English media would have you believe Greece is up shit creek with a turd for a paddle at the minute. It’s all bollocks of course. It’s business as usual. Granted I got there about a week after the bailout had been reached, but the news pretty much painted a picture of mass hysteria. People told me to take all the Euros I’d need with me, turning me into some kind of rolling cash machine for unsavoury types. In reality, if I’d have pedalled in with my head stuck up my arse I’d have never have known the difference. Obviously in five years time, when all the problems have time to take effect, it’ll be a different story.

The Bosnian guys I’d met in Albania had told me Greece was flat, I’m not sure which way they’d gone but it wasn’t the way I took. It was about 100km of winding hills before I reached a valley with a huge delta in the middle called Ammoudia. The climb out had killed me and when I got to the top I grabbed a sandwich from a roadside kantina (at this point I’m still not eating enough and get complete energy crashes, normally fixed by eating crushed up biscuits at the bottom of my bag). This is where I met Harry.

Keep following the coast.

Thomas Cook Coastlines.

Harry was a half Greek, half Australian building contractor who spent a few months a year at his hometown in Loutsa, fortunately I’d managed to catch him. I asked if he knew anywhere decent to camp nearby and before you know it we’re heading back to his place and I have a real bed and more importantly, a shower. Harry pretty much headed out to the pub straight away, but told me I should meet up with him later after I’d hosed myself down. I’m not one to turn down a beer, so I was treated to an interesting evening with Harry, his brother, his seemingly innumerable cousins and their friends, talking mostly about the current political issues, very fast, in Greek. It’s funny how much you can pick up with only body language, intonation and other people’s reactions.

This is Harry. He’s very small.

The next day I managed to get my first bit of hitching of the trip in. Heading to the island of Lefkada, there’s a big old underwater tunnel just after Preveza, which has enough signs prohibiting cyclists to put me off chancing it, so after fifteen minutes in what I deemed a suitable spot with my thumb out, a bloke with a moustache came over from a nearby garage.

‘Tunnel?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Go to start of tunnel. There is camera. Look at camera. A man in truck will come.’

Beats burning in the midday sun trying to thumb down a van. His top tip worked perfectly, and ten minutes later, I’m through on the other side, gratis. A fine service.

At this point, I was close to a major point in the European leg of the trip – finding Kieran Hood on Lefkada and getting a bit of sailing in. The island’s connected by a tiny floating bridge (which is actually a boat, in some weird tax dodge), onto a peninsula which brings you to the island. It was this point I realised that he worked in Vlycho, another 20km further south. Nice one.

What I believed to be Captain Hood’s seafaring vessel.

I found Kieran’s workmates pretty much by chance. I got a beer at a cafe called The Quay, and there was a bunch of guys in Sail Ionian shirts.

‘Do you guys work with Kieran by any chance?’

‘Ahh, Kierwon! He’s out sailing some Albanians around until Saturday.’

Nuts. Fortunately the guys at Sail Ionian are sound, and within an hour they’d sorted me out and we headed out for beers. This was pretty much the port of call for the next couple of days whilst I waited for Kieran and for some nice new Schwalbe Marathon Plus Tours to replace my knackered pair of Panaracer RIBMOs.

When Kieran finally docked with his Albanian family (apparently they were taking their daughter around, dressing her up as a mermaid, and doing photoshoots on rocks, I told him Albanians were weird bastards), he was straight to work sorting out a boat for us to take out the next day, the lad just can’t get enough of sailing.

The view from the Yacht ‘Whatever’. Awful name. Nice boat.

Just a bit of time away from the mountains.

I’ve never been sailing before. I feel like a fraud admitting it; a lad from Grimsby is unseaworthy. I don’t know my knots, my Dad gives me a bollocking every time this comes up in conversation. Luckily, Kieran knows his shit, jumped around, pulled things and tied stuff whilst I did the anchor and held the wheel a bit.

Captain Hood, doing stuff.

Sailing’s a relaxing game, mostly. For the first few hours we sailed about, drank beer, went to a couple of beach bars, swam a bit, very nice stuff. Then on the way back, Kieran pipes up with ‘We’ve got a bit of wind here’.

Unsuccessful fishing, part one.

Mike and Kieran pissing about in the sea.

Secondary sail up. Main sail up. Pulling ropes. Tying stuff. I was a real pirate, all under the tutelage of Captain Hood. Sailing all of a sudden got a bit intense. Apparently we got nine knots (I don’t know how fast that is, but Kieran was happy with it), and I shit bricks when the boat tilted over massively, sending everything flying across the deck. Seemed like a suitable way to finish up and moor in the dock.

The next day a tyre shaped package turned up, which meant I’d be heading out soon enough, after a night out in Vassiliki on the southern coast with Kieran and Mike. The place was mostly filled with tourists ranging from the beach bum surfer type who thinks it’s cool to act stupid, to the upper class, parent-funded, hoity-toity arsewipe, both being as bad as each other.

We headed to a couple of bars, one with a self service theme where you grabbed a beer from a fridge and queued for ten minutes for someone to open it, as though a bottle top was an impenetrable force. If this was the twenty year old Sam surrounded by Team Bastard this system would’ve been greatly abused, maybe I’m getting mature as I head towards thirty. The music in this place consisted of an ageing band playing bad covers from 10 to twenty years ago, the clientele lapped it up. Personally, these blokes shouldn’t have left the garage they came from. They were shit.

The night finished with a typically Greek taxi ride back with an absolute prick who drove recklessly and seemed to wantonly hike the price, then give us a sob story about how he needs to feed his family. I think you’re doing fine in your flash Mercedes mate.

Four hours sleep, stinker of a hangover, tyres slung around my neck, I left Vlycho, being given some deodorant, biscuits, a banana and water en route by Mike. I can’t thank the Kieran and the Sail Ionian guys enough, especially Mike and Scott. It was a cracking week off the bike.

This was the last time I saw Kieran Hood.

Having bumped up my tyre width in preparation for some dirt roads, I needed some new tubes. I managed to get a couple from a bike shop in Lefkas and got to work stripping my mudguards off (not enough clearance for these on my new tractor tyres), and putting them on. Here I got my first experience of gypsy kids. Bike upside-down, bags off, tools out, four lads come over with the illusion of helping, before some beginning to distract me by picking stuff up as the others tried to rifle through my frame bag, slowly becoming more obvious in their blatant search for cash. I think they’d managed to grab about one Euro in assorted coins before the bike shop owner noticed I’d got rumbled, sauntered over, picked up my upturned, wheel-less bike, along with the wheels as I grabbed all my bags and followed.

‘These gypsy kids are a big problem for us.’

You’re not fucking wrong mate. As they’re about 12-15 years old you can’t really land a haymaker on them, as much as you’d like to, the law doesn’t mean a thing to them either, they’re exempt, meaning pretty much nothing can touch them, and they know it. The whole experience left me realised how vulnerable I really am — I’m carting about all my worldly possessions, if it all goes missing, one way or another, I’m screwed. That’s my bike paranoia and cynicism cranked up another couple of notches.

That night I camped on a beach next to a salt lake, just after Amfilochia, ready for a big climb into the mountains the next day. A couple of fisherman toyed with their lines off the rocks a hundred metres or so away whilst I sat on the beach watching a calm sunset as a thunderstorm brewed far on the other side of the horizon. It was a beautiful, yet melancholic moment. Maybe it was the days events, or the accumulative effect of a weeks boozing, but I couldn’t help thinking of family, friends and home, and how much I appreciated and missed them. What I’d give for even a couple of hours in their company. Things that happened far in the past and what I should’ve perhaps done differently, and how ridiculous and futile it was to even think of that now. In contrast, how utterly absorbed I am in this trip, and how lucky I am to be living it, this is the culmination of years of planning, dreaming and grafting, and it’s all paying off. I got there. All these differing thoughts and emotions just left me motionless, staring at the sun falling, as the dark rode in.

Sunset by the Salt Lake

Then I dug a hole and took a turd in it.