Last summer I rode out to Athens and back. It felt like a great adventure, especially crossing from Italy to Greece. This year, by the time I reached Athens, having already been right out to the far side of Turkey, it felt like I was nearly home. On another occasion I would really like to take the route back through Albania, Monenegro, Bosnia and Croatia, but there wasn't time this year. As last year I decided to take the short route home, riding from Athens to the port of Patra, then catching the overnight ferry to Ancona. If necessary I can get from Ancona to Calais in 2 days of riding, but I'm not in that much of a hurry to be home!
The Wednesday morning ride to Patra was as uneventful as driving in Greece can be, though the moto did clock up a significant achievement: 40,000 miles. I've perfected the art of taking photos at speed during this trip, as you can see:
I passed a sign to Tripoli - in this case a city in the Pelopponese
and arrived in Patra with enough time to spare to detour and marvel at the Rion-Antirion bridge, opened in 2004, connecting the Peloponnese with the Greek mainland.
The port at Patra seemed oddly quiet, and after a bit of research I established that it had moved since last year and the ferry I had booked on was departing from a newer port 5km down the road. After dealing with the customary European-style-queueing-system (I've taken to shouting out, helpfully, "Anyone want to push in, please come and stand right here in front of me - plenty of space!") I rode onto Superfast VI, the sister ship of Brittany Ferries' Cap Finistère, formerly Superfast V.
I'd opted to sleep on deck, so took the necessary gear up to deck 10 and marked my territory. Yet again I was jinxed and found myself quickly surrounded by chain smokers, so my hope of breathing the fresh sea air for 22 hours (yes, it's a long crossing!) was dashed. No amount of coughing (or worse) on my part had any effect on these guys, so in the end I just had to accept the smoke and do my best to ignore it.
Superfast isn't an empty name. The ferry really does go at quite a lick; with a cruising speed of over 25 knots it's 50 percent faster than most car ferries. We sailed west, initially, into the Ionian sea, then turned north, passing to the east of Kefalonia and Ithaca, turned west again to keep Lefkada to the north, then turned north once more into open sea. As sunset approached, we passed to the east of Corfu and docked at Igoumenitsa to pick up more passengers. It was dark by the time we set sail again, and for a brief time I was getting an Albanian signal on my phone, before losing the signal altogether.
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| They used string to tie down the motos! |
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| This empty car-deck would end up crammed full, including the drop down deck |
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| View from my "bed" |
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| A very smooth sailing |
