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| Sonny, enjoying yet another beautiful wild camping spot |
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| No motorhome parking sign a little bit further down from where we had parked – not a chance of parking a motorhome here among the fallen trees, even if we wanted to! |
The massive castle juts right out into the sea, with virtually all its
walls intact and cut off by land by its huge moat. Entry is only €1, there is no museum or artefacts but you kind of get a sense of what it was like living here during the day. There are remains of a Venetian Cathedral, Turkish bath, remains of houses and right at the very end a small fortified island that was once a prison.
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| Panoramic view from one end of the fortress to the other |
Right
at the very end you can walk across an old bridge to reach a small octagonal
fort. Erected in 1500 by the Venetians and completed by the Ottomans, it was used to guard the harbour and to protect the
inhabitants in times of siege. Over
periods of time it has been used as a prison and was once a 4 wooden-storey building, although now an empty shell.
Methoni is is yet
another one of these Greek villages that you can imagine is buzzing in the
summer, but this time of year is deserted.
We watched a couple of fishing boats coming and going.
And a few Nordic Walkers, which seems to be the in thing here as we watched a large group go by (we think some may have been English and Dutch, listening to their conversations) and a couple of council workers cutting trees – although they spent more time standing around talking than working – not too different from those in the UK! Next to where we parked the pavement cafés are still out and there were plenty of tavernas to eat in.
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| An historic monument in the village – old Venetian Well, where they used to wash their clothes. The 2 cannons either side are from the castle. |
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| All the streets are lined with these beautiful trees |
Just
up the road from where we are parked is a campsite. It is so
rundown that we thought it was closed, but we spotted a couple of motorhomes on
there, probably long-termers that are here for the winter and a Brit caravan.
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| Methoni Campsite - it's no wonder why motorhomers want to wild camp! |
After
weeks of sunshine and temperatures unusually high for this time of year in
Greece (25°- 29°C), the rains came the second day we were here and the
temperature dropped to 15°C. So, we
battened down the hatches, on went the jumpers that hadn't seen daylight for months and out came the scrabble,
followed by a bit of planning of where we would head off to next. Then it was out to a taverna for a bite to
eat and drink.
We chose to east at Nikos Taverna, as it looked popular
and there was a sign outside in Greek and English that said you can look inside
the kitchen to see your food - a nice quirky concept. It’s a
family run business since 1976 the mother (about 70ish) does the cooking and
the 2 sons front of house. The kitchen is open
plan in the middle of the restaurant and you can go in and see all the food that has been prepared and choose what
you want. Mel chose what he wanted off the menu,
whilst one of the son’s took me for a nosey around the kitchen. We had complimentary bread and olives, followed by a couple of starters of Saganaki, Fried Zucchini and then went for
the authentic Moussaka.
Getting back to the motorhome we
were feeling quite tired, so we had showers, got into bed at 8pm and started watching
a film. After about 30 minutes everything
went dead! Lights went out, TV switched
off, fridge shut down. Fortunately, we
had some overhead street lights, so we opened the roof blinds to see what we
were doing and Mel got his head torch as he investigated. Yep, the batteries were well and truly flat!
We have been lucky in the fact that our solar panel has been charging up the batteries
and we haven’t had to go on campsites for electric. The only trouble was this day there wasn’t
any sun and earlier during the day we had overindulged and charged the laptop, ipad, phones, camera, pretty much everything that required charging on the invertor and then had forgot to switch it off – big mistake!
So, with the invertor switched off, Mel
ran the engine for about 10 minutes and with that the power went back up. The fridge came back on along with the TV and
lights. This was something we had never experienced in the 2 years we have been
on the road - so lesson well and truly learnt! Waking
up the next morning, the rain clouds had passed and the sun was back out. Mel did a quick check of the leisure
batteries and they were both fully charged again – normal service resumed!
Apart from a little bit of pickpocketing, we hear that there is no crime in Greece and in these parts people still leave their
doors open at night and car keys in the ignition. This
car pulled up in front of us, the guy jumped out left his keys in the ignition
and door open whilst he went to grab himself a coffee and some food shopping. What a great way to live!
Breakfast
and coffee done and everything fastened down we headed a massive 6 miles (10kms)
further south to Foinikounta. Another
small fishing village, with nothing much here apart from an abundance of cafés,
tavernas and beach bars. With the season
finished, we were surprised to see so many of them open still. There are 3 lovely blue flag beaches here and
it's a popular holiday package destination for Brits in the summer.
We
headed down to the marina and were going to park here but it wasn’t ideal for
swimming, so we headed to the other side of the village.
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| Marina at Foinikounta |
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| The pavement cafés here are more like ‘drive-ins’ as they sit in the road! – it was a tight squeeze to say the least! |
We
parked up next to the beach (N36.807429 E21.809878) – again another no camping
sign but as the sign showed a tent/caravan we jokingly said it must be okay for
motorhomes.
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| Sonny breaking the law again parked next to a 'no camping' sign |
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| Still sea swimming in November! |
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| It gets that hot here that the red warning signs have turned yellow |
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| Nothing gets picked up in Greece– where it falls it remains! |
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| Another great wild camping spot , watching the sun go down |
Tomorrow
we head south-west to a campsite near Koroni. It's Remembrance Sunday
tomorrow, so it will be a good time to sit, reflect and remember all
those who lost their lives on the battlefields. Plus,
we need to do some washing and the only place we can find washing machines seem to be
on campsites. Fingers crossed the campsite is in
better condition than the one at Methoni.
Sally
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