As the afternoon wore on the thunder storms and downpours diminished, to the point where there was a blue sky interlude long enough to allow us to pedal back towards Igoumenitsa using the half built bike track.
It's a rare thing in Greece, any provision for cyclists, so even unfinished projects seem remarkable.
It was attractive ride, raising our spirits a little. Being grounded in Camping Drepano for three days is almost guaranteed to make you grumpy. The unkempt, ramshackle aspects of the place begin to become irritating, nothing terrible, just a slow agglomeration of minor annoyances - the temperature of the showers fluctuates depending upon how many people use them at the same time, the plumbing in the washing up place is so disfunctional that your waste water bubbles up in the next door sink as you empty your bowl. These are not in themselves major issues, but they join all the other 'for heaven's sake' moment.
The improvement in the weather meant we could cook outside. We needed to grill the chicken we had in the fridge so it would not spoil when we have to turn off the gas during tomorrow night's crossing to Brindisi. Out came the Cadac, the smell of grilling chicken attracted a dozen or so of the site's feral cats who gathered in the dusk spookily. just staring or padding about, the two big lanky black ones resembling miniature panthers. Suddenly they scattered as one of the site's stray dogs decided to investigate what was cooking. She was huge, like a cross between Fozzy Bear and a St Bernard, but a gentle giant who after a few minutes resigned herself to the fact she was not going get a scrap. She flopped down, but continued to regard me out the corner of her eye disconsolately.
In between the downpours we tried to dry our laundry by placing the clothes horse underneath the wind-out awning. It kind of worked, now we had a heap of damp clothes rather than a mountain of soaking wet ones. Maybe they would dry in the morning, with our ferry due to depart at 1am on Friday we were in no hurry to leave the campsite early on Thursday. Aside from the laundry, splash back from the heavy downpours had coated our outdoor furniture and groundsheet in a thin layer of sticky mud. We had stuff to do but no need to make an early start.
Which made waking up a first light very annoying. The volume of the area's ambient hum seemed to have tripled, then a scops owl started to beep, a dog barked in the distance, more of a soundtrack than a dawn chorus, like a track from 'Animals' which didn't quite make the final cut. I lay back expecting the intro. to be interrupted by a series of spacey sustained notes, or a spooky minor diminished seventh played by a stout balding fellow in a black tee on a battered black strat. I thought I was simply wiling away a moment of insomnia, until I discovered later that Pink Floyd were planning to light-up Battersea Power Station at the weekend to mark a reissue of Animals. My prog rock dawn wasn't imagined, I was having a premonition!
The rest of the day was comparatively mundane. We spent the morning 'de-mudifying' the van. Early afternoon we headed to Lidl, which was never going to be uplifting. However, we did have a good chat with a young English couple who had just arrived from Albania in their venerable Fiat panel van self build.
They truly were digital nomads, the woman explained that she had not had a permanent address for the past eight years, and now she and her partner lived in their van permanently. Something of a challenge during the recent heat wave as they had converted it with anonymity and security in mind with big roof lights but no side windows. We chatted about places we'd both visited, everyone loves New Zealand it seems! They aimed to get from Igoumenitsa to the Turkish border in one hop, possible I guess given the new motorway from here to Thessaloniki. The pair were running short of 'Schengen days' and planned to spend three months in Turkey to 'reset the visa'. I admired their spirit and single-mindesness. It must have taken determination to stick to their vegan principles during their three weeks in Albania; they fell into the Lidl vegetable aisle as if they'd been lost in the Sahara then discovered an oasis..
It was good to have an easy going chat, I think people have been quite standoffish this trip. I am not a 'people person' particularly, but I am not completely unsociable. WhatsApp helps as it means we can keep in touch with the kids on an ad-hoc basis and at least chat with someone other than each other from time to time. Otherwise we revert to a kind of gibberish only spoken by us - 'Pellian' - consisting of phatic grunts, inane neologisms and lame in-jokes.
It was still mid-afternoon and we had no need to present ourselves at the port much before 10pm. I suppose we could have found a parking place in the town and visited the archeological museum or maybe driven to see the ruined amphitheatre a few kilometres away, but our enthusiasm seemed to have wained. Instead we drove back towards the lagoons to the beach parking beyond the campsite and stared at the view.
Gill did some knitting, I wrote the first couple of paragraphs of this post on the notes app. This prompted a somewhat rambling discussion about which version of 'Echoes' was the best, the original on 'Meddle', 'Live at Pompeii' or Gilmour's 'Live in Gdansk'. All very nerdy! Our conclusion was the Gdansk version due to the exceptional interplay between Gilmour and Wright; but it's not perfect, I insisted, Dave Mason is missing. The way he drums a tad behind the beat gives an edge to Pink Floyd's performances, like Charlie Watts did for the Rolling Stones.
A litter strewn beach backed by magnificent Eucalyptus, a rambling conversation about music trivia, the silvery glittering sea, a ferry to catch later, time passing slowly, pointless moment by pointless moment - there is something strangely liberating in all of this, how if you travel long enough the episodic acquires significance. Time becomes your significant other.
We decided to drive to the port while it was still light. It proved to be a smart move. Mediterranean ports are not disorganised, they have been shipping people and goods about for more than three millennia; perhaps its this long history which means they don't deem it necessary to explain the obvious, like where to check-in or even bother with an entrance sign.
Our previous experience in Brindisi taught us that we needed to check-in at the Grimaldi desk in the terminal to get our boarding cards. Rather than trust that we would find a parking space at the terminal we stopped in some waste ground between the 'Corfu port' and the 'International Port' and I hopped out to explore on foot. All the parking directly in front of the port was occupied by motorhomes, some had been there a while with tables and chairs next to them and a sun lounger or two on the nearby grass, the big visitor car park to the left of the terminal was empty apart from a few abandoned lorry trailers, so we headed there.
There were only half a dozen people queuing at the Grimaldi desk, each person seemed to have a complicated problem so it took about quarter of an hour before it was our turn. With us it took no time at all, our passports were checked cursorily and we were handed two boarding cards with our cabin numbers on and a Grimaldi bumper sticker with the numbers 16 and 22.30 scribbled on the back to remind us of the correct ro-ro dock and the time to present ourselves.
As evening approached we decided to head through security and into the docks. We decided it would be easier to find where we needed to queue before nightfall. However, we had a problem, the way into the visitor car park was was well signed but the way out was closed off with a barrier. The only way out seemed to be to ignore the no entry signs and drive the wrong way through the entrance. By the time we came to depart there was a small gaggle of bewildered drivers from northern climes all tussling with the same dilemma. The dock security gates were next to us, in a rare outbreak of assertiveness I wandered across and posed the question to the security guys, "How do I get out?" The Greek solution to my obvious question was simple, ignore the no entry signs, so I did, followed closely by four Dutch motorcyclists and a German hot-hatch. Momentarily I had seized the initiative, not a quality I am know for and certainly not something I am going to make a habit of.
A Greek primary school arithmetic problem: if it takes two and half hours to load a ferry and the same amount of time to unload it, how long will it take to complete the operation. The answer is three hours, this apparent arithmetical impossibility was achieved by having scores of large trucks entering the ferry (some forwards others reversing) on the left side of the stern ramp, at the same time as trucks exited the vessel in a similar haphazard manner on the right side of the same ramp. This is because Grimaldi's ships are more like big floating multistorey car parks rather than conventional ro-ro ferries, the upper vehicle decks able to accommodate big articulated trucks. They are impressive but tricky to load and unload.
The upshot of all this resulted in us departing at 1.45am, three-quarters of an hour late. By the time we had queued for towels and bedding it was well after two in the morning before we settled down. The cabins were small and the bunks uncomfortable.
At 7.30am on the dot a voice on the tannoy announced it was time to vacate our cabin. Ten minutes later cleaners were hammering on doors to chivvy people up. Outrageous considering we were not due to dock in Brindisi until nine, and a complete rip-off given that we were charged €200 for an overnight cabin that we barely used.
Disembarkation was just as chaotic, a forty minute wait in a cramped, crowded corridor before the door to the vehicle deck was opened.
Then I had to reverse the van down a steep ramp while an aggressive deckhand waved his arms about and shouted, 'quick, quick, quick!' Grimaldi! Never again we promised ourselves, but they do cover some alluring routes, like Cagliari to Palermo, so....
It was good to be back in Italy. We were stopped at the security gate where a gaggle of bored looking officials were waiting to check if we had any Albanians spirited away in the garage. One guy popped his head around the habitation door. "You have beautiful little house," he commented. Italian charm, it's irresistible!
Gill set the sat-nav for Ostuni, we had a long anticipated and we'll deserved lunchtime appointment with a Puglian sandwich and a gelato.
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