5th October
Aigio to Kineta
I've ended up in an old fashioned hotel run by the daughter. She said her father built it 50 years ago. I complimented her on the homely feel, picture of her Dad on the reception wall behind where she sat, a healthy entrepreneurial no nonsense looking man. 3rd floor with balcony, twin beds and with the bareness in keeping with the simpleness of a place that hasn’t wanted to keep up with the times. The very expensive cliff hugging motorway rumbles up high in the mountains behind.
I was strong and fresh this morning, excited and raring to go. It’s not always like that so you have to bend your needs so everything is lined up, an amazing journey, fantastic bike and enough interest in my blogs to want to keep publishing them; but it’s more about the minutiae. The detail which will quickly get forgotten.
First coffee, rubbish. V.disappointed. Got over it started to get into a rythmn. The battery power flattens out the hills so keeps up the cadence and the speed up a long slope is the same as on the flat. Often I would ride faster on the flat, almost always downhill without power. It’s an electric bicycle but if you deconstruct it as if were any vehicle it still functions as a bicycle. If we screw up on the delivery of new batteries for the second leg, I’ve already made the decision to ride unassisted to Dubai.
Pictures of this morning cycling around the coast of Greece where the ‘Old National Road’ is quite a darling of a route. Greek motorists are kind. They slow before overtaking and pass me by with plenty of space, always a ‘pip’ on the horn not to say ‘get out of my way’ but as a warning that he’s passing so be aware.
Not much happened apart from passing endless arrays of end of season table sets facing a gently lapping Gulf of Elefsina. I took a naughty paddle for a few minutes, if I’d got up an hour earlier I could have had a long swim.
Hate getting up. I’ll find a clip of my early South America rides, couldn’t get up, had to ride through the night. It was terribly hard. Here, less so. A loud German is talking so publicly on his telephone that I can hear him 7 tables away.
Earlier I was surrounded by adoring new fans, let’s hope they all follow me on Instagram. What a way to communicate. So early on the ride today it was nice and steady with a busier second half; buildings I passed so many looked the same along with a thousand coffee shops standing proudly wherever there was a space between Igoumenitsa and Kineta.
Until tomorrow.
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