Sope

Hi all bikefans!
This time we are planing to bike with our Mountainbikes from Sofia (BG) to Athens (GR).
After our Bike-Roadtrip more than 4 yeas ago from Sofia to Istanbul we finaly managed to commit on this new challenge!
Hope we will find some possibilties to once a while update this blog during our trip!
Wish us luck and steadiness!!!
Alex and Peter

30 July 2010

Statistiken

Kurz ein paar infos zu den Gesamtstatistiken:

Gesamt km: ca. 420 km
Gesamt hm: ca. 7200 m
Dauer 4.5 Tage

Update mit grafiken usw. folgt demnächst

g lex

03 July 2010

Akropolis


picture taken by Yanna at the akropolis rock. Today we played tourists with our guide Yanna - born in Athens and mainly visited the acropolis and the brand new acropolis museum. tonight we will have dinner with view on theakropolis. I also managed to organize a new box for my bike, so there should be nothing agains a stress free flight back to Vienna tomorrow morning.

Panorama of athens



02 July 2010

Arrival in Athens


After fighting through the greek public transport (they don't like bikes or tourists or whatever...there will be an extra post for the greeks soon) we finaly reached athens by train and bus. Yanna's mum invited us for a delicious dinner and right now we are having an expensive beer here in the center of athens. Tomorrow I will climb upthe Akropolis after I hopefully found a box for my bike so I can take it on the plane. Btw: tkx for your comments.

The oven man


Tkx to the guy who lit the fire extra for us toget us dry after our pooring uphill in the rodopi mountains (on our 2nd day).

30 June 2010

Day 4: Serres 2 Summit Zero - SUN

It is getting late now - so just some quick notes:
Starting in Serres at about 10:20 we did about 40km south east but our first hill about 400m - nothing - but at about 40degrees in the sun we gave up avoiding getting beating by the sun, so we went back the 150m height and took the bus to Thessaloniki and then decided to take the next bus as well because it was starting 15 after arriving in Saloniki next to our bus arriving.. So we are here at beach at the Hostel Summit Zero hanging out with some coolest of the cool type of chicks from Toronto.
Having the Olymp right in the back of us (about 10 km away) we decided to change our plans and go for a daytrip on the olymp to about 1600m from Zero and stay another night here at Perry's Hostel at the beach and take the train on friday right down to athens.
Well did about 60km today.
Good night.
Lex and Peter (already sleeping for one hour).

Day 3: Kovachevitsa -> Serres

Starting in rain - what else.. - almost getting used to it we had a nice asphalt downhill through the deep south gipsy area of bulgaria. Rain stopped after 1,5 hours during our first stop for a tea. Heading south towards the bg/gr boarder we choosed to take a shortcut to a small valley avoiding the main road to the boarder. Well took us 45 minutes, 10 rivercrossings (without bridges of course) getting wet again - this time from the bottom up :-) but it was getting warmer because sun was shining. The 3rd beck crossing cost me my sunglasses while I was dropping into the water..
Boardercrossing with a bike is fun - we had no problems this time.
After crossing a big valley of fields we went up to 1000, back to 800 up to 1000m again enjoying another amazing view. I will post a video later to make you jealous :-). And the downhill was more than cool again - topspeed 73km/h from 1000 to 80m from chilly 15degrees to humid 26 in Serres. Serres is a very noisy city - we both had a bad night too hot and way to loud - I bought some oropax for both of us the next morning.

Day2 - Yakoruda to Kovachevitsa

Posting from town Gritsa - Hostel Summit Zero right at the beachside in front of the Olymp(Greece).

But now to our 2nd aswsome day:
After a Omlette and some shopping in yakoruda (800m), we started late at 10:20 with a quite hard uphill on a - when we started - dry sand, forrest road. Weather was perfect for the first 1,5 hours - cloudy and not too hot. Light rain started to turn to pooring rain. After resuiting we managed somehow to get up the first hill (1660m) - still on sand but now wet.. with torrents coming down. Luckly we found a place to dry our complete clothes for about one hour. Thx to the guy from the little shop. Starting after one hour again almost dry, suddenly the sun came out - well for just a few minutes - getting warm - resuiting for sunny weather. About 30 minutes later again pooring rain but still not that cold. We almost decided to go to the village Dospat (where we stayed for one night 4 years ago on our trip to istanbul) but we still had about 5h of daylight so we decided to proceed to our original destination Kovatschevitza. After about 50km on sandy roads we finaly reached an asphalt again - amasing how easy biking on asphalt is. Arriving in Kovatschevitza we did 74km with 1650 meter of elevation.
The town of looked kind of crappy and awful at the first sight but the hotel turned out very nice with an extreme amasing panorama few.
I will post some pictures maybe tomorrow.
lex

27 June 2010

1st day finished - arrival in Yakoruda

Yakoruda

The owner of Hotel Helier - Onnig - welcomed us very friendly with a beer after he offered to help us cleaning our very dirty bikes.



We booked the night in advance (the only night which was planed in advance) so we were very lucky getting to our planned destination for that day!
Onnig even managed to send us the gps coordinates of his hotel so we had no problem finding it. For dinner we had the traditional Schopska Salata and a delicious grilled trout (forelle) for €3. Off to bed now. Next day is waiting. Heading east to Kovachevitsa - maybe further. Good night! Lex out!

Best downhill ever


After warming up we decided to take an alternate shorter route to yakoruda where we wanted to stay for the night. Turned out it was the perfect decision because the choosen path was a very challenging and legen - wait for it - dary track (no asphalt) and took us almost 2h and ~38km down very close to our hotel. Also the weather was getting better when we started (almost no rain) which helped a lot to keep warm and almost dry. Picture was taken about 14km before we reached the hotel.

On the top


Finaly we reached the top. Just a quick picture because it was fucking cold! We had to bike another few km to find at least a bar/cafe to get some food and - more important - dry ourselfs and warm up.

Short break


One of our breaks - just before the rain startet.

1st day start - sestrimo


First we took the train at 0735 to Sestrimo (2h - 400m). From there we startet right away our looong uphill trail to the dam of Belmeken (~5h +pauses, 35km up to 1950m). The weather was quite ok at the beginning but changed to steady rain after 2h :-(. Also it was getting colder and colder - brrr.

Sofia from above


The amasing view from Stu's aqartment. Big thanks to stu for the possibility to stay for a night! (On ~800m)

Peter bike