Naousa (Sunday night)

Peaches and wine apparently.  We arrived too late to investigate either today. (Sunday)

We had a very long driving day so I set myself up with a new driving position. 

Clutching the armrest

It enables me to better lean into those steep corners on mountain roads.

From Thassos (island) we were going to take the ferry from Prinos to Kavala, but there are only 3 per day (as opposed to 1 every 45 minutes from the main ferry port).  A few miles later at the main port the lady in the ticket office waved us through with a look of great urgency and we rushed onto the ferry as they closed the ramp behind us.  It was a pretty ferry though – which makes all the difference of course. 

It meant that we then had to drive from Keramoti to Kavala and, as F had carefully mapped out our routes for the day to avoid motorways, it was on country roads. However, as we shot through Kavala we were still over an hour up on the wait for the next ferry from Prinos (and it wouldn’t have been a pretty one).  Furthermore, en route from Keramoti we saw some fields of rice (which we haven’t seen anywhere else).

Kavala might have been interesting, but we were on a mission.  Serres flashed past a bit later.  In between were vast areas of broadacres farmland as we followed a wide river plain up towards the mountains that form the border with Bulgaria.  On a sunny Sunday, the cafes, restaurants and tavernas of Serres were doing good business and it looked lively.  We headed towards Bulgaria and did a last minute swoop to the west make a circuit of the lake called Kerkini.  Lunch was a picnic at the old Port of Mandraki – a small harbour high and dry on what had once been the edge of a much larger lake (1930’s man-made reservoir). In 2020 , with waterline lowered to nearer original levels, there are broad marshes grazed by water buffalo and areas of wetlands with wading birds.

And a lizard

Lizards are held in special regard in our household, but that is a story for another day.

These days Kerkini is one of the more important managed wetland reserves in Europe.

As we headed west and south again the produce growing around us went from broad acres cereals, sunflower (stubble) and cotton, to more intensive horticultural crops like grapes, olives, kiwifruit and fruit trees (mostly stone fruit like peaches and nectarines – also all harvested now).

Our stay for the night was a bit difficult to find….but we got there eventually; to a beautifully decorated hotel room that had been sold as an apartment on the booking site. F was a bit miffed by its shortcomings, especially when even after two follow-ups with the landlady the wiffi thing wasn’t working, but quickly acknowledged that life does not depend on wiffi – blogging can wait. 

Instead we admired the view from the balcony – which was universally agreed to be pretty damned good, and watched the countryside below go from daylight to a darkness laced across with a network of lights.  

From a vantage point high enough up mountains to have ski areas close by, we could see miles and miles out across plains.  That was Nousa country we were looking down on; it must grow half of Europe’s peaches (who knows, it just looks like a lot), and it has a special designated status for wine.  We had driven too far, arrived too late, and on a Sunday, to contemplate a wine tour, and cats don’t care for wine anyway.

Today’s weirdnesses:

1. The mobile chicken farm, carefully built into the back of a 5 tonne lorry, that we followed down the road between Keramoti and Kavala. It was only when it pulled up behind us at an intersection and we could hear its loud speakers that we realized that, like the garden-plant, melon, & fish vendors we see and hear in Piraeus, this guy is a mobile vendor of chickens to country folk who like to have a few chooks in their backyard. 

He was advertising them by colour.

2. Cremated food. 

Today’s bright colours:

Pyracanthus adorns many miles of Greek roadsides and at this time of year it’s bright orange berries do a stand-out glow from the roadside vegetation. 

Linen at Mandraki Port. 

Today’s little roadside shrine (one of 100’s):

Someone (non-Greek) said to us they represent road deaths – if they do (and we have our doubts) it is a very sobering commentary on the country’s road toll.