All Aboard (or "chaos at Piraeus...")

We had one more night before we needed to catch our ferry from Ancona to Igoumenitsa. We’d thought we would stay in Rimini, to have a look at Tiberius’s bridge. We’d found a hotel (from the Telegraph) that looked ok, but the whole area was uninspiring, so we found a rather-nice, low-rise hotel a few miles back north.

I rang them. A very sweet receptionist said, yes, they had a room, and could she advise me that their restaurant was rated no. 1 on Tripadvisor!! So we booked a table for dinner. It as was amazing, and possibly the best meal we had on our road trip. Although the dining room wasn’t full, it was quite busy, and a big group arrived as we were finishing up. We counted four chefs, four front of house servers, plus someone we took to be the head chef or maître d’ who wandered around the kitchen and dining room. I would return just for that restaurant.

Our departure was scheduled for 13.30, and Google maps insisted Ancona was only an hour and a quarter away. We trundled down the coast road again, getting as far as Cattolica, an Italian beach resort, where I had been with my parents, when I was a little girl of nine. I could clearly remember the hotel, and Sari tracked it down on-line, so we went to have a look. Sadly, it wasn’t yet open for the season, but it did bring back so many happy memories. We had a little walk around the area, and then hopped on the autostrada, as time was getting a bit tight.

At the port, we discovered that you check in by parking up and the walking to a ticket office to queue. We had our e-tickets, passports and the V5 car ownership document, just in case. Lorries queue in one area, cars in another. It took a little while, but we got checked in, and were told which lane to join when we got to the car ferry.

We chatted to another Brit in the car park. She had also driven from the UK, and was going to her holiday home on Corfu. Sadly, en-route, her cat had escaped and gone missing. She was hoping to hear some news. We wished her well, and drove off, only to find that the car ferry port itself was quite a distance from the booking offices, plus road works made it completely unclear whether we turned left or right.  A Belgian driver sailed past us, gesticulating to follow him, for which we were grateful.  

On board the Ancona ferry

We boarded straight away, and were relieved that we’d booked a cabin as it was incredibly busy. The ferry was supposed to dock at 09:00 on the Thursday morning, but it was late departing, and hence we rolled off at about 10.15.

We now had to get to Piraeus, several hundred kilometres away, to catch our next ferry at 18:00. The car satnav sucked its teeth, and muttered something about Piraeus being nearly six hours away. Whereas the younger, up-to-date Google maps said she could get is there in four and three quarters. 

We didn’t have time to hang around, so Richard kept up a steady speed. The car’s satnav was very confused as it didn’t know about any of the new, great surface roads and thought we were off-roading most of the way. And we did it in exactly four and three quarters hours, including a brief lunch and coffee stop, and a further pit stop as we approached the port.

And that’s where the fun really started…

We started to see road signs for the port, which luckily seemed to accord with Google maps on the iPhone. We found ourselves in three lanes of heavy traffic, with lorries thundering along. Richard pulled into the outside lane to escape the heavy vehicles, only for Google maps to tell us we were coming off in 500m. “Oh sh*t”, said he, just managing to swerve across the traffic and make the exit.

This fed us onto a two-lane road, which had three lanes of vehicles! And it wasn’t moving very fast at all. Inching forward would be an exaggeration. Every so often, a car would magically appear and cut across the lanes at right angles, but there were no road signs to indicate this might happen. We ended up in the middle lane, hedging our bets, with nothing passing us on the outside. Richard (Clarkson) Crooks pulled into the outside lane, and with a clear run, managed to get us the extra 0.5 km around the road loop, and to the exit for the port.

“Hurrah”, we saw a sign saying gate E1, which was the gate for our ferry. It could now only be plain sailing. We coasted down the approach road. Fortunately, we had checked in online, and the Blue Star Ferry was at the dockside, towering above everything. So far, so good. Richard turned the wheel to point at the ferry ramps, and said, “Let’s board!”.

But the dockside was utter chaos.  Cars were parked, pointing in all directions, there were lorries everywhere, and people milling about. “No”, I yelled back to stop him. We needed to find the queue was for Leros: as the ferry had about five stops, we’d look pretty stupid if we boarded into the Rhodes section and got trapped in until the last stop.

We looked around for someone to ask. In the end, we parked just beyond the melange - well, when I say parked, I mean pulled to one side and stopped. I got out and set off on foot to try and find out what was going on. There seemed to be cars one side of the ferry entrance and lorries the other. I saw a woman getting out of her car, and asked if she spoke English. Luckily, her partner did. They were going to Kos - two stops after us – but he didn’t know which queue he was in. He thought someone official would come in a few minutes and tell him. 

Hmmm

So, we joined one of the many random queues. It was now about 15:30. We drank water, as surely, we’d be boarding soon, because the ferry departed at 18:00.

Dear reader, it was bedlam. Trucks reversed trailers on board up the ramp, and emerged sometime later sans trailer, only to repeat the exercise. Vans were directed on board. People walked through all lorries, with not a care in the world. Some just sauntered behind a trailer in the driver’s blind-spot, and that driver was actually The Stig setting a new reversing record.

Every so often, we’d hear a thud and see a lorry shudder as it failed to clear the ramp and ground to a halt, metal on metal. It had to try again. We shuddered along with it.

Eventually, we a saw a man in a yellow hi-vis, clutching a handful of papers. He’d stop at a car, ask them something, and then put one of these papers under their windscreen wipers. Sometimes, he’d direct them to a different place, which they managed only with great difficulty, because the whole port is now a “15 puzzle” game. But without the spare 16th square.

There seemed to be no logic to his process, so I got out of the car, scampered over to him, and pointed to the Audi, saying “Leros?”. And to my relief, he walked over and put a paper under our wipers that clearly said Leros. He pointed us towards a gap that had miraculously opened-up ahead. We were now first in the Leros queue!

It was now about 16:15, and we both needed a pit stop after our religious water imbibing. But we were going to be boarding soon, weren’t we? So, we didn’t risk it.

But the show continued. We were mildly concerned that no-one had actually asked to see our boarding passes, and indeed, Richard suggested, that we might be in a stand-by line. Some cars came down the road to the gate, waved tickets at an official, and drove straight on to the ferry! To add to the confusion, taxis kept turning up to disgorge foot passengers. And of course, they got as near to the ferry ramp as they could - perhaps with a good tip in mind - but with complete disregard for safety. How there wasn’t an accident, we don’t know. Health and safety would have had a field day.

I crossed my legs. I suggested that I ask an official when we would board and maybe find a loo? No, Richard was not keen on boarding without me, and said it wouldn’t be long. Men from the bridge, in crisp, white naval shirts, stitched with various insignia and stripes, wandered around looking at the mayhem. But it obviously wasn’t their job to help sort it, so they gathered in little circles with takeaway coffee cups and cigarettes. I wondered if I was brazen-enough to pee in one behind the car…

Chaos at Piraeus

Cars either side of us were called on, with trucks still delivering. A mass of motorbikes pulled up in front of us, so we could go nowhere. Eventually, at 18: 15, yellow hi-vis man shooed them away, and turned to wave at us. “Forward, forward, forward”. Up the ramp, and around to the opposite side of the ferry, where they tried to get us right up against the wall. We explained we had a two-door car with the driver on the right, and he couldn’t physically get out. He allowed us to move slightly. We grabbed our stuff, and I shrieked to Richard that I’d meet him in reception - wherever it was - and fled to find a WC. The ferry actually departed at 19: 15pm, an hour-and-three-quarters late.

We grabbed a couple of baguettes, and decided to head to our cabin to get away from the crowds everywhere. Reception told us they would ring our cabin to wake us, in time for disembarkation at Leros (sometime in the middle of the night). And sure enough, we got a call, and also a knock on the door at about 03:00.

We picked our way over bodies asleep in the corridors, and open spaces, and then went down to the car deck before being instructed to do so, only to find everyone else had already done the same.

The car next to us, a large brand-new shiny Land Rover, was so close there was no way I could open the door, so I sensibly stood out of the way. A scruffy, little car with peeling paintwork was behind the Range Rover. A man got into it and turn on his engine, without remembering to take it out of first gear. The little car lurched forward and smacked into the Land Rover’s rear.

If anyone had been standing there, they’d have had both legs broken. But the LR driver ambled over, had a look, shrugged and walked away. Richard and I wondered if his reversing sensors would ever work again…

At 04:00, we drove down the ramp onto terra firma on Leros. We were back.