Current Position:
38 57 06N
020 45 55E

Date of arrival: 26th June
PREVEZA (Cleopatra Marina)

So, we took a taxi to catch a plane to take a train to collect the bike to take the ferry to ride through Belgium. We then took the ferry back to the UK to drop off the bike to get a lift to take a train to catch a plane to get a taxi home. PHEW !!!

We are now home. 3 weeks back in the UK has exhausted both of us. It rained almost every day, I got very poorly and for 3 days couldn't even get dressed. And the country is in total chaos. But despite all of that, we saw our dentist, Andreas had his health checks, we saw family and friends ( my apologies to those we had to cancel) and we went to Spa, Belgium, on our bike with 4 friends, for the Euro Cup racing . It's a bit of a pilgrimage as in previous years we have gone to Le Mans, France, for the 24 hour race but this year we all decided to do something different and chose Spa. But it always turns into an eating and drinking fest but is great fun. One of our group 'Herbs' is an ex Army Captain and is very interested and extremely knowledgeable about the 2nd World War and military history in general, and organises a visit to a historic site for us. In 2017 we visited The Somme, Gold, Omaha and Utah beaches and Pegasus Bridge . This year we visited the sites of the Battle of Waterloo and the Battle of the Bulge. Whilst I knew a little about Waterloo, I knew nothing about the Bulge. The memorial at Waterloo is quite something and the views from the top show clearly the battle site.

The Battle of the Bulge museum is absolutely fantastic and not only tells the complete story of WWII but also of the Battle in incredible visual detail and the impact it had on not only the American soldiers but also the Belgium town of Bastogne. The narrative is told through the eyes of a 12 year old child, a female school teacher who doubled as a member of the Resistance and an American and German soldier. It gives a very balanced view from all sides.
It has to be the most interesting and informative museum we have ever visited and I can strongly recommend it. The memorial is quite sombre with the names of all 50 USA states around the perimeter.
Riding a bike in both France and Belgium is a joy. The road surfaces are very biker friendly, rural roads are virtually empty and on Sundays, heavy goods vehicles are banned and crikey what a huge difference that makes. Its great fun to be riding in convoy but as I get older, I find it is becoming harder to spend hours on the bike and have made the decision that this will be my last bike trip . This year we experienced searing heat in Belgium - which is torture when you are in full bike gear -and rain on the return run from Hull . That's enough for me thank you.

Its always nice to go home and we were looking forward to getting back to Stiletto. We did an overnight stay at the Premier Inn at Gatwick as we had a 6am departure and as the boat is just a 5 minute taxi ride away from Preveza airport, we were on board by lunchtime.

Europe is now experiencing intense temperatures and we were greeted by 38°C in our saloon. We are fortunate to be on the water with the sea breezes but really look forward to leaving the marina and get out to an anchorage where we can dive off the back of Stiletto to cool down. Before we do that, we are having 2 solar panels fitted as the poor old fridge is working in overdrive during the hot summer months and is a drain on the batteries. This is something we should have thought about before we left the UK but we thought Windy Miller would be enough.

We had to empty the fridge before our departure as we were not allowed to leave the boat plugged into shore power while we were away so a rather large supermarket run was needed to stock up with fresh produce.
We took advantage of the free water taxi service and did 2 runs to the supermarket on consecutive days and the fridge is now full. The solar panels are fitted. They work and Andreas is now a happy chappy. Pay roll is done and its time to get back on the road .

We have thoroughly enjoyed our stay here in the marina and I would recommend it highly. Everything works like a well oiled machine. Everything you need is close to hand and the marina staff are the best. The marineros work incredibly hard and are very obliging. They make me chuckle as each time a boat arrives and they are waiting on the pontoon to take lines, their words of encouragement to the skipper are "very nice captain, very nice". All skippers are 'Captain', their wives/partners/girlfriends are 'Madam'.
Very Nice.

So we are now ready to leave Preveza and spend a couple of days exploring the Gulf of Amvrakikós and its lovely anchorages, chilling, swimming, turtle and dolphin spotting . The fish are plentiful in the lagoon so Andreas will hopefully provide supper!!.

Muse for this post: Immature: a word boring people use to describe fun people !!!