Safe Return Doubtful

The rain did come on Saturday but not as continuous as had been predicted. Late on Friday night the sky at night was quite spectacular with the amount of lightning around. In the end Saturday was a series of closely knitted together showers, of varying strengths. Roja and I got out for a couple of hours in the morning and hiked up to a ruined monastery a few kilometres into the forest.

The other van, and the green bus were great company. In turn, I had successive visitors to the van for coffee, Nige, the Hebridean raft leader, Gudi, the Namibian lady, and Nige’s wife. Their kids were over also, with their black lab, Shadow, to see Roja.

Nige and his 8 year old son will head over to Norway in spring for another season for him working as a whitewater rafting guide. He has worked there for more than 10 years. This year, for the second year, his wife will stay in Falkirk with their 11 year old daughter, as she attends school, then join them in June. A highlight of the evening, to the many gathered Greek day visitors also, was Nige’s son jumping into the Voidomatis river from the bridge 10 metres above. The river is known as the most consistently cold in Europe, at pretty much 4C all year (thanks for that bit of information, Hugh..)

Gudi has a partner in Namibia, and they spend about half the year together, but she enjoys the van life more, and so roams alone for the rest of the year. She is a real character, and was around on Sunday after the green bus had gone, so we got the chance to chat more. She runs her electric off just one 100 watt panel and one battery. She says her battery is struggling, but I think it’s the time of year. My 3 panels don’t make a lot of difference here, in a gorge, so with limited sunlight anyway, and it is low in the sky, and three rainy, and hence cloudy days. I have hooked-up to mains at a campsite tonight, the health of the batteries does suffer if they are run low for days, and it’s been 50 days now since they last had mains power. Gudi refuses to, amusingly, as she doesn’t like sites, and doesn’t want to spend the money. Her van is German, she worked in Germany for the last few years of her career, but has been retired now since the age of 67, for two years. She swims in the river each morning, and is headed roughly the same way as me, so we may encounter each other again in the next couple of months.

This video of Roja was taken by the kids..

I’m in the Meteora tonight, a drive of a couple of hours, and a campsite at a place still busy with tourists. The Meteora is a rock formation in Thessaly, the eastern

Pindos. Amongst the monoliths are the largest and most precipitously built complexes of Eastern Orthodox monasteries, second in importance only to Mount Athos. Meteora literally means, suspended in the air.

I did a few chores this morning, including a fairly major supermarket stop at Lidl in Ioannina, and then took my time with the journey, rather than taking the motorway, going over the Metsovo Pass. The pass goes up to 1700 metres on a road that really interested me, as in the research I did, comments were that after the road tunnel was built, below it, the pass is no longer maintained, and only just driveable. I had thought of staying at the top, but the road was fine, those comments seemed greatly exaggerated, and I headed on to give the van the power boost it requires.

I’ll probably stay a couple of days here, despite the many visitors still here. Half the campsite is open, and I’d guess there are 30 vans and motorhomes here, probably about a quarter full. I much prefer to be in a more remote place, but I will take the chance to clean the van for an afternoon. It’s a low season price of only 15 euros which is a bonus.