ASIANOVERLAND.NET WINTER EUROPEAN DAY 28/201:  KAVALA TO NEA KILISTI, GREECE

"8/1/81 EXCITING DAY'S DRIVE

& THE BEAUTIFUL TOURIST TOWN OF NEA KIKLISTI"

Crushed rock edge stones have been a feature of Roman roads for more than 2000 years. The Via Egnatia was constructed by the Romans in the 2nd century BC, and crossed Macedonia, and Thracia, running through parts of modern Albania, North Macedonia, Greece, and  Turkey to Istanbul, as a continuation of the Via Appia.

The Via Egnatia road we travel on, remained part of the eastern Roman Empire until Mehmet the Conqueror, in 1453. One can only imagine the diffculties faced by the ancients, who brought their conquering armies across roads which we find difficult to pass as tourists  in modern times. In 1453, the capital of the Ottoman Empire, Adrianople, was in Thrace, east of Istanbul, and the conquering Ottoman armies marched to Istanbul from the west, as we are, on Ottoman and Roman roads.

Today is probably the most exciting and harrowing day's drive I ever had with Top Deck Travel, and just as memorable today as it was 42 years ago. We drive east from Kavala (Neapolis), on Via Egnatia, but a massive winter storm has blown in, with bitterly cold gale force winds, ice, snow and treacherous driving conditions.

The roads are icy and visibility negligible, but that doesn't stop an oncoming truck from side swiping us and running us off the road, down a ditch and into the trees. The Top Deckers on the top deck all duck for cover as they try to avoid the oncoming truck and trees, which carve out holes on the side of our Double Decker, but don't smash into the front window and front seats where the punters are sitting/jumping/ducking.

We finally manage to extricate INTER from the attached trees and the ditch, and very slowly continue our drive east, where we have Lake Vistonida, an inland lake, on our left, and the Aegean Sea on our right, as we slowly try to navigate the icy road on a narrow isthmus. Inevitably, the ice and gale force northerly wind get the better of INTER, and slowly slide INTER across the icy road towards the freezing Aegean Sea, which we all believe we are about to drop off into. Some punters try to escape from the rear door, but the door blows wildly open in the gale force wind and takes glasses and beanies with it. Fortunately, all punters remained inside the bus, despite the attempts of a few escapees. The gale force is blowing the bus over to the right, so all punters stay on the left hand side of INTER to try to prevent us from tipping over, like bottling a sailing boat. The waves on the inland lake on our left are FROZEN solid!

We can't drive forward and can't go back, but are clinging to the edge of the precipice and the freezing Aegean Sea below. Finally, a truck approaches us from behind and tries to overtake us, but the truck is also captured by the icy road and slides into the left side of INTER, pushing us further towards the precipice and the freezing Aegean Sea. We see another truck approaching us from the rear, and it too, is ice skating and sliding towards our rear end. At this rate, it is inevitable that we will be pushed and slide into the freezing sea........

Gary Hayes and I can decide that the reason we haven't yet slid into the Aegean Sea yet, is because the right seaside verge isn't concrete, which is icy, but contains a narrow length of crushed rock, which isn't all frozen, and our right side tyres are sitting on some crushed rock. So we decide that before we are pushed into the Aegean Sea, we'll try to drive across the icy isthmus, keeping our right side tyres on the narrow section of crushed rock, which is, at most, tyre width in places. This requires me to help navigate by exiting the bus, hold on for dear life against the gale force winds, and jump onto the engine casing, where I have a better view of the narrow bits of crushed rock we are trying to drive our right wheels on, with the driver's window partially open so I can communicate with the driver. We slowly inch forward before more trucks slide into our side or rear end, and eventually get across the isthmus, which is only about 2 or 3 kilometers in length, but seems like forever.

When we finally crawl our wheels across the icy isthmus, all the punters scream, yell and shout for joy, as we know we've beaten a terrible fate, and none of us could have lasted long if we'd dropped into the freezing Aegean Sea. About 3 kilometers down the road is the tiny town of Nea Kallisiti, which has a small café and bar, so we stop for the night and drink ourselves into a stupor on the local Ouzo and retsina – anything, so long as it's alcoholic, as we'll need to make ourselves warm inside before we try to sleep in our freezing bus. The bus ceiling has stalactitis of ice reaching down from the roof, the kettle full of boiling water freezes into a frozen solid brick, all glasses fogged, freezing, but alive …...

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