Leave No Trace

Tuesday 17 September 2024

Opinions are going to be divided on this post I suspect, so if you are someone who doesn’t have an issue with piling stones or attaching padlocks to structures then perhaps scroll on by.

Some people find it therapeutic, meditative and/or artistic. But the flip side is that it can be damaging to the environment or the physical structures which are being altered in some way. We are fully self contained in our VW and we often wild camp which comes with a high degree of responsibility. We are firm believers in the ‘Leave no trace’ principles.

Derbyshire County Council will, this week, start the massive task of removing 40,000 padlocks from Bakewell Bridge to enable them to make repairs to it. They intend to redesign the bridge to make it more difficult to attach padlocks. We have seen ‘love locks’ on our travels in many places from Bakewell to Verona. Interestingly we saw a bridge in Aveiro in Portugal earlier this year with coloured ribbons adorning it.

The removal and threatened melting down of the padlocks sparked an outcry (BBC link) and thankfully another venue offered to accept and display the love locks. I’m sure the council didn’t come to the decision lightly knowing the negative reaction it would generate. But it really is an issue - a section of the Pont des Arts bridge in Paris collapsed in 2015 under the weight of over 700,000 padlocks. I quite like the Grand Canyon’s Facebook post which said "Love is strong, but not as strong as our bolt cutters."

Building piles from stones is an age old tradition used to create cairns for navigation but today its popularity seems less functional and more to do with social media trends. The negative effects include soil erosion and loss of microhabitats. A sign we saw on a Portuguese beach at Vila Nova de Milfontes this spring stated the “The fashion of piling stones damages the flora and fauna and mischaracterises the landscape. We all have the right to find the natural spaces as they should be”. 

We watched a 4x4 drive onto Borsh Beach last night and fill a huge tub with pebbles from the shore. By the looks of the tyre tracks this is a regular occurrence. Hopefully they’ll have enough stones for their rockery, path or patio soon and can leave the rest as nature intended.

Carving initials into a tree or a monument is, in some ways, the worst example of environmental vandalism because the damage is permanent.

And don’t even get me started on litter. Across Europe, including the UK, the attitude towards littering seems to be getting worse. On our recent trip we’ve been saddened to see that in Turkey and Albania no thought is given to the disposal of rubbish and every roadside, beach and path is littered indiscriminately. It really saddens me and I don’t know how you even start to change the mindset of someone who thinks that is acceptable. These photos were taken at a beauty spot in Albania just past the ‘No Littering’ sign and within a few meters from a large rubbish bin.

“Take only photographs, leave only footprints”.

Anxiety about Albania

Sunday 15 September 2024

We arrived at a seemingly deserted Greek border post at Melissopetra. Getting out of the van clutching our passports I walked along the booth windows and peered through the office doors. I turned back to Dave and shrugged, such a different experience from the chaotically busy crossings between Serbia, Bulgaria and Turkey with their huge queues of cars and TIR lorries. 

Eventually a cheery laid back passport control guy appeared, quickly stamped our passports and shouted loudly “EXODUS”. Another young chap, presumably customs, appeared from nowhere, gave our van a cursory glance, asked us where we’d been in Greece and joked with Dave about the steering wheel being on the wrong side. He opened the barrier and waved us on our way. In the 10 minutes we were there no other vehicles arrived. 

We anxiously drove through the ‘no man’s land’ between the border posts. A slightly bigger set up and a queue of 3 cars greeted us on the Albanian side. It didn’t take long before I was out of the van with our passports again, explaining we needed to buy insurance. Whilst UK motor insurance covers drivers for the minimum cover level required in the majority of European countries it does not generally cover Turkey or Albania. In Turkey the convoluted process to buy the insurance from one booth, then go back to the vehicle registration booth, then return to the customs check took ages with plenty of shouting, queue jumping and head scratching. Here a polite young man took our V5 vehicle registration document, made a phone call and within minutes WhatsApp’d me the insurance document pdf. Stunned at the speed and efficiency of it all we paid our €49 for 15 days, thanked him and got on our way. I’m not sure what we were expecting, but it wasn’t that!

Until 1992 the country was a communist dictatorship isolated from the rest of Europe. Enver Hoxha was paranoid about invasions and had over 700,000 concrete bunkers built, he banned religion and private car ownership was forbidden. Like many people we’ve never been to Albania before, we’d looked across at it from holidays in Corfu - so now is our chance to find out about the country.

Initial impressions from the route we entered was a sparsely populated mountainous region. We drove through one small village noticing one of the concrete bunkers on the hillside. 

Cash is king here which, for us at the moment, is a bit of a problem. The Albanian LEK is a closed currency meaning you cannot buy it abroad. So we’ve entered the country with no local currency, just €’s and my bank card. It’s a weekend - there’s not an ATM in sight and cards are not routinely accepted. Knowing the campsite we’re heading for prices the pitches in €’s I’m expecting they’ll happily take them and hopefully we’ll find an ATM in the next big town of Gjirokastër. 

Everyone we’ve come across so far has been very friendly, from the border officials to the campsite staff as well as the young man in the thermal baths and, to our embarrassment and gratitude, they speak excellent English. We’ll give speaking the language a go but the pronunciations seem a little difficult - so here goes “Mirë se vini në Shqipëri” / Welcome to Albania!

Vikos Gorge

Friday 13 September 2024

The sandals have been packed away for a while and the hiking boots have come out. We’re in the Zagori region of northern Greece, home to the Vikos Gorge - reputed to be the deepest canyon in the world in proportion to its width (1997 Guinness World Record).

The region is very much off the beaten track and little visited by tourists. Having your own transport is essential to be able to explore the area fully as the gorge itself stretches for 32km. From the Beloi (meaning beautiful vista) Viewpoint we looked out across the top of the gorge and peered down to the valley floor below. This isn’t somewhere to linger if you have a fear of heights as there are no railings and a sheer drop of 1350m down to the bottom of the gorge.

Over millions of years the River Voidomatis carved its way through the Pindos Mountains creating a deep and narrow canyon. Many sections of the 12km / 7 hour gorge walk are dry as the river flows underground, beneath the limestone rocks. 

Dotted around the region are 46 stone villages and over a hundred arched stone bridges. Of the ones we saw our favourite was probably Plakidas Bridge which has been nicknamed the ‘moving caterpillar’ due to its unusual design. We’re expecting to see more stone bridges in Albania so I’ll do a round up of ‘The best of …..’ in a couple of weeks!

The region is very remote and unpopulated and has a diverse range of flora and fauna. Many of the native birds, animals and insects seemed quite elusive. We saw a number of birds, lots of colourful butterflies and a European red squirrel that actually had a black coat. What we didn’t see were any Eurasian brown bears which are found in the region. The bee keepers weren’t taking any chances though and were protecting their hives with electric fences!

Central Europe is bracing itself for some awful weather over the coming days. We’ve managed to dodge the worst of the storms whilst in Greece but after a beautiful day yesterday the heavens opened today and thick clouds hung over the area. 

On Saturday we cross the border into Albania which is exciting and scary in equal measures. Even getting a reliable weather forecast for the region in the east that we’re heading for first seems impossible. At least, like this huge snail we had to drive around, we have our mobile home and can change course whenever we want.

Lefkada / Lefkas

Wednesday 11September 2024

When we left the UK we didn’t have plans to visit any Greek Islands on this trip (that’s for another day!). But in trying to avoid the stormy weather in the mountains we headed quite far west and found ourselves on the beautiful Ionian island of Lefkada / Lefkas. 

Interestingly Lefkas hasn’t always been an island. It was originally connected to mainland Greece by a shallow isthmus, until around 650 BC when the Corinthians built a canal through the narrow stretch of land.

The ‘island’ has a rich and varied history - it played an important role in the Persian and Peloponnesian wars and has been under control of the Corinthians, Romans, Franks, Sicilians, Turks and Venetians. When the Venetian domination ended in 1797 it briefly became a French state before being won over by an allied fleet of Turks, Russians and English. The English domination didn’t last long and on the 21st May 1864, a treaty was signed proclaiming the unification of the Ionian Islands, including Lefkada, with the independent and newly formed Greek State.

 

The only way for vehicles to cross from the mainland to the island today is by means of a floating bridge across the 25 meter wide canal which leads onto a long causeway. The FB (Floating Bridge) Santa Maura has been operating since 1986 - previous means of crossing the canal can be seen on this webpage Historical Bridge Photos. The road bridge slowly swings open to allow boats to pass through 7 times a day (at this time of year) and stays open for about 15 minutes while all manner of vessels motor through at speed. We watched about 50 or 60 boats pass through in that time and a queue of traffic soon built up on both sides. A horn was sounded to announce the bridge was opening and sounded again twice before it began closing - encouraging the slower boats and stragglers at the end of the ‘armada’ to hurry up. 

Lefkas surprised us with its varied landscape from the steep white cliffs in the south which give the island its name (lefkos is the Greek word for "white") to the verdant hillsides with olive, pine and plane trees. It’s a yachtie and watersports paradise but if that’s not your bag there’s plenty of white sandy bays to laze on with turquoise seas to tempt you in. 

In the town of Vasiliki we watched the ferry to the neighbouring island of Kefalonia arrive, unload, load up again and depart all within about 1/2 hour. 

It reminded us of our younger days when we took the ferries frequently in the Aegean Dodecanese islands. We were quite tempted to travel onto another island but at a cost of €73 one way for the two of us and the van we decided it can wait till we get our yacht!! Well, we can dream …..