We did not expect Camping Drepano, the nearest campsite to Igoumenitsa ferry port, to be up to much. We weren't disappointed. Google reviews do a bull-shit bingo style summary of popular words used to describe places.
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However, none of the reviews mention the site's most striking and irritating quality - the mysterious background hum that pervades the place day and night. At first I thought it might be the distant rumble of marine diesels as numerous ferries chug past, but the sound is too persistent for that and more of a whine than a throb. It had to be from an industrial plant. When Gill went to reception to ask about laundry arrangements she also enquired about the hum. Apparently it emanates from a plastic recycling plant a couple of kilometres away. There is a certain irony in this, as Greece is the least organised place we've ever visited regarding recycling arrangements, to the point where we were carrying two big bin bags of glass, cardboard, tin and plastic items in the rear garage in the hope of finding skips to put them in. We didn't. Judging by the state of the verges most of it seems to get tossed out of car windows.
Camping Drapano is located on a thin spit surrounded by lagoons which form the southern edge of the delta of the river Thyamis. The area is sparsely populated but criss-crossed with tracks and minor roads. Soon after we arrived we unloaded the bikes and set off to explore them.
The ride was cut short when it began to drizzle, the first rain of the trip. We have had over a month of hot dry weather, that's tantamount to a drought, so I guess a bit of rain will be welcomed by the locals.
However we didn't get a bit of rain. An hour or so after we got back within a few seconds of each other our phones both gave off a loud fire alarm type sound. This was triggered by an emergency signal from Greek met. office warning of a 'hazardous weather event'. I think this must have used our phone's emergency frequency, not something we've come across before, but maybe more common in areas prone to tropical type storms or other general emergencies like volcanic eruptions or tsunamis. It gave us a bit of a turn.
What happened was not a 'weather bomb' but 12 hours of heavy rain, some of it torrential. I was glad we had moved off the terraced, steep sites we had been on previously, they could have been tricky in a downpour. The aftermath here resulted in nothing more than droopy trees and big puddles.
Spectacular cloud formations piled up around the mountain tops.
The site itself now looked bedraggled as well as unkempt.
As the storm cleared the pallid sun set quietly over the misty hills of Corfu. It brought people out of their vans clutching phones; nobody seems to carry a camera these days.
Next day, another message from local media dropped into my phone reporting that schools had been closed yesterday in Corfu.
The article was illustrated with a photo of a road covered by about 3cms of rainwater. The headline 'Floods in Corfu' was pushing it, really if you read the piece what it actually reported was the fact the threatened cyclone had not materialised.
It remains unsettled though, bright periods interspersed with darker, rumbles of thunder drowning out the ambient hum from the recycling plant. Regular sharp downpours have put the kibosh on any plans we had for cycling into Igoumenitsa and visiting the archeological museum. Instead I have spent the afternoon interrogating Trip Advisor and Google Maps seeking cool places for lunch in Ostuni, Lecce and Otranto. There are many.
"Are we 'Greeked' out'?" Gill enquired. I glanced out of the window, the rain coming down in sheets; I watched a bedraggled cat, one of the many feral moggies plaguing the site, crawl under a tattered tarpaulin, the campsite handyman drove past in his rusting Isuzu 4x4, it sounded as if the exhaust had dropped some years ago. "Yes, probably," I half assented. Then I read the description of the 'elevated' pizzas on offer in 'UEMÈ' in Lecce.
"No, it's definitely time for Puglia", I asserted, "I am 'Greeked out'."
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