On the Road again (part 1)

 

So what does a man like me when he's leaving one home and has no idea about his next one?

Goes to his second home, the road!

This reminded me of a text I've written long ago about how that tiny space of my bike's saddle between the tank and the rear luggage often feels to me more like home than my home does. Boy I missed that "home" so much during the pandemic years. Not that the current situation is ideal for travelling, emotionally it's terrible thinking of the unthinkable torture Ukraine is going through and gas prices are sky rocketing. 

But, if there's a will there's a way so...

Here I am picturing my fully loaded iron horse in front of this old road roller right before the first tolls:

Weather is mediocre but not bad enough to complain. I chew up the first kms on the highway to leave Athens behind as fast as possible and decide to leave the toll road after Corinth as I hate toll roads and prefer to ride by the sea. The goal is to record some riding videos on this coastal route up to Rio (the Greek one) but unfortunately this wasn't exactly possible. You see, the North wind was so strong that it blurred my windscreen with sea spray. As if the overcast pale weather wasn't an enemy photo wise already. The wind was actually so strong that made me cancel a lot of stops for photos. I did manage a few shots by the sea so you get an idea how the coastline looks like after Kiato:

FYI, the snowy peaks you sea above belong to Parnassus mountain. Like below in the middle:

A couple of km later I capture the abandoned train rail. Parts of it are barely visible today due to vegetation:

Almost an hour later with a bit of a struggle in traffic I arrive at Rio (remember: the Greek one right?) where different snowy peaks catch my eye:

These ones belong to Panahaiko mountain which overlooks the city of Patra.

Rio also has an interesting fortress built in 1500, unfortunately over the ruins of an ancient temple of Poseidon. Worth a visit but I had no time for it so here's a few pictures from the outside:

You probably already spotted that bridge behind the fortress and yes, that's the most emblematic one in Greece bridging Rio with Antirio. Some prefer it at night due to its lighting but I don't travel in the dark unless there's no other option so here's my harvest in poor overcast daylight:

This almost 3 kms long bridge is an engineer's masterpiece as it faced successfully a variety of challenges (earthquakes, strong sea currents and extreme winds) hence it has set world records and is named after the Greek ex PM Charilaos Trikoupis who was the first to have this bridging vision and shared it in the Greek parliament in 1889 (!).

From this spot I climb up to get a better overview to the fortress - this view point makes my bike look like a fly:

Time to cross that bridge isn't it? Not so much fun to do so on a bike on such a windy day but definitely fun to pay less than 10% of the tolls cars are obliged to.

Here's a video:

Bet your life you prefer to listen to my music on that than the ear drum killer of the original audio due to the crazy wind.

I continue North as my destination is the island of Lefkada, a rare case of a bridged Greek island (Evia is the other one). The route is nice especially around Thermo but my windscreen is dirty again due to bugs and I risk arriving in the dark if I delay to clean it and make stops for pictures plus the sky doesn't really compliment them so I focus on fast riding to arrive before sunset.

I manage that so here's my cute AirBnb captured with the help of a low sun under the first blue sky I see in this day:

Now I have a very nice bed at my disposal, and a promising island to explore (it's my first time here) so stay tuned cause there's lots of beauties to follow.

To be continued 🙂