Day 67: Alexandroupoli, Greece

Stats... 88.02km in 6hrs 1min. Wow... what a day. We left around 8.30am and managed to find small country roads which we headed on for about 10km until we reached Messi. During this ride we clocked over 4,000km so far on the trip! This is only approx 1,000km more than we had expected! We stopped and asked for directions from a family sitting in their front garden. They invited us to join them for a glass of cold water which ended up being a plate of salad fresh from their garden and a bowl of watermelon... mmm! We continued to the coastal road which had amazing scenery and a lovely cool breeze. We could not withstand the sea for long and crashed on the beach under a wicker umbrella for a couple of hours. We had lunch at a cafe which consisted of a bowl of chips and salad for us and 3 ice creams for Bas! We finally got on the road having only done 40km at 3pm. We got a further 10km then we were faced with the decision to take the shorter 15km of unfinished dirt road along the coast or the longer over two mountains finished road. We deliberated and decided to go with the dirt... which in retrospect may have been a poor decision! We made it 5km in when Bas with his mountain bike tyres got a puncture! We repaired the puncture then just round the corner it was flat again so we were forced to replace the inner tube. A car passed and gave us a bottle of water and looked concerned for us but on the other hand he had a look on his face of its your own fault for cycling this road! We were held up again as a rear spoke had snapped on Kris bike! As his wheel buckled more and more the rear brake seemed to be on all the time and any bump at the wrong angle would collapse the wheel. We offloaded as much weight from his bike onto ours and continued. As the sunset we came reached the other side and kissed the tarmac as it was a sight for sore eyes, bums and all muscles for that matter! We were amazed that our thin touring tyres survived. We were losing light but decided there was too many benefits by making it to the campsite at Alexandroupoli so we soldiered on in the dark with head torches illuminating a few inches of road infront of us. With Baz wearing the high vis we cruised on into the town, found the campsite at 10pm, set up the tent and cycled along into the town in search of food! We sat and had dinner on the seafront then returned to camp at 12.30am. I finally decided on a name for my bike today... Betty.