This is the day I thought I would never leave Thessaloniki. Not because of falling in love with the city but because I kept going round in circles trying to find the road to Kavala. It took me about 5 hours to be on my way.
I stopped in a cafe for a coffee and a man wanted to see a map of where I was going. Other old men gathered around and gave me a lemonade. They wrote directions for me in Greek and pointed me vaguely in the right direction.
I walked round in endless circles, stopping at various places for sweets, biscuits, milk and an egg. An old lady in one shop gave me a red hard-boiled egg. One man went out of his way to take me to the bus station. I worked out that the directions I had been given were for the bus station.
I finally got onto the right road about 15.30hrs, and walked until around 18.00hrs. This took me to the outskirts of the city. I found a dip in a hilly field and set up camp.
This consisted of taking one end of my orange polythene bivouac and pegging the cord into the ground, doing the same with the other end, and then tying the top to my backpack laying on its side. I was only in the Boy Scouts for a few weeks before we moved from Addiscombe to Shirley! I threw in the groundsheet and sleeping bag, and bundled everything inside the entrance, leaving a couple of small air passages. Full details can be found in my unpublished manual “Survival with Del”.
I recorded a few thoughts:
uncomfortable; trudging along dusty road in hot sun, with dry mouth (despite 2 pints of milk), sore feet, riving a path through the concrete overgrowth, past the big palace of BP…
That was Day 19, giving new meaning to circular tours before shooting off at a tangent to sleep under the stars.
Tomorrow night finds me still about 60km short of the seaport mentioned yesterday. Oh, enough of mystery, I already noted above I was heading for Kavala.
Psychologist on the Move 