When one imagines the Italian Riviera, it’s a picture of sun, sea, boats and lots of people in lycra on bikes. Well, that’s a pretty accurate picture, but maybe with a little more rain in January! We did have a couple of glorious days as well as the rain though.

As we travelled along the coast, we had been told that if we were passing near to San Remo, we had to visit Bussana Vecchia. Some of the time, we do what we’ve been told, so we stopped for the night by a marina in Arma di Taggia then the following morning we drove to Bussana Nuovo (“new” Bussana) and parked Bertha. Our destination was a village that had been ruined in an earthquake in the late 19th century and subsequently abandoned. Then, in the 1960s a group of hippies moved in and started creating art there. Their legacy is an exciting half-ruined village filled with artists, which is best reached on foot.

Bussana Vecchia was right up our street; especially as it was so quiet (we imagine it’s busier in the summer). We enjoyed exploring the alleyways and thinking about how great it was that something that was once seen as worthless was now a place of beauty once more. As it was so small though, we did feel as if we were intruding, so we were almost ready to leave when we arrived at Ronald’s place. Now Julien + Anais had told us that we had to go to Ronald’s place (the only house in the village with a windsurf outside!). We summoned courage and wandered into the garden, where we met a British guy called Roger, a Swiss guy called Max, a dog called Bea and a goat with an identity crisis (she thought she was a dog too). The few hours that followed were some of the best of the trip so far.

Roger + Max explained some of the history behind Ronald’s place; how the vision was to set up a place where artists could come and live for free; sharing all resources and working together. We were invited to join them and stay with them for a while; if it hadn’t been for the fact there was nowhere to leave Bertha and our time constraints, we might well have. It was just such an inviting and exciting model of community. After sharing coffee, having a look round and showing Pablo (another resident artist) how to set up a playlist of Lou Reed songs on the computer(!) we headed to Roger’s house/studio down the hill.

It was great to share time with Roger; getting a measure of what makes him tick and seeing the passion when he talked about his ways of working. Often when you see art in a gallery, it can seem a little sterile, whereas we were seeing pieces that he was working on in their natural environment. It’s not often that you’re asked by an artist for your opinion on whether a piece is complete… that’s a very deep question with any art! We learned a lot from Roger, and I think that Kiri particularly got a lot from that meeting… and in fact the whole time in Bussana Vecchia. She had a revelation that I’m sure will not come as a surprise to anyone who knows her; she’s born to paint.

From there we floated to the border on petrol fumes, as French petrol is sooo much cheaper, before heading towards the Verdon Gorge; Europe’s response to the Grand Canyon. We took half a day to just pootle around the southern lip of the gorge; stopping at every opportunity to breathe in the natural beauty. It was a gorgeous (sorry) day; if it hadn’t been a little on the chilly side, you could have mistaken it for summer and the place was deserted. Aside from Bertha being hit by a fallen rock (it’s ok, she’s fine, but it’s a reminder that those warning signs are there for a reason!), it was a perfect day.

And so from here we move south; a few more days of France, then we’ll be in sunny Spain.

Apparently every motorhome on the planet (well, at least in Italy) goes to Florence for New Year. Who knew? Well, we didn’t! Arriving at our planned stop for the night, we were just maneouvering into a space, when we were asked if we had a reservation? A reservation? But we’re free spirits. We float with the wind, we stop to smell the flowers, we don’t do reservations! Sadly, they were full, so we ended up in what appeared to be an equally busy motorhome car park across the way, but charging 25% more per night. Doh.

What followed was a cultural day in Florence; we appreciated it more than Rome, even if we did have to queue for 3 hours to get into the Ufizzi Gallery! It was worth the wait though, even if it was just to hear Kiri utter the words:

I’m not sure that Boticelli had seen many naked women before painting ‘Venus’… the proportions are all wrong

In general, we probably appreciated some of the lesser-known artists’ work than the more famous pieces, although we were very intrigued by a Boticelli “Adoration of the Magi” which included a self-portrait as one of the people in the crowd. He did not look impressed! After a quick munch on our packed lunch, we enjoyed a leisurely wander around the city (particularly appreciating some of the personalised road signs) before we returned to Bertha for a risotto.

We knew we had to cross the mountains to get to Venice and we didn’t really want to pay tolls, so we chose the long and winding road that goes via Forli. Well, it’s only long and winding going over the mountains; we’ve never seen hairpin bends quite like it! Forli held a lovely reward though, in the form of some special offer Tallegio; quite possibly the greatest cheese in the world.

And so on to Venice. Having had the mishap with Florence parking, we checked online and found a campsite in Punta Sabbioni (handy for catching the water bus to Venice) which was open until the 10 January. A bit of a foggy fiasco followed (oooh, lovely alliteration there!). It turns out the internet is not always right. We arrived to find out that they closed on the 7 January. Which day did we arrive? Yes, 7 January. To cut a long story (involving fog, people wagging their fingers at us, and a potholed-car park) short, we decided to double back on ourselves to a campsite that was open… but all the way back past Venice. There’s a reason that we’re trying to avoid campsites… you don’t have this problem with car parks generally!

Venice. Aaah. We’re not city people, but if every city were like Venice, we would be. Yes, there are the touristy bits, but we purposefully wandered aimlessly. Is that an oxymoron? Maybe… basically I’m trying to say that we ignored the map and tried to wander randomly; discovering exciting little alleyways and beautiful piazzas. This approach did mean that we had a few issues trying to find somewhere for a coffee though. We ended up in Venice’s equivalent of Fawlty Towers, where we were given food we hadn’t ordered (before it was whisked away), then we were asked to move table, then when the people next to our new table said their wine tasted funny, the proprietor kept on repeating “best wine in the house”. I’d love to be able to tell you where it was… but I can’t, because I have no idea! We ended the day with a calzone each on the way back to the bus… which we found eventually after caving in and looking at the map.

What’s next? Well, we’ve got some gearbox oil for Bertha, after some very amusing interactions where I tried to speak Italian to mechanics. “Olio?”. “Cambio?”. “Trasmissione?”. Confused look. Look of realisation. Reply in English! Hopefully that will help Bertha to run more smoothly now. Italian Riviera, we’re on our way (albeit slowly!)

New Year; a time to look back on the past year and forward to the next. In the context of our travels, it’s quite useful to take stock, assess what’s happened so far and use that to plan what might be next. We’ve done a fair bit of assessment so far; especially after our breakdown, 1 week into the trip, but we’ve got some data to play with now to make more informed decisions.

Our mean mileage per day across the whole trip is (up to 6th Jan… so 70 days of life in Bertha) 54 miles per day. That doesn’t seem like a lot, but when you take out the days that we’ve been helping at a project (and therefore not travelling), that increases to 81 miles per day… still not masses.

Possibly the most useful data we’ve got is our cost data; where our money is going. When setting out, our budget was £1000 per month, to cover everything; petrol, food, tolls, entertainment… everything. We used cost data from Adam + Sophie and Jason + Julie to check that this wasn’t wildly optimistic… now’s the time we’re finding out! We’ve only got just over 2 months of data to work with, but our total expenditure in that time has come to about £1150 per month. By digging into the figures, we can see that we had a couple of non-standard costs; a breakdown (which cost £205) and ferry tickets from Greece to Italy (which cost £228). So if we ignore those, we’re well in budget (approx £900 per month).

However, we’ve been helping at projects for some of that time too (24 days), where we’ve (very kindly) not been charged for accommodation or food and we haven’t driven (so no fuel expenses). If we once again take out those days, and average out the costs, we have an average expenditure of approx £1450 per month. Now we’re not going on to any future projects with expectations of getting anything for free… so this could be an issue… but might not be.

So where’s the money going? In short, petrol and other transport costs (tolls, vignettes, ferries, buses, trains, breakdown) make up 65% of our outgoings. If we ignore the breakdown and ferry, it’s still 58% of our outgoings, with petrol alone making up well over a third of our outgoings, as Bertha’s only averaging 19mpg. Some costs are dependent on how far we travel, and some on how many days we’re travelling. It therefore makes sense to separate out the average costs into a cost per mile (for petrol and transport as those are dependent on how far we travel) and a cost per day (for everything that’s dependent on time on the road; overnight stays, food and drink etc). So, this is what we get:

Transport and fuel costs per mile: 34p (ignoring the breakdown + ferry)
Cost of living per day: approx £14
We’ve averaged approx 54 miles per day, so transport and fuel costs per day: approx £19
Total cost per day: approx £33

The one key thing that the data does not show is how much money we have saved by travelling in Bertha. As we are effectively carrying our home on our back, our total cost of overnight stay has been minimal. We can park up anywhere (within reason… and obviously only where legal!), cook ourselves a meal, then settle down for the night without spending a penny. How much are we saving on campsite and hostel fees? A stab in the dark guess would be £30 per night… if we’d had to pay that much per night, we would be well over budget by now. So whilst the other figures might suggest that a motorhome is not economical in terms of mileage, this added bit of information puts it into perspective.

We might be on track and on budget, but a little bit of us is uneasy about burning all of this fuel in such an inefficient manner. 19mpg isn’t much at all. And for our cost per day to stay the same, we can’t afford to break down again… which is almost inevitable in a vehicle as old as Bertha. Certainly food for thought!

To be continued…

Every traveller needs an oasis; a watering hole to stop next to, refill the reserves and then start travelling again. The Oaks Oasis in Porano, Italy was such a place for us. Now don’t get us wrong, we love travelling, but it’s good to put your feet up at times too. Especially at Christmas! So we joined Celeste (who runs the retreat centre) and her friend Laurie over Christmas and New Year in the heart of the Umbrian countryside for a mixture of relaxing and helping out.

As with the other projects we’ve visited so far, we had contacted Celeste at the Oaks before we set off, offering to help her in any way that she wanted.

…help? Oh yeah. I have 24 oak trees. So there will certainly be some raking you can help with!

We arrived, eager to get stuck into the jobs that she had lined up for us, but also a little tired after our wanderings. It was a lovely surprise therefore to find that we had a real bed to sleep in (that you could even sit up in!), Celeste had a menu planned out for our stay and she wasn’t expecting us to get straight to work. Aside from moving some firewood inside and rebuilding the wood pile (under the watchful eye of 3 of the feral cats who currently caretake the retreat centre), we didn’t really do any work until a couple of days after Christmas.

In the meantime, I read a book. A novel. From cover to cover. In just over a day. I haven’t had made time to do that since I was a teenager. Kiri went for a countryside walk, being accompanied by a local dog for some of it. We watched films. We ate food together. Actually, that last sentence doesn’t do the mealtimes justice; dinner was an occasion every day; not just a time to refuel, but a time to savour and have deep conversations. Celeste is American, we’re British and we were all in Italy, so the menu was an incredible fusion of the tastes of 3 cultures; prosciutto, roast pork, pumpkin pie, chilli con carne, lemon meringue pie, southern fried chicken, meatloaf, pecorino, etc. Food heaven!

We also had several trips out from the retreat centre; on Christmas Day we visited a small, friendly church where they served espresso before the service (take note, Church of England!), we went to a wine tasting event at a local vineyard and we had a day in Rome. Now, when in Rome, do as the Romans… or so the saying goes. But what do Romans do? Well, I guess they tried to invade Scotland, gave up and built a wall to stop the Scots invading them… but we only had one day, and Scotland is quite a way away. So instead, we wandered around Rome; saw the Colosseum from the outside, saw the Pope’s house from the outside, saw the Trevi fountain… in fact we saw a lot of things, but it was a street artist near the Colosseum that wowed us the most. We ended the day by watching The Hobbit at the cinema, noting down things that might help us on our travels (not that we’ve seen any orks yet).

And so onto the leaves. 24 oak trees do indeed drop a lot of leaves. We assessed the situation and decided it wasn’t a massive job actually… until we realised that the carpet of leaves was a couple of inches thick. In total, across the 3 days that we spent raking leaves, we probably cleared enough leaves to fill a couple of skips. It was great exercise and lovely to be outside in such beautiful surroundings, as well as being very satisfying, seeing the progress as we unveiled the ground beneath the leafy carpet.

All good things must come to an end and soon it was time to… leave (sorry). It wood (sorry) have been very easy to stay, but we didn’t want to outstay our welcome, plus we felt that we’d kind of abandoned Bertha over this time. So, we uprooted (sorry) and once again hit the road after a great time at a place for rest. For rest. Forest? Get it? I’ll get my coat.

It shouldn’t be that difficult to catch a ferry. Turn up, get on the boat. Done. Somehow we managed to go to the wrong port in Patras though, then get a little confused about lots of things until we were finally on the correct ferry. Thank goodness the captain wasn’t as confused as us, as we might have ended up in Barry, Wales rather than Bari, Italy! We left Bertha to play hide and seek with the “big boys” whilst we settled down for the night, watching a beautiful sunset before taking advantage of a warm shower (a lovely treat after a few days of wild camping)

Don’t you love it when you fall asleep in one country and wake up in another? Probably only when you intend to travel to a different country… I guess in other instances it could be quite disturbing…?! In any case, when we woke, we were in Italy (well, Italian waters). After disembarking, we spent a while trying to explain to an immigration officer that the pile of coats in the back of Bertha was just that, and not some random stowaway. Eventually he bought the story (which is just as well!) and we were on our way to Pompei via an extremely beautiful scenic routine. We partially planned it that way, to avoid tolls, but some scenic bits were added bonuses, where our planned route became unsuitable for some reason. Bertha coped valiantly with the steep hills and we admired the Italian countryside, however the journey took a little longer than anticipated. It was dark by the time we arrived into Pompei (the modern city) full of passionate Italian drivers; the air full of the roaring engines of mopeds and the tooting of horns. Bertha sucked her sides in to squeeze through tiny gaps in traffic, guided by the able hand of Kiri at the wheel and we were glad to finally park up under orange trees at our campsite.

The following morning we jumped online to find out how close we were to the archaeological site of Pompeii. It turns out that we should have just looked out of our window; the entrance was literally 2 minutes away by foot. What followed was a bucket list day for Kiri (and probably for me too if I had drawn up a bucket list) as we explored the ancient city of Pompeii.

It’s mindblowing to think that the streets that you walk through today would have been so similar nearly 2000 years ago when disaster struck. The sheer size and wealth of the city astounded me as well as the level of preservation. I’d (wrongly) pictured Pompeii to be more of a village, but in the 5 hours we were there, we couldn’t get around the whole city… and there’s more that still hasn’t been excavated! I think it’s fair to say that Kiri just loved everything about Pompeii; the level of preservation really helps you to imagine the human aspects of life there in Roman times. We both loved the visible indentations in the stone road surface from wheels that passed over it nearly 2000 years ago.

It’s also fair to say that Kiri really appreciated the frescos and the vibrancy of the colours still remaining. The digital swatches that she took will, I’m sure, form the palate of any future home we have!

Before leaving Pompei to head north for Christmas, I wanted to check out a faint whirring/grinding sound that I’ve been hearing since Meteora. In Bertha I mean, not in my joints! I say faint; Kiri can’t even hear it, so maybe I’m imagining things; after all, our fuel economy hasn’t altered in that time and there’s been nothing visibly wrong under the bonnet. So, I took the opportunity at the campsite to get under Bertha and have a good look (ooh, er missus… well, we were in Pompeii… had to get Frankie Howerd in there somewhere!). This is what I found:

That’s the gearbox. And that’s oil on the outside. Now, as previously established, I may not know much about engines, but even I know that gearbox oil should be inside a gearbox. The second picture (on the right) is after I cleaned up the gearbox and we had driven for a day. We’re currently in the process of asking experts for opinions on it… but most responses are that we shouldn’t be too worried about it! Which is good news 🙂

Following Pompeii, we pootled up the toll road (we’ve learned our lesson!), stopping overnight at a couple of car parks with panoramic views on the way to our Christmas destination, near Orvieto.

Speaking of Christmas, may we wish you all a very happy and peaceful Christmastime (sorry we didn’t get this post up before Christmas day!).

We hate being tourists. Standing in the middle of a square with an oversized map in hand. Looking confused. Getting in everyone’s way. That’s why we try not to be typical tourists when we visit a city. Yes, we like to see the sights, but also the real city. And so it was with Athens. A bus and a metro into the centre of Athens from our campsite (sorry Julien + Anais, we’re not as bold as you; we opted to stay at a campsite rather than brave city “wild camping”… plus the campsite had washing facilities) and we were ready to “do” Athens, our way.

So what does that actually mean? Well, we got a bus into Athens, walked to the Acropolis and had a lovely chat about London with a lady who offered to be our personal tour guide, before we decided the ticket prices were too expensive to go in. From there we wandered north, through an arty area of Athens (Psiri), up to an area where a lot of anti-fascist protestors hang out. There weren’t many signs of them, but there was plenty of fascinating grafitti. After a cheap coffee and pastry, we wandered towards the panathenaic stadium, decided it was worth 3 Euros each to go in and didn’t regret the decision. It would have been worth the money just to look at the collection of Olympic posters and torches they have there. After a lot more walking, we ended the day with a couple of Souvlakis each before heading back to the campsite, 20 Euros lighter than we left, but feeling like we’d had a pretty good overview of Athens.

The following morning we went to find the washing facilities… only to be told by the owner that they consisted of some 6 Euro washing machines in a launderette 5 minutes up the road. Turns out that hand washing underwear takes quite a while… but once that was done and Bertha was decorated to resemble a laundry, we hit the road, finding a lovely beach to park next to for the night. This actually turned out to be our model for the next few days; hitting the road and finding a beach to park next to, not the hand washing!

We’d been tipped off that Epidavros was worth a visit, so this was our one other “touristy” visit in Greece and once again, well worth it just for the amphitheatre alone. We’ve concluded that amphitheatres really are the result of architectural, scientific and artistic prowess being smashed together to form something brilliant. I mean they’re great to look at, they’re acoustically mind-blowing and they are created as a stage for artistic expression; they’re brilliant “on so many levels” (to quote an accidental pun of Kiri’s!)

The day that we travelled up to Patras for our final night in Greece marked exactly a week since we had bought a bag of 64 satsumas for 5 Euros and we were down to our last 2. I’d like to think that the excessive consumption of orange-like fruits led to the moment of madness that then ensued. I saw some oranges for sale by the side of the road. So I bought some. I say some. OK, so we bought a 10 kilo bag of oranges, but they were only 3 Euros! Guess we’ll be eating a lot of oranges in the next few days.

Sadly our 10 days in Greece had to come to an end. As we parked up for the night next to a beach near Patras, we enjoyed watching the windsurfers in front of the Rio bridge. However, we didn’t make the logical connection between windsurfers and wind as quickly as we should, leading to a very windy night. We’ve enjoyed touring Greece and have to say that 10 days is only really enough to give a tiny taste of the country – we would love to return.

What if we were doing our trip, but for 3 years instead of 1 and covering not just Europe, but all the way to China… and possibly beyond? Well, sadly we’re not… but we have met some people who are doing just that; Julien + Anaïs.

When we arrived at the hot, sulphurous springs of Thermopile near Lamia, the first thing we spotted was a French campervan and our immediate reaction was “great, another campervan, we’re safe to stay overnight here”. Having had a brief wander to check out the springs, we were just turning Bertha around, when up bounded an enthusiastic guy who introduced himself as Julien and asked whether we were going to bathe. We explained that we were just turning around the van, then we’d have a dip, but we’d have a chat with him later. Julien pointed out the best place to get into the springs, then left us to it; a lovely soak in the stinky water.

After soaking for as long as we dared in the fumy water, we returned to Bertha, dried off, ate some dinner, then pondered our next move with the French couple… should we knock on the door of their camper and invite them to Bertha for a cup of tea? We were eager to get to know them, but didn’t know how to make the first move. We didn’t have to – Julien appeared at our door and invited us round to Balthazar (their van) for a drink… but warned us we might need a couple of extra jumpers. As Bertha was warm, we suggested they came round to ours… so they did.

Julien + Anaïs (or “Jongle et Aiguille”) are about our age, with a van older than Bertha and they’re 5 months into a 3 year trip towards China. What’s inspiring is the way that they’re doing the trip… they’re so much more laid back than we (i.e. me… Kiri can be pretty laid back!) could ever be. Whilst they have a plan, their philosophy is that if someone suggests that they should go somewhere, they go there! They’re also so much bolder; they are willing to park almost anywhere (they parked on the road next to the presidential palace in Athens for 4 days!) and they will talk to anyone, which has led to them making lots of friends and being welcomed into people’s homes along their way. It’s also giving them some amazing stories to tell. Annoyingly, we were enjoying our time with them so much that we forgot to take a picture of them in Bertha… however they took a picture of all of us in Balthazar later:

After going for another dip in the springs in the dark with Julien + Anaïs, we went around to Balthazar to hang out and chat a little more. If there’s one thing that we envy (yes, we know that envy isn’t a good thing) about the way that they’re travelling is that they have time on their hands. I think because we’re trying to fit visiting the whole of Europe into one year, we haven’t allowed ourselves time to fully appreciate countries; we’re just getting a taste. Maybe that’s a good thing though, in that it leaves us wanting to return? We certainly don’t think 10 days in Greece will be enough to take it all in. The main thing that we can learn from them though is to talk to people. Approaching strangers doesn’t come naturally to either of us, but their stories show how much it pays dividends when you’re on an adventure.

And the blog post title about a simple life not meaning an easy life? It’s something that Julien said that stuck with us, because it’s so true. We’re loving a simpler lifestyle; working with fewer resources, carrying fewer belongings and being more in tune with natural rhythms. However it comes with its own complications… you have to work hard to conserve what you have, there’s no routine or normality to fall back on, you’re constantly in new situations and learning new things. And even though you may be having a great adventure, there’s still washing up, clothes washing, tidying, finances and other mundane things to do!

Simple life? Yes. Easy life? Maybe not. Good life? Definitely!

After our flight from Serbia, via a corrupt official in Macedonia and the cheapest petrol of our trip so far (99p per litre!), we arrived into Greece. The first sight that we were faced with was a toll booth… that was totally derelict. Maybe we won’t be paying so many tolls after all!

We’d planned to spend our first night just south of Thessaloniki, but when we stopped to pick up food in Lidl on the way there, we succumbed to the temptation of stopping overnight in their car park. Well… almost! You see, we’d heard on the grapevine that Lidl are motorhome-friendly, as motorhomers are likely to pop into the shop in the morning to pick up supplies. However, we had no evidence… and after about half an hour of peering through our blinds, we lost our nerve and moved on to our planned destination.

The following morning, we topped Bertha up with all of the things we needed to top up, emptied all of the things that needed to be emptied and drove south towards the coast for our first bit of “wild camping”. We arrived in paradise. A deserted beach with a bright blue sea and a picture-postcard tree up on the cliff. With Bertha parked up, we just relaxed into the surroundings; I did a bit of whittling and Kiri wandered on the beach, collecting shells and stones. As we settled down for the night, we were a little nervous that someone might knock on the door and tell us to move on, so we both jumped when we heard some rattling from Bertha’s main bench. Turns out that some of the shells that Kiri had collected hadn’t been unoccupied… we set the crabs free and the rest of the night was undisturbed.

From there, we travelled (via a wild goose chase for both cash and petrol) to Vergina; a place that we’d found on Peejay’s Greece stopovers. These POIs (points of interest) are a good addition to our other collections that we’ve been relying on so far to choose our overnight stops. In other countries, we’ve been using campercontact.com, campingcar-infos.com and the ACSI camping card guide. It’s good to have the different sets of POIs; whilst there’s some duplication between them, overall they’ve given us a good selection to choose from. Add to this the travel blogs of previous motorhomers and we’re set; it’s great to learn from the people who have gone before us.

Meteora was the next destination, again from Peejay’s Greece stopovers. Whilst researching Meteora, we realised that we were inadvertently doing exactly the same Greece overnight stops as Jason + Julie at ourtour.co.uk… but in reverse order! Having read accounts of the Pension Arsenis motorhome stop near Meteora at ourtour.co.uk and europebycamper.com, we were ready for just about anything, and weren’t surprised when Kostas rocked up on his scooter, offering us his Mum’s special meatballs and sausages “not from the market”. We agreed to the offer, had a lovely meal and managed to slip out without being invited for quiet drinks with Kostas later (although his Mum did insist on giving us sweets every time she saw us!).

Meteora itself is stunning (we’ll add photos later!). Totally out of this world. It’s a group of monasteries perched on top of columns of rock, that originally would have been totally secluded, but now are accessible to tourists. We viewed most of them from afar, but went inside one of them to try to get a feel for how the completely opposite worlds of tourism and sanctuary work together. To be honest, we’re still not sure, but we did note that the monks had their own private areas of the monastery and very little is open to the public. I think that increased the respect we have for them. They’re making money from tourism… is that wrong? Maybe they’ve got the balance right; a stream of income, but without compromising community life for themselves; not “selling out” their way of life?

Are there parallels that we can draw between a monastic way of life and the life of a traveller? There are certainly strands of learning from people who have gone before you as well as being part of a community. Are we over-thinking it? Maybe! So, with food for thought, plus feta, olives, stuffed vine leaves and tomatoes, we headed south.

Bribery isn’t good; I think most people would agree with that. Would you pay a bribe? What if it was someone official asking for a bribe, like a policeman or a border guard? Before we left for our travels, we had to ask ourselves this very question as there was the possibility we might encounter corrupt officials. We’d been told to watch out for Serbian police… so we did!

In fact, we managed to pass all the way through Serbia with no issues at all. We were just breathing a sigh of relief as we crossed out of Serbia and got to the Macedonian border. “Papers please. And your green card”. Now our insurance company had told us that we needed to buy insurance on the border so we explained this. “OK, you buy it over there and when you have it, you can have your passports back”. Seemed legit, so off we pootled to buy our insurance.

I got into a conversation with the guy selling the insurance; talked a bit about Serbia, a bit about England, then we got onto the cost of insurance.

“How long are you in Macedonia?”

I explained we were just passing through on the way to Greece, so only one day.

“Oooh, very expensive”

Oh dear.

“You see, you have a truck over 1 tonne”

Do I have a truck? Is Bertha really a truck? Not according to any other classifications.

“A truck over 1 tonne costs 230 Euros”

WHAT? REALLY?

“But as you are only here for one day, I will help you”

Oh, yeah? This sounds a bit fishy.

“I’ll say that you are a family car”

Which is how we’ve been classified for most tolls.

“You pay 50 Euros”

Still sounds expensive, but that’s better than 230 Euros!

“So how much will you give me for this”

Aha. So that’s your trick. I explained that I would rather pay 230 Euros than give him money.

“No, you only pay 50 Euros, then you give me money”

I explained that I didn’t want to break the law.

“No, family car insurance is legal”

OK, so I’ll pay 50 Euros… why didn’t you tell me that in the first place?!

“So how much will you give me?”

I said that I would rather pay 230 Euros. This went on for 5 minutes. Slowly, he wrote 50 Euros on the insurance card, and asked me for cash. I headed back to Bertha, made sure I had 50 Euros exactly, then emptied my wallet of all but 5 extra Euros… just in case. I handed him 50 Euros exactly. He looked at me. Quizzically. I stared back at him. He gave me the insurance card. I got our passports. I got back into Bertha. We drove off.

So, should we have paid 230 Euros, or 50 Euros? Post-incident research suggests that 50 Euros was correct for a motorhome and the official was just trying to pull a fast one. It’s really quite sad, as if that guy tried it on with other visitors, that might be their only impression of Macedonians. Fortunately we had met some great Macedonians in Serbia and found a lovely petrol station attendant later on, so we know that Macedonians are generally lovely and honest people.

The moral of the story? Well, I don’t know really. Maybe try to convince your insurance company to give you a green card that covers Macedonia, so you can avoid similar situations?!

The second of our films about the trip is now available on YouTube