the dead fish smell off.

She does love swimming now and goes straight in with no hesitation.

When I got back to the van we got into full packing up mode. We were both a little out of touch as we hadn’t done it for a week! It all fell into place soon enough and, saying a sad farewell to one of the loveliest campsites we’d been on, we headed towards Igoumenitsa and our overnight ferry to Bari in Italy.

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The drive took us up through the mountains (basically, right across the country). In total, we counted 41 road tunnels of varying lengths. This route is beautiful, very green virgin forests and, to our surprise, is apparently Bear country. There are actually warning signs on the roadside with big and small bears and an exclamation mark . To confirm this, the land is fenced off all along the motorway, even around the rest areas. Needless to say, we were scouring the countryside to hopefully spot one .

As Igoumenitsa is about 5 hours in the van (on the toll roads) we picked a stop for tonight about an hours drive away.

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This took us into Ioannina, a city on the edge of a lovely lake and the capital of the area – Epirus. There’s a car park, right by the centre of town and on the edge of the lake, that lets you stay the night until 10am for €10! Bargain.

We arrived about 4pm and took a walk around the lake and listened to a busker playing the piano , while viewing the lake and the distant mountains with snow still visible. There’s an old castle with an old town inside. The original walls and gates are still there but sadly, the town inside isn’t that interesting.

The main attraction is definitely the walls and entrances. One of them has cobbles so old and uneven, we had to tread very carefully. We took a walk around the old town outside of the castle which has a couple of cobbled lanes lined with shops and eateries.

We sat down at one, hiding under shade as it was very warm and ordered a chicken and pork souvlaki served with home made chips. All washed down with a half carafe of the village red. Yum yum.

Walking back to the van we couldn’t believe how busy the bars were on the main promenade by the lake. It was buzzing, with music thumping and young people waiting for free seats! On a Thursday?!

We can’t hear the bars from our parking spot so I don’t think they’ll impede on our sleep tonight . The van has cooled down now the sun has set, it was 30° outside and 33° inside this afternoon!

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