February 28, 2018
Balkan Bits
Breaking up the tour into Four Easy Pieces
This spring’s tour will have more than its share of challenges -the Balkans are notoriously lumpy. According to our GPS routes it looks like we’ll cover about two thousand miles with 150,000’ of elevation gain. That should earn us a nice dinner or sixty. Like any other journey though, it’s not as daunting to think about if you just take it one step (or rotation) at a time. This one breaks up neatly into four almost evenly sized pieces. Taking them one at a time, I’m sure they’ll go down easily.
Crete
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We have been to Crete before, on our second tour of Greece. We thought it was a fabulous place for a cycle tour and we left it swearing we would return some day. Crete is a quite large island, with plenty to see - one could easily spend an entire bike tour here. We were there for ten days last time and left feeling like we were just getting started.
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We’ll be staying a bit longer this time and will visit corners of the island we missed the first time through. Starting from Chania (one of our favorite small cities), we’ll make a counterclockwise circuit of the mountainous west end, head back up to the north coast, and finally wrap up our two week Tour de Crete in Heraklion, the port city for the Cycladic Islands.
Here’s the GPS route for this stage of the tour.
The Cyclades and Evvia
from Crete we’ll ferry-hop our way north through the iconic Cycladic Islands. The Cycladic Islands are a bit difficult to plan for - they all sound significantly different, and all sound well worth visiting. How to choose? We visited several of them on our first tour of Greece, including the incomparable but tourist-mad Santorini. This time we’re returning to Naxos because it was our favorite last time - large enough to offer some excellent cycling opportunities, quiet enough that you can appreciate it.
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In addition we’ll stop at Tinos and Andros, because they’re also fairly large and quiet, and because the ferry connections are frequent and convenient - an important consideration in visiting the Greek Islands.
From Andros we'll continue north to Evia, a long island that borders the eastern edge of the northern mainland. We'll be on Evia for four days, avoiding the sprawl around Athens and working our way up to the northern tip and the end of our second course.
Here's the GPS route for the second stage of the tour.
Northern Greece
Northern Greece is mostly virgin territory for us. We made a brief foray into it on our first tour of Greece, crossing over the Gulf of Corinth for a few days to visit Delphi. This time we’ll traverse it east to west, beginning at the northern end of Evia and ending at the exotic island of Corfu - a place I’ve dreamed of seeing ever since reading Gerald Durrell’s My Family and Other Animals back in my youth. Along the way, we’ll visit other landmark destinations we’ve fantasized about seeing: the astonishing cliff-top monasteries of Meteora, Vikos Gorge, and the Zagori villages. It should be a wild, wonderful two weeks. Here’s the GPS route.
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Southern Albania
The final stage of the tour is an afterthought. We originally planned to end it in Corfu, when I was still working and thought We should limit the length of the tour to six weeks. Since planning this trip though, I’ve of course fully retired. One evening recently over dinner with friends we discussed cycling in Albania; and once I noticed that it is only six miles by ferry from Corfu, this seemed like the obvious best time to check it out.
Our route will follow what is becoming the standard route for commercial tours, but in reverse. From the port city of Sarande we’ll spend a few days along the Ionian coast on the ‘Albanian Riviera’, before heading up into the mountains to Lake Ohrid. We’ll end our tour in Ohrid, Macedonia; and then take a taxi to nearby Tirana for our flight home.
Today's ride: 42 miles (68 km)
Total: 42 miles (68 km)
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