Day 14 - Just Slogging
We had a slow start. Lots of phaff and just enjoying not racing off. Got a parcel of Emma's souvenirs sent home and her loose cassette fixed before we were moving again. The parcel sending was a bit of a mission, to start with you're supposed to queue at the window for what you want, sending, receiving, banking(?) even if it's not occupied and not in the general area where people were waiting. Took a lot of being "queue" jumped to work that out. When finally served, the staff were very helpful while also looking very pissed off with the process and our ignorance! 😂 then of course we didn't have cash...mind you seeing some Bulgarian Lev is a time-limited opportunity - they're switching to the Euro here from the 1st January!
The bakery hit was good though. All sorts of oily flat breads and rolls filled with cheese, and great fresh bread too. We went back for seconds but he'd already sold out!
"In 34 miles turn left" - the Garmin instruction was more like a car as we left the city on a road with definite Roman influence. It was headwindy, it was fumy and it was busy with fast moving traffic and lorries. Today was not pleasant cycling in any way, especially as we were actually on the road not for 34 miles, but all day, and left late. Headphones in, audiobooks on, do your turn on the front, switch, do your turn on the front, switch, don't look at distance travelled, switch... at least we were able to make a decent average speed (so the distance does actually go down)...and it wasn't raining!
Once again we were pedalling into the dark, this time armed with a 6kg watermelon which had been donated to us for dinner while asking for water. We crossed into Greece (another country ticked!) and quickly found we couldn't camp where we'd planned as a) it was not possible to get off the motorway/main road and b) there were police waiting in the tracks. Eventually we got to a junction and to a campsite next to a quiet field before we hit more towns and then the Turkish border!
We've got to stop arriving late. It's so much harder having the pressure of trying to find somewhere to camp and stopping every 10s to check the map or shine lights off of the road - slow and tiring. Also headtorches are sub-optimal bike lights. At least we got near the minimum today after all.
Food spend today: 48.50 euros