Adventures with Aimile

  Congratulatons Joanna - no she hasn't broken her arm, she's just showing us the jewellery she won for the closest guess for our Valentines day kilometres! Her guess was 3089 kilometres. Although the closest guess she was around 500 kilometres out - we'll leave you to guess whether it was over or under... So start looking at Google maps - calculate our final distance. Remember prize one for the closest to our final kilometre count is for five days for two in our Kini Cat Cottage, with a celebratory dinner one night at a seafront taverna, transfers from the port in Syros and a two day stopover in an hotel in Athens, so you can explore the sights. Dates to be decided by mutual arrangement. All you have to do is donate 20 Euros to our cat cause and send a message to syroscats.com detailing your guesses. there will be consolation prizes for the highest altitude we reached and the amount we spent on fuel for the trip. For those of you who have already donated, you just need to ...

  Apparently there were wild boar in the hills - but we didn't see any! Aimile gingerly made her way down the mountain and back to the main road and we bore off left heading for the distant hills. We had to traverse the serious mountains indicated by the blank patch on the road atlas. It was steady climbing and the houses and farms were thinning out and reflecting the tough living conditions up at this altitude and distance from civilisation. I made sure we had a full tank of petrol as the stations were getting fewer and farther apart and this was not place to run out. The border, when we reached it, was pretty small.  No questions, we were waved to a bay with a table and ordered to empty the car. we never found out what they thought they were looking for, but poked into everything and their dog sniffed everything and moved on to the next victim.  One remaining hurdle, would Greek customs take us apart. Since Brexit any parcels coming into Greece had been held up and scru...

  Guess the top fort was how it used to be!  Montenegro, while not disappointing, didn't quite live up to what we expected. maybe it was a victim of its own marketing hype. It was not far  to the border with Albania. We were a little apprehensive at crossing into Albania, or more correctly, Jacky was, having been refused entry 50 years earlier. There was a considerable queue, pretty much the first we encountered. It wasn't until we got our turn and more hassle about our papers, that we realised it was the Montenegro side and not Albania. Clearly we had entered with them, so eventually they gave in and waved us to the customs guards.  By contrast the Albanian officials were polite and smiling, checked our passports were in date and waved us into their country.  No phone data put an end to navigating by google, it was back to a 20 year old motoring atlas of Europe. Not too much of a problem as there aren't too many roads to choose from. Agriculture is the main act...

   10 a.m. we were outside and ready to make the most of a sunny warm morning. Our hosts wanted photos for their web site and neighbours assisted taking group shots. Two hours later we were entering the built up area around Dubrovnic. What doesn't show on a road map is the terrain. This was all on the side of a mountain, with houses piled on top of each other and narrow medieval roads. To cope with modern traffic an extensive one-way system had developed. I had this naieve idea that we would park the car and saunter to pleasant restaurant and have a leisurely meal before heading on. Not possible. We tried various turnings indicating parking to find them chock solid and had to back out into traffic, that let us know in no uncertain terms we were performing a dangerous maneover and being classic 2CV was no excuse. At this point I made an executive decsion and we gave Dubrovnic a miss.    Saddened, and after about 10 kilometres down the road, we turned ri...

  Makarska, Croatia Refreshed, we took to the helter-skelter switch-back for the following few hours, until the terrain eased and we started coming on to the port towns that Croatia is famous for. We had climbed quite considerably and as we topped the hill, Split was spread out before us as a huge industrial sprawl. The thought of negotiating all that urban traffic was not appealing and since we had no specific destination, we elected to by-pass it and push on. The rugged barren rocky coast-line north of Split gave way to an easier wider road that swung around sheltered harboured villages hanging from the hillsides, mostly only supporting the odd small fishing boat. Late in the afternoon, Jacky picked out Makarska as a likely place to spend the night. A delightful thriving harbour opened up, with a developed waterfront boasting bars and cafes. Still no hotels, Jacky contacted an apartment holder who agreed to take us for one night, but was an hour and a half away in ...

  The Alps behind us was bitter sweet. Aimile had coped superbly, hauling us up and over the mountain passes and shared some of the most breath-taking scenery in the world. The run down the Italian valleys past Bolzano to Trieste was more mundane. We didn't attempt to enter Trieste's  industrial sprawl and skirted round, fumbling our way to engage with the coast road that runs all the way down the Adriatic.  After a couple of missed turns, we were heading for the Croatian border. There was no  discernible  difference between the two countries as we exited Italy and entered Croatia. Even the currency stayed the same, as Croatia had obligingly adopted the Euro on January 1st. What changed was the scenery. The mountains came down to the sea and the road clung to the edge of the cliffs and followed all the contours. That is, all the contours up and down. No gracefully curving Italian sculpted concrete bridges. It was a fun drive to start with, bu...

  Cafe at the top of the world... Google put in an appearance in the morning, but we still couldn't work out, which route to take through the mountains. We skipped breakfast in the hotel and got a coffee and croissant, when we filled up with petrol. The attendant, asked if we should go left or right out of Davos for Italy, sucked his teeth and suggested the "ferry". That was back down the mountain we crawled up the night before. I hate back-tracking, but we had become intrigued by the thought of a 20 kilometre ferry across the Alps. Not an easy job going down the mountain. The brakes soon started to over-heat and get spongy and I had to pull over and let them cool down. On the second occasion I pulled over opposite 'The Ferry ", which turned out to a train for cars, similar to the Channel Tunnel, but wider and ran every half hour. We could skip 2 mountain passes and emerge on the other side. 37 Swiss Francs for a trip of a life-time. 20km and 20 minutes later we ...