Ferries, a Train and an Automobile

The journey by foot from our canal-side hotel back to 'car-park island' (Tronchetto) was probably not too long as the crow flies. But, the canals provide formidable obstacles. And our luggage was a tad heavy. We had various options, one being to hire a water taxi to take us from the hotel’s water-side terrace to Tronchetto. But you need to have deep pockets to hire one of those smart, shiny, wooden vessels. So, we opted for public transport, for which our 2-day travel passes would still be valid.

We left the hotel on foot and walked around the block and along the grand canal to the floating ‘bus-stop’, and waited for the No 1 vaporetto, that would take us two stops west to Piazzale Roma. We debarked, and walked across this busy transport hub to the elevated, ‘mass-transport’ train. This railway only has two stops, but serves our car park, and we were whisked there in a couple of minutes.

We hauled the bags to the VIP kiosk in the car park, where we asked if we could retrieve our car. After reading stories of thefts from vehicles, I had been super-cautious, and booked us into a special fenced-off area within the covered multi-story car park. Only the VIP attendants have the key to the sliding gates. Maybe we were more cautious than anybody else, because we had been the only car in the compound when we left her, and she still had no friends now. Still, better safe than sorry and it had allowed us to relax and enjoy Venice.

Rather than heading south on the autostrada, we opted for the coastal road. It is single carriageway and quite busy with lorries, but more sedate. The vast Po valley, which is squeezed between the Apennines to the south and the Alps/Dolomites to the north, is a flat and largely featureless landscape. As we moved away from Venice, the commercial sites thinned out, and the landscape became more agricultural. Roof-down, we occasionally glimpsed the lagoon and then the wider Adriatic on our left.

The carriageway traversed a regional park, which looked like a wetland area, good for birds. There were lakes on our right, and we saw men ankle-deep in the centre of the watery expanses, bending down and searching for shellfish we assumed. We saw flocks of wading flamingos, quite white, unlike the pinker ones you see in the French Camargue. And we saw storks, again like in Germany, wheeling around above us.

We skirted Ravenna, and continued south to Rimini, where we planned to overnight, and explore the Roman sites, including the remarkably-durable bridge of Tiberius. But, as we cruised up and down the, high-rise, beachfront hotels, we decided it was all a bit-too uninspiring, and so we retreated to Google. We found a highly-rated hotel 15 minutes back up the coast. Not only was it a lovely hotel, but it also happened to have the best restaurant in the area. There were more chefs than residents/guests, and the food was delicious, and an un-expected bonus.

Nest morning we continued south, and gradually the foot-hills of the Apennines appeared in the distance, ahead and on the right. We topped up with fuel on the outskirts of Ancona, and wended our way downhill into the ancient port. Ancona seems to be a pretty town, and maybe we should have stayed here and not Rimini.

Departing Ancona

Rather than heading straight for embarkation, we worked out that we had to drive to another part of the port to check in. Suddenly, procedures at Portsmouth and Ouistreham, seem world-class. Even though we had tickets etc., we had to park the car and head into a building to find a very long queue of potential passengers waiting, in some sort of line, to get their boarding cards. Eventually. once we had collected ours, we got back in the car and tried to follow signs to embarkation, which seemed to involve leaving the port, via several roundabouts and entering it elsewhere.

Whereas in England and France there are loads of chaps in high-viz jackets directing you to the ship (often when you don’t really need them to), here there was no-one. Fortunately, a small car with a Belgian number plate overtook us, wound down his window and waved his boarding papers. We interpreted that as “follow me”, so we did, and we got there!  "Merci!"

We were boarded quite early, and walked to reception where a male usher, without offering to help with bags, escorted us to our cabin. Even through this massive Greek Ro-Ro ferry was built this century, the cabins looked like they had been fitted out in 1970’s. Still, the cabin was spacious and basically clean.

The ferry to Greece

By the time that the last lorries and coaches had been loaded, we were nearly an hour late leaving. An amount of time we would not make up overnight. It was a calm night, and during the following, bright morning, we passed through the gap between verdant Corfu, and the heavily-wooded Albanian/Greek mainland.

We docked at Igoumenitsa at 10:00 local time, not the scheduled 09:00, and we had to get to Piraeus for a 18:00 departure to Leros. Our Audi satnav said that we would arrive at 17:15 with no stops. But fortunately, the maps and software are 10 years out-of-date. Audi wanted about £400 to upgrade to an up-to-date system, so we had spent about £20 instead on an excellent iPhone holder, that attached to the car's air-vents. Google Maps, of course, knew all about the new dual carriageways, and our ETA was reduced to 15:00.

It was a glorious morning, and the roads were almost empty. We drove south, and again - like every day previously - with the roof down. We arrived at Preveza, tunnelling beneath the neck of the Gulf of Ambrasia near Aktion. We left towering Lefkas island behind and headed inland, through the mountains, and wending past lakes, and crossing gushing rivers, towards the gulf of Patras. Here we crossed the impressive bridge across the bay. Not quite the Millau, but grand nevertheless.

The toll-booths seemed to increase in frequency, and although each toll was only about €2-3, the cumulative fee was mounting impressively. We cruised along the north coast of the island of the Peloponnese, until we reached Corinth, where crossed teh canal back to the Greek mainland.

As we approached the steaming, acrid megapolis of Athens, the traffic increased logarithmically, and our wits required much sharpening. The traffic became stop-start, but we finally found the exit to terminal E1 in Piraeus, from where our Blue Star car ferry would depart.

The calm before the scrum at Piraeus

I could write a whole blog about the chaos of the ferry quayside; no lines to join; lorries and cars mixed up; taxis dropping off pedestrians in the middle of the mayhem, and the rushing off; lorries doing 3-point turns, so they could reverse onboard; officials directing elderly foot-passengers to their entrance, but directly in the line of reversing artics; bikes and mopeds everywhere...  But I won’t.

All I will say is that Ricky Gervais would have enough material for a full-length comedy feature. And, that I am staggered that no-one was killed, or at least seriously injured.

Eventually, we hailed down a bloke in a high-vis vest, and he gave is a ‘Leros’ sticker for the windscreen. By this stage we thought the ferry garages must have been bursting at the seams, but when we eventually got waved on (about an hour later than scheduled), the garages were half empty: the illusion of loading was that each lorry’s manoeuvres took so much time that very few embarked per minute. Again, the ordered-efficiency of Portsmouth was a distant dream.    

We made it to reception and, again, a Greek usher took us to our cabin. And again with no offer to help with bags, although we only had one small carry-on. At least we had a cabin. Most other passengers did not, it seemed. The whole of the ship's communal areas resembled some overcrowded, biblical camp, with humans of every age, trying to sleep on bar chairs, on the floors, and even in stairwells. At least on the Ancona ferry, a couple had managed to pitch a tent outside on the aft deck. That now seemed very sophisticated in comparison.

We arrived at Leros at 04:00 the next morning in pitch black. I drove around to the first bay and we parked up and slept in the car until dawn. It was cold, as I had occasionally, to run the engine and the heated seats to help us no-off again.

Morning arrival at Leros

Still, we had finally arrived, after 14 days, 1,700 road miles and quite a lot of nautical miles.

We had travelled through eight countries (not counting sailing through Albanian waters). We had crossed a massive, road bridge (Patras); a giant causeway (Venice); traversed two underwater tunnels (Chunnel and Preveza); driven through innumerable Alpine tunnels; used two Ro-Ro car ferries; and used several trains, and water-buses. It had truly been an epic road trip, that even my fellow ‘Doncastrian’ - Jeremy Clarkson - might have enjoyed.