It was an early start….for we had organised a bike shop stop to hopefully fix that spoke, straighten the wheel and replace some brake pads!! (..all Martin’s braking…hahaha!). And with a ferry crossing, a border crossing, a changing time zones…& 100km to ride..it was going to be a long day.
I woke up feeling fairly shitty to be honest. And in normal times and places I would happily have put my feet up for the day feeling sorry for myself. But no time for that……
So we set off at a good hour….and the ferry was but 15 minutes away!
Four car capacity (plus a few pedestrians and bikes!)….on this cable towed barge…for the 50m crossing!
But what a business. One minute to cross…one minute to load…30 crossings an hour….and with the fares of 7 euros per car(!!)…that is 1,000 euros an hour!!
And it is a key link saving an hour’s drive for anyone travelling this way!! Gold!
A wee lake en route….
…and to our last “water” stop in Albania….
And then it was to the border….farewell to Albania (I’ll be back in June!)…and on in to Greece.
Lovely and fast riding through to Igoumenitsa….and we arrived at our bike our appointment just four minutes late….despite the fairly slow border crossing.
And the guy was waiting for us…Martin’s front wheel off before you could blink….
…..and he set to work while we retired over the road for coffee!
This is a major ferry port…serving Corfu…and with lots of ferries to Italy and elsewhere! I have only been to the ferry end of the town before…which is fairly grim…but the ‘other’ end of the town where we relaxed awhile was surprisingly pretty!
Our man was really conscientious…..and it was a surprisingly big job…having to remove the (tubeless) tyre to get at the spoke…straightening the wheel…re-taping the rim….refilling the tyre with gunk…checking the brake pads (which needed replacing) and the brake disc (also replaced but with a good second hand one he had available). So it was a full hour and half’s work….20 euros for the pads…20 euros for the disc…and only 65 euros for the whole job! Epic! In NZ or UK..if you wanted to get that amount of work done….1: you’d probably have to wait until next week to get an time slot…and 2. it probably would have cost way more than double! All credit!
And so were on our way agin…following the bike shop man’s advice as to route…which took us around the coast.
Glorious it was too!
A late lunch here at Syvota. One for the notebook if you collect names of must-visit places. Gorgeous town…..
….and then on…with a surprising amount of climbing (it certainly would have surprised Mr Google too…who under-estimated it by about 50%! What’s new!?).
Great riding….
And then a glorious descent…..
…to our overnight stop at Parga!
No pedalling required at all…straight to our apartment, where we were met by a great guy! Cycling fanatic! No beer, no smokes, no coffee sort of keen athlete! But we had a few laughs as he helped us lug our bikes up to the accommodation.
Nice view from the bedroom window.
And all-round….a lovely town. Shennae and I detoured here for lunch two years ago…so it is nice to be able to spend a bit longer.
Great spot.
Martin swam.
I didn’t. Still feeling fairly ho hum…..but glad to have been able to finish the day relatively unscathed! Not sure what it is. Adrenaline? Which allows you to do things that normally you would not have thought about doing (by that I mean…full of the cold…sore throat etc…..oh…let’s just do a double-ton bike ride!…instead of chilling in front of the tv…haha!).
But having got here…feeling good!!
Beer…..and….?
Gyros of course!
Drown it….I say!! Usually works!
