Our trip to Britain

What better way to open this blog but with a series of posts describing my recent trip away from Greece!

We had been in Corfu for just four months when we decided to visit Britain and see our relatives again after a year or so of being in Hong Kong. Having recently bought a car, after being car-less in China and Hong Kong for 8 years, the idea of driving home couldn't be resisted for long. Our main obstacle was finding somewhere to home our cat for 1 month. After scouring the Corfu forums, local rags etc, we eventually found a vet who discretely provided boarding for a select few of her customers. We quickly became customers by getting our cat updated with her vaccinations, "Hey Presto" a cattery was provided and the trip could go on. We took the cat to the vet's home and left her, a wee bit uncertain as the place she was provided wasn't tops in our scale of cleanliness etc, but having now booked and paid for the ferry to Venice, we were committed.

"Minoan Lines here we come"

The ferry was leaving at seven o'clock in the morning and check-in time was 6:30, so an early start was needed. With all this rush, we naturally forgot to pack our usual kit of handy things, like tea, coffee, cups and an electric kettle for using in unfriendly hotels who don't provide you with those sort of facilities, and, believe me there are many of them! So it was going to be a make and mend sort of trip, buying things as we needed them and gradually filling the car with all sorts of goodies.

The ferry takes 25 hours to reach Venice, first crossing to Igoumenitsa on mainland Greece and returning almost to Corfu Town about 3 hours later - very frustrating. Then it's off to Venice and a very boring sail up the Adratic Sea.











(Very grey St Mark's Square and Gondolas)


Leave Venice at about 8 a.m. and rush north to Austria to find somewhere to sleep that night, nothing pre-booked as we thought we'd just chance our luck as we went! The last time we did this trip was in a Land Rover, having driven from Saudi Arabia, but that time we at least had all the camping gear as back-up in case there were no hotels available.

We found an Austrian Gasthous early in the evening after having trekked around quite a few villages where all had no "zimmer frei" signs hanging. By a bit of luck we entered a village where Barbara thought she saw the "green for go" "zimmer frei" sign on the side of one of the houses. Just as we were trying to do a u-turn to get out of the place having found no such "free room" a young man asked us what we were looking for. Ah, a room, you want? Eh, which house do you want, pointing to his two gasthouses. Luck had shone on us at last and there was even a restaurant across the road. Just as well as he didn't provide any meals! Next morning, a breakfastless early start and we found ourselves heading for Oberammergou (of the Passion Play fame) having just passed through Underammergou, funnily enough. Ha, a large hotel that looked very promising for food. Barbara went in and discovered what appeared to be around 100 or so American Passion Play tourists ploughing in to their buffet breakfast. Not wanting to compete with them, she asked if we could just have some coffee and bread rolls. We were offered what was to be the best deal of our trip, a mini-buffet breakfast for 6 euros. Just take what we want from the big buffet and let the waitress know when we were finished so she could estimate if we'd eaten enough. Great stuff!!

Onwards and northwards through Germany and into south Belgium.........