Road to Crete?

Off to Crete this year, have you done it? and can recommend the best way to get there, good stop offs, great roads etc.

Any advice would be much appreciated!

Crete is like Budapest,(two cities Buda and Pesht) in that Crete is combined with the city of Con. This happened due excessive building work in the eighties. The people of Concrete are rather hard and inflexable. It is a grey place, however if you mix well with the locals it is easy to cement a relationship with them. Dont rub them up the wrong way unless you have reinfocement or you will end up collapsing in a heap. There are lots of bars in Concrete, these help strengthen the community, but a lot of stress is still evident. This causes cracks and rifts which are difficult to mend.

Rudgey said:

Off to Crete this year, have you done it? and can recommend the best way to get there, good stop offs, great roads etc.

Any advice would be much appreciated!

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Be very carefull on the roads, they are like soap even on dry days. Wiped out last October doing about 5 mph around a corner with the front wheel just losing grip. The roads are not for cruising they are for bruising.

Loads of places to hire bikes and trust me when you fall they will get their excess etc very quickly from you before making sure you are ok.

Pm me your address and I will post you a book of Crete gratis. We won't visit there again.

cheers

Thanks for the info guys, I don't think I made myself very clear?
The destination happens to be Crete, only because we are hooking up with family who live there part of the year.

The info. I’m really after, is the drive to it, we (the wife and I) will spend most of the time touring down and back, (about 1 week each way).
I would be very interested to hear from people who have journeyed down to southern Italy / Greece by bike? Which is the best route, great places to stay & visit, good roads etc. etc.
Also can I use my normal driving licence and not an international one in all the countries on route?

Thanks

enjoy the ride....it should be no problem.
Down through former yugoslavia and bulgaria. It is always worth getting the international licence as they are so cheap.

try www.horizonsunlimited.com for info

Gavin

Thanks for the book on Crete Maverick, I got it the other day,
Top man !!!! Cheers!

No worries mate! Hope it is of more use to you.

gavinbell said:

enjoy the ride....it should be no problem.
Down through former yugoslavia and bulgaria. It is always worth getting the international licence as they are so cheap.

try www.horizonsunlimited.com for info

Gavin

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That seems a bit off course, why (apart from just the hell of riding) go into Bulgaria?

Be sure that you visit LASITHI area and ANWGEIA. Cretans are very nice people unless you insult them.Try to avoid big cities and places with great tourist consetration.You're going to end up eating mousaka (which is not the traditional Greek food by the way) every day and learn nothing about the real Crete.Try to reach the mountain cretan villages.You will have the chance to listen to the real traditional music,see old men wearing the traditional clothes(sariki,vraka and stivania) and drink "raki" from the barrel.Each time you park your motorcycle to some mountain village and sit down at the taverna to eat,the locals will be nice to you and they probably buy you the first rounds of raki.Smile at them,raise your glass and say "stin ygeia sas!".
There is a great tourist guide for motorcyclists here in Greece that has anything that a biker should know about Crete.There is an English version too.If you want any information p.m me and I'll be glad to help you.

Have you done the trip yet ?

I regularly travel between the St. Albans and Istanbul and provided you don't mind packing in the km's you can do this in 3 days.

The route as far as Greece taht I normally use is :-

Day 1: Calais- Reims-Nancy- Basle - Night stopover in Switzerland
Day 2: Gotthard Tunnel-Milano-Ancona or
Gotthard Tunnel-Milano-Bari

This is using autoroutes/autostard predominantly but you can judge better the balance between time and distance that you want to cover and hence specific road choice; if you really want to, however, you can be in southern Greece (or Athens) by day 3.

Then take ferry to either Igoumenitsa ( north Greek mountains route) or Patras ( southern Greece/Athens).

Choice is up to you and where you want to go in Greece before hooking up with your friends. Either route has masses of ferry crossings ( and if you want you can also carry on by ferry from either port to the Greek islands).

This route is all through the EU ( with the exception of Switzerland and thus there are njo complications with licences's etc. Only need to buy a tax vignette at the Swiss border (30 Euro).

As mentioned earlier the older Greek roads can be really slippy when wet but other tahn that there are no problems.