European Journey
by Kevin Jones
It was during the long hot summer of 2006 (remember that?), that we decided to go for a year out, and some months later after arranging sabbaticals from work and preparing our journey we now had a rather more extended route than originally planned! It would take us not only to the very south of Greece and to its Islands but also would bring us later in the year back up to the very North of Europe, to the North Cape where the sun shines 24 hrs a day in summer; something neither of us had experienced.
We embarked on the 2nd of April 2007 across the pond to Boulogne-sur-Mer with our trusted Syncro Joker Pop top. By now we had uprated the LPG capacity from 60 litres to the larger dual system 80 litre inboard and 30 litre belly tanks. We discovered the range necessary between fillings needed to be at least 450 kms to accommodate the lack of garages in some countries that supply LPG. To drive on petrol would just add to costs considerably.
Our first stopover was at Konigsee, the site of Hitler’s summer house or Eagles Nest at Berchtesgaden. The weather was perfect and the lakes like a mill pond, it was shear joy.
We made our way through Slovenia then on to Croatia, driving along the winding coast road to the south.
Passing through Montenegro we wound our way around the mountain passes that we needed to drive to avoid entry to Albania, still a lawless society we were told. Here the scenery is just spectacular with deep gorges and long tunnels cut into the rock.
Our first real problems started at the Serbian border which the rather thuggish border police insisted was Kosovo. Our first bribe started here and we negotiated a £40 tariff to pass on with a scrap of paper giving us so-called insurance cover and also a pass through the frequent police and militia check posts. We learned later that the Albanians had shot 6 United Nations soldiers recently and the whole area was on high alert.
Passing through the brutalised country - resembling Dante’s inferno with smoke from many fires now hanging in the valleys - we decided after driving around a blown up bridge in the beautiful area of Biogradska National Park to carry on to Greece.
We arrived in the town of Kosovska Mitrovica at about 9pm in total darkness and it was evident that the locals hadn’t seen a tourist for some time. The mostly unwelcome attention had us (with the aid of Tom-Tom sat nav,) speeding on past Pristina towards the Macedonian border. Again, a full interrogation at 2am in the morning and payment of the by now familiar “Insurance Premium” had us speeding towards the final stages of our 17 hour epic drive to the safety of Greece.
The next morning after a brief visit to Thessalonica we headed west and over the Katara pass with its brilliant views of the 5000ft snow capped mountains.
We made a firm ferry booking at the port in Igoumenitsa for our return via Brindisi in Italy and headed south to Kephallonia.
The pace now started to slow down as we took in the sun and basked in the mild 23celcius weather. On the beach at Sami, where they shot the film Captain Corelli's Mandolin, we set up camp just a yard or so from the waters edge just basking in the sunshine and an occasional swim to pass the time.
Now our tour of Greece began in earnest taking in the monuments of Olympia, Apollo Temple before heading south along the coast to Kalamata and Areopoli. If you are the wild camping type there are some great places on the coast and the Greeks being very laid back will let you camp up in peace.
Our Journey then took us via Mistras with its picturesque hillside village, to Korinthos and the famous Canal, deep cut into the bedrock.
Athens and the Acropolis were next, and with Tom-Tom the chaos of the city was reasonably well negotiated. Next the town of Meteora - but on our way the high-pressure filler tank decided to leak and after an enforced stopover near Volos at a charming campsite near Kala Nera we picked up the spares, fitted them and were on our way.
Meteora featured in a James Bond movie where the monasteries are perched high up on natural rock pillars with a winched wicker basket as the only way up.
It was here at the close of business in late afternoon, that one trailing arm decided to give up and the retaining lug for the coil spring, now rusted through, resulted in the spring slipping and lodging itself against the rear shock absorber. Not the best condition for the VW to re-cross one of the highest mountain passes in the country.
We scrabbled about and eventually persuaded two mechanics to spend the three hours or so to fix the arm, albeit temporarily, so that the get-you-home job had us on our way by 8pm with the impending ferry crossing to Italy booked for 4pm the next day!
After a most relaxing time with mild sunny weather and spring colours we crossed to Italy to explore the southern National Park areas of Pollino and Cilento with their pastoral and very quiet back mountain roads. Then we explored the magnificent ruins of Pompeii and the still smoking volcano of Vesuvius, which required driving a narrow road with hairpin bends, 1 in 3 slopes and massive coaches that took up nearly the whole width.
Up to Casserta and the impressively rebuilt Abbey at Montecassino which was totally destroyed by the allies in WW2 on their push north towards the heart of Germany. It is a tragic story told to me by both Allied and German survivors of the conflict and the evidence is expressed in the numerous impeccably kept graves in the War cemeteries of the Colonial and Polish forces thereabouts.
We had appointments for Han [Kevin's wife] to visit a few centres of autism on our route as part of some research, one being just outside Rome where a local farm had been converted for the benefit of clients. A peaceful afternoon well spent and we were on our way and the “Big Push” to the Pyrenees just north of Gerona in Spain to visit another centre for autism. We broke our record covering 978km in one day from a free camp near Piombino to the Beach at Cap D’Age.
It became very hot in Spain and well into the thirties, and this was only the beginning of May, and so our drive to the summit of the western pass of the Col de Puymorens over the Pyrenees brought a cool 18 degrees outside temperature with our camping spot surrounded by snow capped mountains.
The run back to Chester took us through the rolling countryside of the Lot and Dordogne where we met my former colleague and travelling companion, John McMahon who has retired there. It was he with whom I spent six incredible months travelling from London to Yemen overland in a 1970’s VW to photograph the Middle East for a Photo Library in London in the late seventies.
I will not dwell on our experiences as it is well documented in my published book called “Inshallah, Odyssey to the Middle East” which is available from me from home or at various shows throughout the year. Suffice to say we talked over old times and picked up our stories as if we had just come back from this epic adventure.
Eventually we returned briefly to Britain and after repairs were made at the facility of Syncro-Nuts just outside Glasgow to replace the two corroded rear trailing arms, followed by a tune up at our LPG fitter Steve of Gasure as well as fitting in a couple of shows, we set off once again. This time we were to visit the far North of Norway via the former Eastern Bloc states of Poland, through to Estonia.
We met so many people on our way that the conversations we had and friends we made along the way will be there forever. One of these, a German called Peter put us up in his brother in law’s Hotel car park and even bought us breakfast the next day. He was a former VW mechanic and garage owner and needless to say his enthusiasm for 4 wheel drive syncros knew no bounds.
The memories of our journey from the rustic streets of Prague and Otto Schindlers factory at Krakov across the plains of wheat and barley to Lotz where another of Han’s contacts were awaiting us seem so far away.
Torrential rain hit us near Warsaw but with the higher than average wading kit fitted to the VW along with the 4 wheel drive we were adequately protected. However we visited yet another of Hitler’s former bunkers, the Wolf’s Lair, a Famous WW2 site at Gierloz. On the road we passed another T25 van that had run into a Deer and the front cab was completely smashed in. It reminded us to be more vigilant for stray wildlife and we were thankful to have our front mounted bull bars with spare wheel as extra protection in front of us.
From Poland we made our way through Vilnius and Klaipeda in Lithuania to Riga in Latvia and eventually the university town of Tartu and the beautiful medieval city of Tallinn in the far north of Estonia.
As we went further north the landscape changed from flat farmland to rolling wooded forests interspersed with lakes that provided a foretaste of Finland.
These countries though part of the EC have not defined themselves as much as the Czech Republic and the old Communist style and way of life still persists. The shops outside the main cities are all but bare of goods and the western type infrastructure has yet to appear in any real sense. However they are making good progress with some of the road systems which our Tom-Tom found hard to cope with. The map sometimes went blank due to the out of date database it uses. Still for the most part it was very enjoyable and a final push across the water to Helsinki found us participating in the Mid Summer celebrations there along with several thousand other party goers, enjoying the late evening sun, beer, deer pie or Paella, and wonderful folk music to accompany the boisterous dancing which went on to the wee small hours.
The long straight roads to the north were through endless pine forests and lakes to overnight stops at campsites with a view to a dash to the sauna or a walk after dinner, which were cut short by the aggressive mosquitoes that inhabit the area. Never more so than Hamnbukt, our last stop before North Cape. I swear the mossies were trying to scratch their way through the double Perspex windows for a juicy snack!
And finally we drove through the tunnel to the island of Mageroya and North Cape. Gone was the summer sun and clear weather to be replaced by cold winds, fog and rain. The traveller has to pay about £25 to cross through the tunnel and at the very end on the North Cape point in the fog looms the sheds of the parking control. Dipping into our pockets for a further tariff of about £40 for a maximum 48hour stay we had just 30 metres to go till the end of our northern journey. It was bleak. The fog was as thick as a smoke screen and after all our travelled miles seemed a huge disappointment.
However after a scrabble about over the rocks, a few laps of the visitors centre, and a photo session at the monument we returned to the van for a warm cup of tea. About an hour later and the clouds started to lift, oh joy. A little later and all was sunshine, with the sun glistening off the sea revealing this rather inhospitable outcrop in all its glory.
So relieved was I that I re-emerged at 2 am in the morning to photograph the midnight sun.
How strange it was to see everything lit with a sunny glow and how relieved we were to have seen the sight after so long on the road, as others we heard had waited days and still spent a small fortune to see virtually nothing. Yes I know it’s a tourist trap now with white boxes heading north in a conga line to see the North Cape but for a one and only time I am glad we made it.
Much heartened, we returned to the south of Norway and sunnier climes, crossing seaways by ferry giving us spectacular views of the snow capped mountains running down to glistening water; before taking in Tromso and its University Museum; the war museums of Narvik and Alten Fjord where the Tirpitz was irrevocably damaged; the whirlpools off the Bodo coast where the water rushes between lakes at Godoynes; and past the arctic circle heading towards Bergen.
The journey from Trondheim and through the Jotunheimen national park area was spectacular to say the least. With high mountain crossings and a 24km tunnel it has to be one of the most interesting drives of the journey.
Arrivin at Bergen the rain finally gave way to unusually warm sunshine, ideal for photographing the older, less tourist quarter of the city with its colourfully painted lapboard houses.
Two days later we were on our way through the flooded areas around Kongsberg where a state of emergency had been declared. Passing over one bridge the raging torrent was less than three feet from the road instead of its normal fifteen feet, and all about the parks were flooded. Passing columns of army vehicles called in to sandbag waterways and rescue flood victims (boy does that sound familiar), we happily passed out of the danger area to Oslo. Now this is a city of great interest as it houses the Tor Heyerdahl, Kontiki museum. This features his two famous exploits the Kontiki and Ra voyages that inspired and developed a taste in me for adventure and travel. This is a city of underground tunnels and frequently we would crawl out of a tunnel in the hope that our Tom-Tom would re-aquire its GPS signal and tell us where the heck we were!
Our journey south to Copenhagen and the time we had left meant we had to give up a visit to Stockholm and leave this for another time. On arrival at the great city we had such a glorious sunny evening we decided not to waste it and within minutes of arrival had grabbed the last boat trip around the harbour. Seeing so many sights we later returned to the city and imbibed in a hearty steak and chips supper washed down with the local brew, Carlsberg. The next day was spent visiting the factory where afterwards we were offered two free glasses of best lager. I decided to re-enact the last scene from the film “Ice Cold in Alex” where for those film buffs, our wartime desert hero, John Mills, famously downs an ice cold glass of Carlsberg from its distinctive glass. I did the same but had to request a special glass from the bar kitchen. Oh yes that tasted just as good after a two hour tour.
And so to the final, but most enlightening leg of the journey. Through Germany we visited the national tank museum, yes you have guessed it, I love military vehicles too until we reached Wolfsburg, home of our beloved VW museum. We were gobsmacked by the variety of Beetles sported at the museum, not to mention the other exotic collectables there.
We met up with a Canadian couple and we just became instant friends. Having slept in the car park of the VW factory we joined them the next day to visit the factory itself. For those that have not visited yet I can really recommend it. The factory is cleaner than some operating theatres I have filmed in and they have taken its level of sophistication to new heights. For those collecting their car, a cylindrical glass windowed tower contains the latest issues off the production line. A hoist automatically selects your car on request and from this thirty or so storey warehouse the car is delivered to you for collection.
And that’s not all. The factory, reception and visitors centre is set in a very futuristic and landscaped park, straight out of a sci-fi movie. It is simply breath taking in its concept.
We parted company with our Canadian friends with a view to visiting them on our three month visit to the USA and Canada and checking out his VW repair business, more later.
We returned via Holland driving the smaller back roads there, care of Tom-Tom, which avoided all the traffic jams and took us to the really older and traditional farm areas that are missed on the main roads.
After our goodbyes we powered down the autoroute to arrive at Boulogne, our budget Channel crossing, courtesy of Speed ferries, with a dry water pump bearing and the precious antifreeze dripping in a constant stream.
We were relieved to drive up the ramp onto the ferry and one hour later were travelling the back roads of England to avoid what I now consider to be some of the worst motorways in Europe with their congestion and interminable road works. We made it to Bristol, got the VW fixed and ready for the exhibition at Vanfest. All told, it was a wonderful way to spend three months. Can’t wait for America!