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In Which I Test The Yellow Roads

September 19, 2008 by Mike

Itea

Route: Amfilochia - Vonitsa - the Lefkada causeway - Mesolongi - Nafpaktos - Itea

Something of a curate's egg of a day -- good and not so good (but nothing bad).

The Good

The first hour's ride, along the southern edge of the Amvrakkikos Gulf then out towards the island of Lefkada. One of my Greek spies, Konstantina, who I met in a champagne haze in Monte Carlo -- as you do -- had recommended Lefkada but I'm not going to be tempted -- try one Greek island and I'll have to sample them all -- and I'll be here for years.

[Note to self: try to come up with a single reason why that wouldn't be a good idea.]

Even though Lefkada is actually joined to the mainland by a narrow, man-made causeway, so I could have made an exception. While I stood and watched, from a terrific vantage point on the overgrown, crumbling walls of the Byzantine castle of Santa Maura, a section of the causeway swung open to allow boats through. That did it for me: if you can sail a boat through it, it ain't the mainland.

Instead, I carried on round the coast, specifically on roads marked as 'Secondary' on my map. That's as opposed to 'Main' or 'Dirt'. The Secondary roads are coloured yellow on the map and, as I greedily eye up the rest of the map, there's an awful lot of yellow roads closest to the coast. But kind souls have warned me against attempting them by any means other than an offroad vehicle. And the Bonnie (and the Bonnie's rider) aren't offroad types at all.)

Nevertheless, proceeding slowly and doing my best to avoid the larger potholes, the road to Peratia and Nea Plagia is enjoyable enough. The views, across the narrow sound to vertiginous Lefkada, are outstanding. As the road cuts inland to avoid an unavoidable cliff, I found myself riding through a dead village.

Building after building, farm after farm, broken, caved in, collapsing, dead. The walls were still standing, for the most part, but roofs and windows had disappeared. This was Palia Plagia. Presumably the roofs and windows were re-usable in Nea Plagia, and I've learned that Nea means 'New' and Palia means 'Old'.

Also today, I rode past the northern end of the Rio-Antirio bridge that spans the Gulf of Corinth at its narrowest point. 40,849 miles on the clock. I'm going round the Gulf instead, of course, but nerdily, I'll be checking how many miles I could have saved by spending 1€80 and biking straight across instead:

And The Not So Good

Mesolongi, a town crucial to the Greek War Of Independence in the 1820s, was a disappointment to me. Or I was a disappointment to it. Lord Byron died here. It's strange to think of a poet having any kind of impact other than prompting a lot of yawning (from heathens like me) or chin-stroking (from people who pretend to like the stuff.) But Byron was a 19th century rock star -- young and dissolute and romantic and talented and impetuous and sexual and doomed -- who discovered and gave his life for the cause of Hellenic independence.

Imagine Pete Docherty travelling to Darfur. And dying. (Half of that is easier to picture than the other.)

But while Mesolongi is supposed to be stuffed to the gills with museums, statues, tributes and the like, to be it was a sleepy, empty backwater, where the cafes were closed at lunchtime and the buildings, on the whole, modern and prefabricated. There was no sign of any signs that might lead me anywhere I might want to be.

I rode on to Nafpaktos, which looks lovely and has a huge place in history. It was once known as Lepanto -- a Venetian outpost -- and on the waters just off the town, an Ottoman fleet was defeated by a mixture of Venetian, Spamish, Neapolitan, Genoese and Papal ships. (No wonder I've been hearing about and reading about Lepanto in maritime museums all around the Med.) But anything vaguely museum-y was closed. Tourist Information was open, but they didn't have any information for tourists. So I continued to Itea, on the sea below Delphi. I'll see the navel of the world in the morning. Cool.

And The Veering On The Bad

The new shock absorbers were left on a middling setting by Vangelli in Athens. "If you need to adjust them, it's simple. Just δεν αρνούμαι ότι υπήρξαν λάθη και παραλείψεις, έχω πλήρη επίγνωση, έχω καθαρή εικόνα," he explained.

He was pointing at something on what I imagine is the new shock. Don't misunderstand me (as I misunderstood him) - he was speaking perfect English, but it was all Greek to me. (Boom boom!)

I am, to my shame, barely able to locate the petrol tank on the bike. That's the limit of my mechanical expertise. And I wasn't brave enougfh to 'fess up to Vangelli, because this was clearly -- to him -- painfully simple.

So when I realised, on this bumpy Secondary road, that the shocks need to be adjusted, and that otherwise the jolts to the system (bike and rider) would be intolerable and possibly dangerous, I did what generations of the mechanically illiterate have done. I slowed down and tried to avoid the bumps.

Even so, by this evening my back was in a worse state than normal. The bike can't talk, but if it could, it would probably be complaining of a pain in the back too.

Beside the Seaside

In Which I Test The Yellow Roads

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