Turkey to Greece - Week 31

Monday 14th January 2019

We spent a peaceful night in the Fiat garage compound in Izmir. By 9:30 the next morning, Harriet was on the ramp being looked at. We were shown to the waiting area and cafe where a lovely young man came talking to us. Onur worked for a company called Cozum and was waiting for a car. After an hour of chatting he gave us his card and said if we needed any help at all while we were in Turkey, we could contact him. How lovely is that.

The mechanics couldn’t find anything wrong. They had stripped the wheel down, cleaned everything and checked it all. Very strange. We did wonder if someone had sprayed the wheel with brake fluid on purpose but we hadn’t left it unattended? Even when we were in the supermarket car park Andy stayed in the van. Never mind, onwards and upwards. We’ll chalk it up to experience.

We drove steadily northwards until we reached Ayvalik, our parking spot for the night. We drove past a huge lake with pink flamingos wading in the water and on the other side of the road, the sea. Unfortunately there was no place to park to take photos and it was raining, so we carried on to our sleepy spot on the beach for the night. We were just in time to watch the sun set over the sea.

Andy still wasn’t feeling very well next morning so he went back to bed. After lunch we left Ayvalik and headed towards Troy.

Troya or Truva is another UNESCO World Heritage site, and is one of the oldest continually occupied cities in human history. It was occupied for more than 4000 years!!

Most of us know the version of the Trojan Wars. How Paris' abduction of Helen, wife of the Greek Menelaus, triggered a 10-year siege of Troy. How Ulysses fooled the Trojans into thinking a huge wooden horse was a peace offering. And how the jubilant Trojans failed to realise Greek soldiers were hiding inside. But what I didn’t know, was when the Trojans built the huge earthquake resistant walls, 95% of worlds population were still living in caves!! And yet they’re still standing today. Amazing!!

The most curious thing was the grand entrance. It’s wide enough to take horse driven carts but it was built long before man mastered the horse. It begs the question why the Trojans built it like that? No wonder the ancient Greeks called it, “the city of the Gods”. What a place to visit.

We crossed the Dardanelles by Ferry from Çanakkale to Kilitbahir. You don’t have to book, just turn up and pay the 65 tl to the man on the gate. You drive on and that’s it. 20 mins later your driving off the other side.

We found some overnight parking at a fuel station in Eceabat, thanks to park4night. The manager was very friendly and offered us water and a place to dump our toilet. He even offered us EHU but we declined as we didn’t need it. We filled the van with LPG and ate a meal in his very clean restaurant. A two course meal for both of us came to just under £10! It was quite a noisy night but it was free so couldn’t complain.

We read on the “Our Bumble” blog, that the Gallipoli peninsula was a great place to visit some memorials to the fallen soldiers in WW1. So we set off back through the town and past the Ferry port.

We soon came to the castle and bunkers at Kilidulbahir. We didn’t get out to have a look around as Andy still wasn’t well but instead carried on a bit further to the statue of a man carrying a huge shell.

We did decide that they mustn’t get many visitors as the dogs just laid in the road and didn’t bother getting up lol.

We hugged the coast where we could see lots of little fishing boats out on the water. The whole peninsular was beautiful and peaceful and it was hard to imagine the slaughter that went on over a century ago.

Our first stop was the Lancashire landing memorial. The resting place of over 1200 soldiers. It’s always sad when you read the gravestones and find out that most of them were under 20 when we they lost their lives. It’s also lovely to know that CWGC look after them all even though their last resting place is so far from home.

Then we drove to the Helles memorial, a bit further around the coast. The double layered slabs on each side of the huge stone monument listed over 20800 men. Quite an emotional and humbling experience.

Abide was the last place we visited. You forget sometimes there are two sides to a war. Right or wrong, innocent people die. It is the memorial to all the Turkish soldiers that perished. It was an amazing place but again so sad.

There were so many memorials to see but it was time to truck on and find a place to stay for the night. We found one near a sports centre a few kilometres from the Turkish Greek border in Kesan.

The next morning it was time to leave Turkey so we headed for the border.

We showed our passports & vehicle documents at the Turkish passport control. All was well. The guard stamped our passports and told us to drive to Custom Control at the next window. He asked us again for the documents and that’s when it all went a bit pear shaped.

The guy told us, we had over stayed by 5 days and we had to pay a “punishment” of €50.

Shocked, we told him no, we had Visas for 3 months and had also paid for 3 months vehicle insurance at the border just over a month ago. His reply ... not my problem!! Now we don’t mind paying what we owe, but in our heads we had done nothing wrong. We asked him why, but the only answer we got was that we could stay for 3 months, but the car only 1 month.

We were made to wait for 2 & 1/2 hours until we were given some paperwork so we could pay the fine. Strangely enough, the fine had been lowered to 195tl (£28.36). We still have no idea why we had to pay.

A bit deflated, we continued across no mans land and expected the same rigmarole from the Greek side. Instead, our passports were checked and they waved us through.

We headed for Xanthi, stopping on the way at one of the service lay-bys to empty our toilet and fill up with water. There were hardly any vehicles on the road and those that were seemed a lot better drivers than the mad Turks.

The first park4night sleepy spot we found was a car park near the old town. They were setting up market stalls so we tried the second. This one seemed much better, with a park complete with windmill on one side and a University building on the other. 

It soon became apparent that the boy racers were using it as a racing circuit. Deciding to stick it out, we did some research on the area. The plan was to visit the market and a really cool looking art museum called the House of Shadows. Nothing ever goes to plan though. The cars came and went all night long with loud base music from a nearby building. Neither of us could sleep properly so we got up and drove out of the town and parked up in an out of town shopping centre car park. What a 24 hours!

We continued on to Stavros and found a sleepy spot on the side of the harbour. 

It’s what I imagined we would do in Greece. The town was a bit rough around the edges and many things were closed for the winter but the place was busy with men fishing in the beautifully clear water. Our spot along the sea wall allowed us to just sit and watch what was going on. Even as the evening light faded a small fishing boat chugged its way into the harbour and moored up along the stone jetty.

After a good nights sleep, we continued on our way to Thessaloniki. As we climbed up over the mountain roads we could imagine how much snow they must have had recently by the remnants of the white stuff in the fields. A snowman was still standing in a drive way. Every mile or so we saw roadside shrines and in one particular place we passed some fields full of topiary trees.

Thessaloniki is the second largest city in Greece after Athens. Maybe because it was Sunday or maybe it was because the sun was shining, every man and his mother was out. Every available parking space was taken up but because Andy never gives up, we found a piece of rough ground to park on, on the edge of the harbour. 

It was a 3 mile walk to the start of the old town and the White Tower along the widest revetment we’ve ever seen. People were out with their families all rugged up as if it were -14oC instead of plus 14. Some people were riding bikes and others on electric scooters. There were others selling balloons and candy floss and tourists just like us taking pictures. We’d never seen so many people in one place for a long time.

Usually we’d head towards the UNESCO sites which included the tower and some Byzantine churches but the electric scooters had caught our eye. Reading the instructions, you have to download the Lime.S electric scooter app (from google not the App Store) and load it up with your credit card details. Then away you go, if you can find one!! We practiced on one of them and had the idea of using them to get back to Harriet but it proved impossible to find 2 together and when we did, the battery ran out or was flat. It must have been due to the sheer volume of people out that day. It was fun practicing though.