Greece is the word..

We’re off to see the sea (eventually)

In the morning, we head off to the travel agency on the bikes and weave our way through the crazy traffic. The agency is now open, and it is little more than a flat with a chair a desk and a couple of seats.
Good news then.. the door was open and we could go in. Yep not the best picture of the agency, but a pretty dingy place. Light bulbs it seems are not in the budget.

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The agency fella was reasonably friendly. After a bit of to-ing and fro-ing, we’ve established that the ferry is leaving in the early hours of the morning tomorrow. We’ll need to come back to the agency tonight, at around 10pm, to collect our tickets, although they can’t be certain at what time; it’ll all depend how loading goes. When we’re called, we need to come back right away, immediately. And when we come back we need bring payment.
Cash.
In Euros.
No cards (don’t be daft).

We’ve a little more time to see Batumi so we wander. We stop for a traditional Georgian Breakfast of Khachapuri, which is a Cheese Bread with egg. Excellent stuff.

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“Hanging around down by the quayside, where the men dress as ladies..”

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There’s no MOT in Georgia, as I think I might have mentioned. If it rolls, you’re good to go. Huge numbers of cars roll around with bits missing, mostly front bumpers.

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I’d had a cursory look at trying to find a dentist for my tooth but without success, decided to leave it for a bit.

Stopping for a rest. Where’s that smell coming from…? :D

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Fill up your own keg at the Supermarket. The first thing there at the entrance. Inspired..

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More MOT failures..

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In the centre of Batumi, they’ve put a lot of resources into making the place tourist friendly. In my reading about the country there seems to be a lot of controversy on how funds have been spent; spending on towers and finery when most of the population struggle. The contrast between in and out of town is something else.

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Georgia five-O runabout in the posh bit..

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Interesting fair ground ride in the middle of that thing…

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The mountains inland in the distance

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More MOT failures..

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Brian needs to get some local currency. In what we’ve read about trying to catch the ferry, they only take cash in Euro. Since we don’t have enough Euros it will have to be the local thing, changed up at a bank or one of the many change places here into Euro.

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After a while stood at the machine, Brian returns. Its got my card, he says and he’s got no money. Ah. We then establish where the branch of the bank is, so Brian hurries off to find out what has gone on, leaving me by the ATM to ensure it isn’t some sort of card scam, and some bloke doesn’t turn up to empty his bank account.

Brian returns after half an hour or so. Whilst he goes to make his complaint, he finds his card, which it turns out hasn’t been taken by the machine. There is no elaborate scam, turns out the machine doesn’t take his card, so it just spat it out and harrumphed for a while, in which time Brian picked it out of the machine and forgot about it.

All’s well then and it is a relief as I’d used most of my limit on the card I had to get cash to change. It would have been interesting to sort. We eventually changed money and we wander back to HQ to get ready to pack and wait about a bit for our call.
 
Came across this a few days ago. Just wanted to say a big thank you to Roberto, it just about saved my Christmas, what a great tale.
 
The people who put the sea in bureaucracy..

Crumbs. Perhaps you’re getting the message, but it has been an incredible and drawn out faff around trying to get this ferry sorted out. Information is really limited and the internet definitely isn’t always your friend. But with a fair bit of application we’re sorted (well, we hope).

Since we’ll be staying potentially until the small hours, we’ve said to the family that run the place here that we’ll pay for another night at the apartment. They’re very reluctant to accept the money and can’t really understand – if you aren’t staying the whole night then not to worry? Really a very hospitable people.
It is the youngest lads 18th birthday this evening, so we’re to come along to the party. We’ll need to deny ourselves booze, which could be tricky.

Back in the apartment we’re just about packed up and just lounging around in our smalls, when my phone rings. It’s about 5.30pm. “You need to come now, come right now” says the voice. Some middle of the night that is.

Washing is quickly retrieved and a last look taken around the unusual but really charming place. Sad to go.

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So we quickly get our stuff together, go and retrieve the bikes from the neighbours, load up and explain to our hosts that we’re leaving now. We insist to pay for the apartment and if they don’t want the money it can be a birthday present for the youngest. This goes down well and they return with bottles of wine, spirits and some plum sauce which we liked when we sat down to eat. We strap them haphazardly to our bikes, say our goodbyes and are off.
We collect our tickets at the now familiar shipping agency. Outside there’s a chap on a Honda with a Slovakian plate that is catching the ferry. We introduce ourselves and head down to the ferry together.

As we reach the gate for the ferry, one of the bags of booze splits and plastic bottles roll off the bikes and around the floor, which we retrieve awkwardly, wondering what the situation is with a ‘bring your own’ arrangement to the ferry. It was no matter. It’s all pretty disorganised and after we show our paperwork we’re directed to the side of the ferry. After a short time, we’re rolling on to a pretty much empty lower cargo deck and getting our bikes strapped up for three days at sea.

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Once onboard, and after a fair walk in the ship, we reach the reception. The purser, a hard nosed but petite blond lady in her 40’s, hands us our room keys and a free hat. She turns out to have a very dry but good sense of humour. I ask her when the captain’s cocktail party is and she sees the funny side.

We will need to wait to complete all of the customs requirements and this could be late, possibly around 11pm. By now it is just before 7pm. A quick getaway from the harbour this will not be, we’d best settle in.

Loading up, which looks to be done at a mind-numbingly sleepy pace.

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Unpacking, a view, some assembled grog in the cabin.

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And a bit more grog for luck..

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The passenger area is pretty small. There’s a fairly large enclosed deck outside; inside there is a café with a bar (but it is closed until later) and a small lounge with a TV and DVD player. Despite the bar being closed on a happier note they have this little automated chappie, which takes Euro coins, fortunately of which I have a bucketload rattling around in the tank bag.

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Happy times.

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We’re treated to a pretty sunset.

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Later.. much later… by night.

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We wait in the cabin, and wait some more. Just before 2.30am the following morning the door gets a knock and are summoned down to the ramp at the back of the ship, where we wait for twenty minutes.

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We’re then summoned to the custom house, so wander down the ramp and off to the building. Inside there’s a committee of folks. Passports and vehicle documents are submitted. They also ask to see our insurance documentation. Remember I said don’t ignore the insurance? That would be why. I wouldn’t have fancied not being compliant. Friendly they did not seem.
All is good and we trundle back onto the boat and off to our beds.
 
I’ve just caught up on this and can I just say that even though I’ve been hopelessly drunk and lost in foreign cities I’ve never, repeat never, been so bad that I’ve checked into a second hotel and found the one with my gear the next day. Unless there was a woman involved :D

Top quality touring :clap
 
Cheers! :beerjug:

Unfortunately booze was the only mistress. Must try harder :D
 
If I had all the money I’d spend it on drink, spend it on drink...

Good morning. And we’re out at sea. There’s the two of us, occupying a four berth cabin and it has enough space with an en suite shower and toilet. Comfortable enough.

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A free hat, courtesy of those ever so nice people at Drujba.

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We’re on a full board basis, so three meals a day, only expenses being the demon drink.

Breakfast is fine and served by cheery galley folk who, to me anyway, ever so nicely insist you have as much as is humanly possible. I manage to get away with something modest.

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We have lunch, and it seems the ferry folk have quickly assembled into three groups.

Group A) A collection of a dozen or so staggeringly pissed Georgian Lorry drivers. They were spied late on departure ‘getting on it’. I could vaguely hear them singing from the cabin in the small hours.

Group B) Us. A group of two wheeled travellers from the European continent.

Group C) Actually not a group, one guy on his own, who wants to talk to no one it would seem. I don’t think he’s a Georgian guy but I suspect no one will ever find out.

So in our new group we also meet Manu. Manu is a German lady who has been cycling around the ‘Stans, and has been away a year now and is now making her way back to her home in Leipzig. She makes us two look like weekend trippers. Like Rob, a systems chap from Slovakia, she’s really rather good company and has some excellent tales to tell. Rob has also been out further East, and has opted to take the ferry route back as his Honda isn’t in the best of health.

What to do on the black sea for three days.

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What indeed, eh. Catch a few rays.

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Basically, eat, rest drink, repeat.

Also you can watch a Georgian lorry driver stumble through the door exiting to the deck with a full beer glass, scoring a Krypton Factor of ‘one’, cue then a wobble to the left, a wobble to the right (flat calm sea) before he hits the deck with a satisfying ‘thwack’. I could perhaps describe it as someone’s dad trying to do the worm, top half hitting the deck hard and legs flying up afterwards In the process, he smashes his glass, sending bits everywhere. He is then rescued by another couple of suitably wobbly but ever so slightly less pissed other random Georgian Lorry drivers.

One of the galley staff soon appears in another guise, this time clad in overalls, and begins the clear up in aisle one. He doesn’t seem at all surprised at events and steps over the Georgian lorry driver rescue party with a certain nonchalance.

He sees me and waves Hi, gives a shrug and a smile, and carries on.

The ferry is pretty empty, god alone knows quite how it would be if it was packed with these guys.

Dolphin spotting.

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Lager spotting.

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I am glad for en-suite facilities.

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The food is actually pretty basic and hardy shipboard fayre but it is quite tasty.

We quickly establish a routine, meeting for three meals, chatting about places, things, this and that. The Georgian lorry drivers meet, eat, have a sing song (wish I hadn’t have lost the video) and then retire to the video lounge to get a more pissed.

We organise ‘Tuesday night cocktail club’, where we’ll bring our assembled grog to pre-dinner cocktails and basically get wankered.

The evening is soon upon us, and we enjoy ‘cocktails’ by sunset. Some of the Georgian cha-chi spirit is served, with tropical Fanta to take the edge off.

Three quarters of the cocktail club.

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Already a bit tiddly.

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The evening is hilarious, if not a little blurry. Young Robert takes a bit of encouragement, for his body is a temple and kept generally in much better order than ours. He soon gets well into the swing of things and here he is setting the pace for group ‘B’. The Georgian Lorry drivers team features in background.

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Dinner.

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‘Cha-chi’. Note, this is not mineral water.

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Sunset on the Black Sea.

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More Lager.

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Fun times :D :thumby:
 
Well, as luck would have it whilst fiddling around on my phone I came across this cinematic masterpiece, showing Group A in all of their splendour :D


:thumby:
 
I go out on Tuesday night..
..and I come home on Wednesday morning.


We’d spent some of the final day planning routes and swapping advice on points of interest. We’re armed with some great info :thumb

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What a great few days we’d had. Both of us had thought that stuck on a boat would be incredibly dull, but bored and trapped we most certainly were not.

:beerjug:
 
So long, and thanks for all the Fishport

I’m woken very early, at about 5.30am by my phone going bonkers. Three days of nothing, followed by lots of messages coming in, o2 welcomes you to Bulgaria, this and that, and with European data roaming set back to on there’s a now usual dose of rubbish from Whatsapp.

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Bulgaria comes into view. We’re still a way from land but I head to deck to watch us work our way in.

Following breakfast we’re manoeuvring into Fishport.

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Scenic Burgos from the dockside.

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Everyone’s got a signal.

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Getting off the ferry is a bureaucratic affair (ooh the surprise). We eventually can go from the deck passenger compound down to the bikes and get ready. We take the cue from the assorted Georgian lorry drivers who, though looking slightly better hardly look in the best of shape and take the walk along and then down precarious steep stairs down to the vehicle deck. We’re by the ramp and saddle up ready but can’t go. We’re left peering out of the back of the ship waiting for twenty minutes or so, until a man with a walkie talkie says to go. Manu on her bicycle goes first. Farewell Manu. Her aim today is to get as far out of town as possible.

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It must be only fifty yards from the ferry to the check point. Her bike and panniers are gone through by customs, after her carefully loading it on to her bicycle, they’re straight off again.
Good grief, this will be fun.

Rob the Slovakian chap is the next one in the queue and gets similar treatment. I have lashed up all of my stuff perfectly, so it’s typical that then I have to go back and unpack it. When I say unpack it, what I mean is unleash all of the bungees, unroll the Ortleib bags for the guard to say OK before he’s actually looked in them. Similarly, the same treatment is with the pannier bags. He wasn’t interested in my Georgian plum sauce or cha-chi. Hey ho. Anyhow we’re off! A couple of checkpoints later, passports, V5’s, we think we’re home free, but that’s just too good to be true. We’re directed by the toothless gentlemen at the exit barrier to an office close by, whereby it is the Passport and V5 shuffle all over again. We’re shut out of the air conditioned office unceremoniously whilst they do their thing.

Ten minutes or so later we’re given a piece of pink paper, which we hand to the toothless bloke ten yards away and then, thankfully, we’re into the Burgos morning Rush. All is fine, soon we’re wafting along wide boulevards at good pace and out of town.

Rob has also left us, he’s making his way down into Bulgaria and then along to Macedonia and Greece in a reverse pretty much of how we made our way to Turkey not so long ago.

It takes us a while to get going. Garmin seems to be sending us the wrong way. So we do that dance of taking lefts and rights, u-turning, leaving a main road only to rejoin in a few kilometres up the road. For anyone who has been there, you’ll know what I mean.

We have quite a sunny day and things are going alright. It feels quite nice to be back on the bike. One thing here, in all of the years I’ve been riding, I’ve never been stung on a wasp. That includes riding with an open flip for many, many a mile, naughty me.
As you gather, that is cure for me to get stung by a wasp on the neck. Thwack, ping, crap.

We stop for petrol and bite spray.

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The going is unremarkable but gets better as we head North West. We continue to keep getting ‘Garmined’, the GPS taking us strange ways, but we work through it.

A short time later I get stung on the other side of the neck. Crap.

We continue.

An hour or so later I get stung up the sleeve by a wasp. Crap again. This is no longer funny. More bite spray.

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I get stung no less than three times. And my tooth is starting to hurt. And I have a couple of mouth ulcers, too. Peachy. And I forgot to put on my sunscreen this afternoon. Great.

We work our way up to the Danube and the Romanian border.

After establishing there really are no bridges in this part of the world, we eventually find a place to catch a ferry across the river. It looks like we’re pretty lucky. They don’t seem to run particularly often, information is pretty sparse, but care of some careful dodging round HGVs we’re onto a ferry in about twenty minutes or so. It was peculiar, they were still shunting HGVs around on the ferry well after it had started crossing the river.

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Crossing the mighty Danube.

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7 Euro for both of us, with a 4 Euro surcharge on the Romania side, for whatever that was for. But the woman in the booth had lovely teeth which and happy enough to display them with a nice smile. Just thought I’d mention.
I got a salute from the border guard on the Romanian side before we set off.

We’re free to move North then.

Our ride takes us to our destination of Craiova some 120 or so miles further on.

***

ROMANIA

All speed limits are in miles per hour*
*Nobody takes any notice of any kind of speed limit

***


The motoring standard is pretty poor in Bulgaria, but we’re down a couple of places in the motoring league now. You’ve got to be wary. More of that later.

We reach Craiova at around 5pm. We look at our favourite app and decide to go look at a place before booking. It seems OK so Brian is in to investigate and I park up and unload. Despite the place looking fine, Brian returns and says there’s no Aircon, so has said no. I put stuff back on the bike and we head across town to our next choice. I’m stung, burned, got dental pain and now have a bit of a headache. I’m feeling a little worn down.

As we get off the bikes I realise- I’ve left my tankbag outside the other hotel, on a chair by the entrance. And I haven’t been concentrating and can’t remember the way back. Ah, this would not be good. Brian luckily has his wits, so we whizz back to the hotel to find it thankfully untouched and on the chair where I left it. That would have been particularly bad if it had been lost. V5 and all that, laptop, all manner of stuff. I’m hopping mad at myself and really relieved. Some good luck today.

We return back at our new hotel at more of a sedentary pace. It really is a nice hotel, despite lack of parking. The bikes are shuffled into a tiny space opposite outside a church.

The Hotel Prestige, Craiova. Recommended :thumb

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We take a walk. We discover Romania’s craft beer scene.

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Wasp stings, dental pain, mouth ulcers. If I look like I’m over it today that’s probably about right.

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We have a great pizza..

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..another nice beer hits the spot..

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..and then hit the hay.
 
can i say that last post :(

but the post about the leave one hotel and arrive at another lost pissed and no clue

ROFLCOPTERSAUSAGE
 


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