November | 2011 | The LifeCycle

I opened my eyes. Outside the tent, beyond the olive rows, the sun was rising. I was making a habit of finding these orchard fields. Secluded and sheltered. I’d crossed the hills out of Thessaloniki but was way beyond reaching my couch surfing home, which had been two hundred and twenty kilometres from the city. I’d only covered forty of those. There was almost certainly no way of reaching the town of Xanthi, where Evi, the student host, was living. Either way, this would be a long day and the first day of the Greece I had always imagined it to be; when the sun finally broke the clouds, it was deep and orange and bright and the world was filled with colour. Yellow hills, with green shrubland. Olive fields deep and dark and fruitful. Rocky roadways and dusty tracks leading off from the highway and into the mountainsides. The air cleared and, though cold, was bright and hazy. It was as if I was just a step away from Winter. It had come but, like trying to outrun a raincloud, if I just kept moving east it couldn’t quite grab me.

The day had it’s problems. The stupid bolt, basically destroyed by the Albanian, who I now firmly resented, was rattling about all over the place again and the rack was wobbling and sliding from side to side. I had no spare parts for this and it proved difficult to find shops that sold the right nuts and bolts at the specific moment you needed them, my moment being as I travelled through a hill road, passing only small farming villages. Eventually I did find a shop, but I had to get my hands dirty trying out a few different pieces. As soon as I get to Istanbul, I thought, I’m checking into a proper bike shop! A screw near the spoke was also bending loose and my saddle was wearing down on one side and not the other. It was pretty obvious now that I knew nothing about bikes. i could fix all this, but I had no idea why it was happening.

But these things made the day interesting, a near-perfect day full of lots of mini-memories; the fire I managed to light out of some wood scraps with a match, to warm up some tuna, beneath the statue of greek god or the empty beach I found full of strange trees and a chance to wade into the ice cold sea, amongst other things.

In one day I passed through lakelands, olive plains, ancient mediterranean harbour towns and long, abandoned cliff-born highways. Fields, seas and mountains. It was beautiful and the day, with all its sun and winter warmth and colour ended in Kavala. My day didn’t end here, but the sun set beyond the sea as I cycled into coastal cliffs. The view from the ascent was breathtaking and I’d wished I’d been able to spend more time in that town.

Here we go Again

It was seven in the evening. I had cycled beyond a hundred and twenty kilometers already. I was tired and hungry and the night was growing cold. I made a call to Evi in Xanthi and explained the situation, that I’d try for her place. She asked how far away I was. I said I wasn’t sure, knowing full well that it was sixty kilometres! I put the phone of the petrol station office down, looked at the time and the map. Why did this always seem to happen to me?

Other cyclists, like those I’d met in Dubrovnik, seemed to be cycling slowly, calmly, knowing where they would end each night. One day I would cycle forty kilometres after a morning spent in a hostel, before throwing my body into shock the next and compensating the distance with insanely over ambitious rides.

For any of those other cyclists, this would be a moment where they might say ‘I’m done, I’m camping. It’s impossible.’ For me, these were, and still are, the moments where I am able to remind myself what I am capable of. Why I had wanted to do the whole world and not part of it. Why I had been able to begin in the first place. I wanted to be in Xanthi. I wanted to be sixty kilometers from here and I wanted to be there within the next hour or two! The old highway was my route. Barely lit. Isolated, now used as a backroad. It was time to see what I really could do.

The nights cycle through Croatia had been nothing compared to this. I had no lights. They had died. I had no energy after climbing a few minor mountains to reach Kavala. My hosts were out there, waiting. Somehow forty kilometres disappeared within an hour and then I hit the wall. One minute I’d been riding strong, my legs pumping like pistons, unnaturally, illogically strong. The next I hung drooped over the saddle, eyes rolling, swaying across the road, slower than I could have walked. At a petrol station I bought all the chocolate I could and stuffed into my mouth in one go, washing it down with bottles of sugary sodas. I sat down and waited until the first twangs of sugar twitched in the muscles of my arms and legs and then got on the bike.

I went crazy. I cycled. Fast. Disturbingly fast. Whether it was phycological or physical, whether it was the idea of energy or the actual sugar within me, I have never cycled like it in my life before. I was pumping at such an unnatural rate. My legs, now, had become like lead, my chest was heaving, yet the bike felt weightless. It was money well spent and never have I cared so little about diabetes or tooth decay. I was flying down the old highway and then, out of nowhere, dogs!

A group of them, shifting through bins by the roadside, turned their heads, squinted their eyes and leapt into a sprint behind me. I can outrun these I thought, there were only four or five of them. But more came, bigger and faster and hound-like. From the bushes, from the alleyways. Where were they all coming from? Barking erupted through out the highway townships. There must have been two dozen of them. Most dropped away but, as I looked to my right, I saw one, thin and lean and muscular, moving powerfully alongside the bike. It jaw tight, its teeth chopping back and forth. I knew this type. It was crazed. Rabid. My pedometer was clocking forty kilometres an hour and still the thing was catching up with the back wheel. Oh god, I thought for the first time, I’m not going to outrun this! With that realization came thoughts of being bitten. The weight returned to the bike, my legs suddenly felt sluggish again and, genuinely, I was riding out of fear. The road dipped and descended a little and I was able to ride free of the beast and catch my breath. I’d been a screaming madman, cycling down the highway for two minutes, churning out expletives as I’d gone. It was like no one lived in Greece once the sun set, the land taken over by wild dogs.

By the time I made it Xanthi, through the town and out to the student dorms in the eastern suburbs, I was a wreck. ‘Come in, sit down, have a drink’, the lovely Evi had said. She was beautiful, I’d thought. Her boyfriend waved at me from the corner of the room! ‘I’m sorry I’m late.’ ‘No it’s alright, we’re going out, but not until at least midnight!’ I laughed. It had been a new record, the longest ride yet. 185km, over mountains, round coastal cliffs, chased through the freezing night by a pack of wild dogs and now followed by drinks till three in the morning!

Winter came. The clouds sank. A blanket of white, damp fog thrown across the world. This was the moment Autumn ended. I was with Tasos and Di in their home beyond Kozani for two days. In this time, the sun misted over, became a pulsing haze beyond the hills and the cold rains came. There were mountainsides. There were fields. But not as you’d imagine them back home. The colours were unusual, browns and yellows and greys. The fields were just shrublands, rocky like the mountains that grew out of them. The climbs felt more redundant, unhiked, just vast, brown folds.

I spent a morning in a fur factory. I don’t want to go into the ethics of it, my brain was questioning everything I was doing at the time, but it was the business of Tasos and his Dad and one of the reasons they, unlike a lot of Greece, were doing alright for themselves, with a large rural house and summer place on of the Greek Islands. In a small mountain town, after an hours drive into the clouds, past steep Greek villages, we filtered through bags of different coloured furs. I was told they were the furs from voles, farmed in the north of the country primarily for their skins and that the colours were just dyes. Considering I had been given a bed, shower and food, I had no real choice, whether or not I agreed in the production of animals for fur, in offering my help. Nevertheless, a day off the bike, working, in a way, was kind of refreshing and to see the kind of jobs that took place out here was eye-opening. They would still happen whether I disliked them or not.

It rained for the rest of the day and I was grateful to have been dry and warm inside Tasos’ house. My memories of that place are of roaring fires, chestnuts, good food, families, hot tea, and the Honey Tahini I was given by Tasos’ mum. I giant pot of sesame seed paste, a little like peanut butter. I took this, along with my cleaned clothes, a day later, cycling away from Kozani, into the lessening rain. I would miss them all. It was a reminder of all things homely and, in Greece, I got the impression that family were much closer, whether for better or worse. Di would take turns working the family fashion shop in Kozani centre, whilst Tasos helped run his Dad’s business. They all lived together, even at the same ages as myself. I thought of the ten years I had been away from home living. Though Di had plans to study abroad and Tasos had his own bar in the summer, it was almost like they had had no choice right now but to take over these family businesses and it was more apparent, from where I stood, free and cycling away from my own home, that they were restricted. There was talk of major economical crisis in the country and I was sure I’d learn more about it the further in I cycled.

Dogs, Round Two

Mountains appeared from within the fog and I began riding up a neverending series of hairpins, further and further into cloud, ascending into a damp, white world. Orthodox shrines could be seen along the roadside. Candles flcikering. Dogs called out through the valleys. I reached an empty street, lined with closed up restaurants. Like some kind of twisted western film. My bike creaking through it, uphill. From the road side, up ahead, the shapes of dog’s rose up and began to move into the center of the street. I got off the bike. One of the dog’s began to bark wildly. The other’s became restless too, until one of them charged towards me. I turned, jumped on my bike and rolled away for twenty metres. The dog halted and returned to the pack. Again I tried to move up the street, pushing my bike this time. More dogs appeared from the roadsides. For five minutes I stood there, wandering what to do, in a stand off, before a small, old lady swung open a door of one of the houses and screamed at the dogs. She tutted at them as they ran away and then waved me forward ‘No problem. No problem.’

Minutes later I was rushing downwards, through the fog, descending at high speed, towards the valleys beyond. I had no real idea what mountains I had just crossed, what the land aorund them had been like, I couldnt see anything through the clouds. I ended the night beyond a city, away from the highway in a muddy Olive field. All I knew was that I was a days ride from Thessaloniki and from seeing the Mediteranean again.

Thessaloniki

My laptop charger had blown up back in Macedonia. That was a total of two eighty pound replacements on the trip so far. The problem redirected my whole trip. I entered the Thessaloniki purely just to buy a new one. It was crammed. Streets so tight and narrow, full of shops, market stands, food stalls. But, not winding, just straight and dull. The air was thick and heavy. The traffic congested. Off the centre, out into the steep, hilly suburbs was a small hostel. I stayed for a night before moving on. There’s really not much for me to say about the place. It reminded me of the South American cities that sprawled up the mountainsides, stacked and piled. My main memory is of a German guy who was walking from his home town to Beijing. Just walking. He carried a big stick for the dogs. He was bearded. He was quiet and he smelt. These things I noticed and I knew I was about to start meeting a lot more adventure travellers as I cycled nearer to Istanbul, the supposed crossroads of the world.

I setup some couch surfing of my own. After staying with Tasos, I reaslised that the local way was the way I wanted to go from now on. It was time to grow up, start moving away from hostels and embrace the people I had, kind of, been ignoring so far. I had met a lot of backpackers on my journey so far, this I enjoyed, but I wanted real experience. I also needed to find ways of interacting without having to check into hotels and hostels all the time. I would often visit a city but be too tired to check out its museums, or its harbour sides or really get a taste for it all. With Tasos I had been taken out into the town, enjoyed drinks and food with him and his friends and his family and all the time, whether we had just been relaxing in his home, I had been surrounded by local, authentic people. I cycled away from Thessaloniki, towards new local experiences.

Capturing the World

Sometimes the things I write about or remember most are instance or places I never actually took pictures of. It’s confusing for the journal, when I talk of mountains in fog and there’s only pictures of food on the table. Often, the moment is fleeting or I am just more interested in being there and seeing it than messing around in my bag for a camera. When we travelled to the fur factory there had been a couple of minutes where the landclouds thinned and the sun tried to push through, where the mountainess landscape was a bathed in a yellow haze and I had been in the back of a car, just staring through the window, still tired from the ride a day before, just relaxed, in awe and without a camera.

Some of these moments I wish I could share visually now, but I can’t. Sharing is why I take pictures, why I write at all or doing anything creative at all. I want to tell stories. For a long time I chose the wrong avenues to try and do this and aimed to high too soon. But it wasn’t enough to sit and wait and learn, I had to get out there and be creative now, in whatever form I could at the time. I’m discovering on this trip that I have use whatever tools and skills I have in this moment. I can not shoot films alone at the level I would like just yet, I can not always shoot the pictures I want to make for one reason or another, though I know for both those things I would do a good job given the chance. As it is, I have only words most of the time. I hope this is enough for this journey and it’s story and for you, whoever is reading.

So the bolt on my rack, repaired by the local Albanian mechanic, snapped and flew off and forced me into a guesthouse in the dusty Greek border town of Bitola, where I was able to get another rescrewed into the frame. The weight on the back wheel had proved too much for it. Where the Albanian had drilled into the frame, only an uneven hole remained. He had actually sliced right through the metal itself. Thank you for drilling into my bicycle. Now, it seemed, as if the whole vehicle was slowly dismantling itself.

Before arriving in the city, earlier that morning, I’d woken in the frost field. Dawn had come and, with it, a world of glistening colour, sparkling and crispy. There were national parks and wild, forested hillsides on route to Bitola. Pine trees, christmas like and prickly. Thinner, taller trees, stripped of all life, all colour, rising like pylons across the hillsides, dried out and sharp. Another beautiful autumn experience in Macedonia.

Greece

Beyond the Greek border, after leaving the guesthouse, there were flatlands, farmlands, drygrass, mudfields. Hedgerows returned in a country more tamed and it felt like France all over again, France but in winter time. I remembered the golden fields and green woodlands of that France. In that moment, riding through Northern Greece, it felt like such a long way away.

I continued through the empty fields, past smoking factories and electric lines for hours. Today was the day I would reach the home of Tasos, who I’d met back in Ljubljana in Slovenia. I sent through a few messages online and pushed on to reach Kozani, where his family was living. It occurred to me that not since Dubrovnik, which had already been a four weeks ago, had I stopped in a normal environment, with people I got on with. There had been Mickey’s place in Kotor, but that had been cramp and damp and complicated. There had also been the hostel in Tehrani, but I had kept to myself, kept to my writing and photography. I road into the night to reach their home.

Around eight in the evening the air really started to bite. I put on more layers and pulled my hood down. My route had been blocked by a motorway and I’d found myself riding through total darkness, in Greek backcountry. Eventually I reached a small town, lights lined the streets, red and blue and green. Squinting through the wind, the cold, I looked closer. They were christmas lights. Twinkling Santas and sparkling trees, sleighs and presents and reindeer all neon and pulsing. It was late November. It was nearing Christmas and it was a strange reminder of a world I’d left behind. After Mediterranean sunshine, after rainstorms in rundown Montenegro and the Muslim mountain lands of Albania, I had forgotten about Christmas and of life in London town. Back home, right now, people must have been out shopping for the first presents or putting up chocolate calendars. Strange.

The First Dogs

There had been dogs all day, barking from the farmhouses. There had been dogs through the night too, jumping out from the roadside. Greece was full of them and as I began to scale the pitch black backroad of the hill Tasos had mentioned would take me around the motorway to his house, from out the darkness, half way up, came the violent sound of barking. Barking so vicious and loud and so close that it caused me to spin my bike around and fly back down the hill that had taken so long to climb. The barking followed me down the hill for a hundred metres before returning to the farmhouse or kennel or den it had come from. I could see the top of the hill. I could see the lights of Kozani beyond it! I was a few hundred metres away.

A car pulled up beside me, the window slid down. A man started shouting things at me in Greek. Waving his hands as if to say Don’t go up there. Eventually he found the word he was looking for… ’Dog! Dog!’ And, with that, he drove off up the hill. Frustrated, I began to pedal back up the hill. You can do this, I kept thinking. That thought vanished as soon as the dark shape of a huge dog moved into the road ahead of me, barking, howling, snapping its teeth and running towards me.

Two hours later I had retraced the roads back to the motorway and ridden the highway at high speed for dozens of extra kilometres. I was late for Tasos, scared of being caught by police again, lights down, head down, way beyond a hundred kilometers of cycling achieved that day, all thanks to one dog! I was picked up outside Kozani by Tasos and his Sister Di. They stuffed my bike into the back of the car and drove me to their home. By the time I was alone, staring into the bathroom mirror, razor in hand, I realised that I had crossed the Balkans, that I was in Greece and that I looked like a total hobo. I began to shave off the beard.

Beginning your day riding up a steep mountain road is not everyone’s idea of fun. In fact, it’s not mine either. But, come nightfall, you feel strong, invigorated and it’s likely the mountain climb would have triggered a long days ride. I road away from the derelict building, from the Balkan valleys and from Albania, up over the last pass and across the Macedonian border.

Ohrid

The air cleared. The sky brightened. The day was fresh, but autumn cold. A lake appeared, lined by rural homesteads, orthodox churches and potato fields. In the distance, beyond the haze, I could see Ohrid. The first town in south west Macedonia. Once again, the world had changed after the border crossing; all dry and hay and yellow. A cleaner landscape, less muddy and it reminded me of the Scottish Highlands. I rode around the lake to reach the waterfront, staying for a couple of days in a cheap and empty hostel, in a beautiful town which I saw little of.

On the third day in Ohrid, late in the afternoon, I finally managed to tear away from the town. Nowadays, at the edge of winter, the sun would set early and, though I only had a few hours of light left, this sunset ride became one of the most beautiful days in all of Europe, rivaling even the early days in Switzerland, which felt like, and were I guess, so many weeks ago, crossing mountains in the late summer haze.

I cycled down a long straight road out of Ohrid. Simple buildings. Rural. Rundown. The world was brown and yellow, dotted with white human structures. The shadows grew long and far in front. The sun became intense and warm. The road turned away into a snaking, tight valley full and ancient and overgrown with oak trees and bramble rows. The dying leaves were going out in style, up flames. The trees, the mud, the dirt, the branches, all dry and flaky, were like gold. The further into the valley I travelled the quieter it became until I was just drifting through a sea of flickering, shining color. The land was so rich, shimmering to the point where my eyes began to hurt from looking. I have, simply, never experienced Autumn with such intensity as I did then. In everyday life, the seasons can be easily forgotten, taken for granted. But, when your out there, in nature, for weeks on end watching it change around you, you are reminded that it’s power is greater than any man made concept, any fictional notion.

On through the evening I rolled, round tight and winding hills, climbing into the last of the Balkan rises. Frost began to form, began to sparkle across the hillsides, where smoke rose out of the oaks and elms. Somewhere out there people lived. Chopping wood to warm their homes in the forests. On the road, it was like an empty world. This may sound strange, but as I crossed a bridge through the darkening forests, a great river below and reddening hillsides in all directions, I howled like a wolf, so overcome by the wilderness, by the isolation, so in awe of nature and cycling through it’s colours at high speed.

The sun dropped behind the tallest peak. Darkness crept across the sky and dogs began to bark within the forests. The truth is, I was scared. But, I have always been scared. Of deep water, tall heights, gloomy forests. Throughout Europe I had been scared, worried about where I would sleep, how I would cope should something go wrong, thinking on problems that hadn’t happened yet. The forest here was so stark, so cold, so medieval, so lightless that my fears just, sort of, washed away, replaced by a numb acceptance that I was vulnerable, A small, helpless figure riding alone through a wild and untamed landscape. I just accepted the fear and kept my eyes open for a camping place. This time, I told myself, I will not ride until midnight. I will set down somewhere.

Then the strangest thing happened. Something I will never forget. In the fading twilight, riding the last and highest of the woodland passes, three shapes appeared, moving amongst the trees beside me. Shadowy figures drifting along the forest edge, cloaked and hooded. As they dropped to the road side I realised they were monks. Heads bowed, holding candles, moving as if in slow motion. My jaw dropped. After all the intensities, after reaching the top, after being so alone for so many hours, it was like I had crossed through the mountains and into another time. I rode by them, their heads never lifting, unnoticed. I stared until the figures slid back into the forest and were gone. Did that just happen? Were there monasteries within these hillsides? I asked myself, my mind whirling with ideas, with stories and histories and cultural questions, before descending into the valley beyond.

The view from the top had been a mixture of forming fog, glistening frost and a dim glow from the unseen sun that had fallen behind the brownlands. Rolling forests in everyday direction. In the valley was a town, smoky and rural, beyond it a field, frozen and hard. I slept in that field, amongst the iced up long grass and an icy brook, the sound of wild, howling dogs growing nearer and nearer, circling the nearby fields, as the night grew colder. I closed my eyes.

Out of Tehrani and into the mountains I went. A day spent riding up over passes, into browner lands. The landscape was changing, dying, saturating, muddying. I was heading into to Greek and Turkish climates. Following a winding river, through autumn forests, I made my way between the Balkan valleys. There was sun, but everything felt damp, cold here between the low mountains. At night temperatures dropped. My hands, my eyes, were always freezing. The road pitch black. I thought of wild dogs, wolves. I thought of hunters in the forests. In total darkness I tried to find safe places to camp, crossing rail tracks, dragging my bike through fallen leaves, mud, water to try and find sleeping spots. But the lights of passing cars would light every spot in this cramped part of Albania.

I was in the wild. I’d been reading about banditry that still took places in the mountains and I was nervous. On I kept on cycling until the mountain widened out in a vast brown valley, a huge sprawling town covered the valley floor. In the darkness it was hard to see where the city ended or make out what were forests and what were buildings. In the end, I just kept pedalling until the land started to rise up and, before I knew it, I was crawling towards a mountain pass near the Macedonian border. I had run out of places to camp, it was nearing midnight, too late to cross into another country. I had no idea what I was going to do.

Behind me the city twinkled, I wanted to be free of it, to be somewhere safe. Albania felt so different to any other country, so much more wild, that I just felt afraid. I have no idea why. A mixture of the dampness, the shadows of the mountains, the remoteness of the Balkan Valleys, the browns, the purples, ominous colours.

In the half light, a mile up from a petrol station, I saw a small building by the roadside, half-built. I was so tired and, since Croatia, I was not interested in cycling the whole night through. I had to get some rest. I dragged my bike off the road when all the cars had disappeared and slid into the derelict building. Dust hung in the air. Bags of cement and sand lay about. I looked for signs of human use; cigarette butts, drink bottles. There were none. Only the excrements of passing animals. Dogs were my greatest fear, but these looked like the work of cats or rabbits. Spiders amongst the rubble, scuttled in the dark, moving away from the light of my torch as I scanned the small breeze block building. Behind a wall I lay down my mat, crawled into my sleeping bag, pulled my bike beside me and, with the tent unopened, staired up through a crack in the roof at the distant stars, icy breath, eyes heavy, until I fell into sleep.

When the morning came my bike was still there, my ears and hair were free of insects and I was safe. A pink haze was developing in the growing light outside. I stepped out to see the mountain I had begun to climb. I saw the city and the valley I had crossed the night before. I had slept very little during the night but I was almost proud of having slept there at all. A mile away the Macedonian border was waiting to be crossed.