Sitting out the storms and planning for the future
Dave the motorhome is keeping quite still on his hard-standing at Agios Ioannis beach near Nikitas (N40.19160 E23.68982). Around him the skies are cloudy and the wind is picking up, there are storms forecast for the next few days, so we’ve decided to stay put and do a bit of planning for our route across Bulgaria and Romania. I only realised today that we can’t cross straight from Romania to Poland, so need to check the insurance to see if we’re covered in Ukraine, if not it’s back into Hungary then Slovakia before Poland. One thing is for sure, my geography is improving.
Bulgaria planned.
Yesterday we received another great review of our book – A Monkey Ate My Breakfast : Motorhome Adventures In Morocco, this time from the fab website Motorhome Planet. We’re so pleased with all the great comments and feedback we’ve had about the book. For us it’s not only a great way to remember our time touring Morocco, but also it helps us to remember how we felt as we saw people ploughing fields with donkeys, washing clothes in the river and wearing long robes with pointy hoods! It all seems a long time ago now, but as soon as we start to read a page it all comes flooding beautifully back.
Happy Dave resting up at his home for the next couple of days.
Connie popped round this morning and we’ve called off the BBQ for today, it’s just not warm enough. Sure we’re all still in our shorts and t-shirts, but a cardie has to be wrapped around every so often when the wind gets up.
Dave and Co. sheltering from the inclement weather!
The maps have been out all morning, then this afternoon we went for a little walk around the patch of land behind the beach and filmed some shots of Charlie on the beach shots for his new video – coming soon!
Connie and Marc are coming round for tea later and maybe a game of scrabble. So no doubt there will some of Lidl’s finest flowing and we won’t want to move tomorrow due to hangovers!
This afternoon the beach was invaded by around 300 goats!
No photos please we’re eating!
Ju x
If you can head up out of Romania through the Carthathians and through Ukraine – that is a far preferable route to the long slog through HU, SK and into PL. Try and research Lviv in UA, everyone tells me what a beautiful city it is and is on the route back into Poland.
I wanted do the route through Ukraine but they wouldn’t let me in due to my car being RHD, they said it was dangerous, obviously a 1 year old BMW with the steering wheel on the right hand side is far more dangerous than a 25 year old Lada – luckily you won’t have that problem.
From my experience car insurance was optional, although i never had that confirmed, until the steering wheel issue (which i still think they wanted a bribe), but it was £25 for 6 months and you buy it as the border as usual.
Shame you don’t have time for Moldova, its an absolutley beautiful, rugged and unspoilt country. With all these countries, prepare for bad roads!!
Hi Roger
Hey! You’re pushing us outside our comfort zone man! We’ve been to Hungary, Slovakia and Poland and no-one kidnapped us, sold us into slavery etc, so we’re happy to go there. The Ukraine? The only Ukrainians we met up until last week were a couple of crews of mini-bus drivers transporting cleaners and local grub back and forth to Italy. They looked SERIOUSLY mean, slavers for sure! The chap we met at Meteroa was a lovely guy though, so maybe just some of ’em are slavers.
I’m just kidding of course, we’ll check out the Ukraine route, currently busy trying to work out where to go in Bulgaria and Romania, and eyeballing the Cyrillic alphabet with suspicion. Hah, the story about your steering wheel’s a great one, I can just imagine the uniformed hussling!
I dunno what a bad road is any more. Tunisia had ten-mile stretches of unsurfaced stuff. Morocco had some fast-ish roads but narrow, sphincter-pinching on-coming lorry land. Italy had roads which went from decent and wide to Dave-in-a-vice narrow in minutes. Greek roads have been cool, but the ubquitous mountains are knackering when driving this thing trying to keep it vaguely in my ‘lane’. I’m expecting slow-going, pot-holes and a bit of hazard perception with donkeys and stuff. As long as there’s a cold beer in the fridge at the other end of the road, all is good.
We’re running out of time. I’d love to go to Turkey, everyone we meet rolls their eyes heavenwards at the mention of it. The rest of the ex-Yugoslav countries would be fascinating. 2 years is not enough, more money needed though.
Thanks for writing, and happy travels. Cheers, Jay
Hi, been following you blog since you departure,re amazon review,it always amazes me reviews some vindictive people leave, have they got nothing better to do or do they just lead sad lives,i recently sold my battery business and in around 8 years was quite bemused just how much some people could say in a derogatory fashion on how say a Duracell aa battery did not live up to their expecations and ruined their holidays etc etc
Goos Luck with your travels.
Hi Dave
Thanks for your words, means a lot to us.
We’ve found that almost all the feedback we get is encouraging stuff, for the books, website, the places we choose to visit and the way we travel. We get a few bits of biting criticism, which hurts. Of course, they are sometimes correct, and we have to take it on board. I do sometimes wonder how the same words would be presented to us face to face though, but hey, we’re having the time of our lives, so it’s generally water off a duck’s back!
Thanks again, take it easy and happy travels to you too sir, Jay