Fromeward Bound

Taking the long way home from Japan to Frome, UK

Category: greece

Candied Concrete Constructions

February 21, 2017 / / 6 Comments

I doubt this is the usual overlander/traveller blog topic! Nevertheless, as one travels through the countries that we have on Fromeward Bound there’s no doubting the influence that concrete has in shaping the region.

It should be noted that I’m a big fan of concrete; both as a building material and also aesthetically. I particularly love 1960s brutalism; as a child I would visit my uncle who lived in the Barbican and marvel at this unapologetic beast of a structure. (I’m no snob though, as I’m equally enamoured by car parks!) I love the rawness of the material, the colour palette, the different textures; it’s uncompromisingly scale and it’s innate strength. I’ve mixed concrete only once before when Captain and I laid some foundations for an extension. It’s pretty mind boggling that from four simple ingredients of sand, cement, aggregate and water one can create a material so hard and strong it can withstand a nuclear bomb.

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Philosophising on Greece

February 21, 2017 / / 0 Comments

#1 Proper Greek salad….delicious!

#2 More olive trees than you can shake a stick at

#3 Athens is quite literally covered in graffiti and tagging

#4 Lots of brand new, but totally devoid of traffic, expensive toll roads

#5 Lamb Klefteko is yum

#6 A nice place to be out of the tourist season

#7 They like their coffee and beer

#8 Ouzo is gross!

#9 Miles and miles of beautiful coastline

#10 Lots and lots of cats

Let England Shake

February 14, 2017 / / 6 Comments

In my last blog entry (dated 13th December) I was luxuriating in the fact that we were sat on a sofa in front of a fire gazing out of a window at the mountains of southern Greece. The novelty of having rooms, a hot shower, a kitchen, a flushing loo, sofas to sprawl on, a fireplace….was great! Our days were mostly spent slowly meandering into the local village – where we would eat delicious food, drink cappuccinos and down cold pints of Mythos with the Mediterranean Sea as our vista. In the evenings we would cook, drink and then collapse into an electric-blanket warmed bed – lying in until late in the morning.

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Arriving at the house in Greece

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Greece Route

December 10, 2016 / / 2 Comments

It’s official! Fromeward Bound stage 1 is now complete!! We rolled up at Clare’s parent’s place in Greece sometime just after lunch today.

Plan A was to arrive in very early January. Then about a month ago we formulated plan B, which would see us turning up in mid-December. As it turns out, we’ve arrived even earlier! Mostly that’s down to a combination of cold and darkness – for the last 3 or 4 weeks we’ve had to huddle up in the car from 5pm until 8am, which means we end up playing a lot of Scrabble. To be honest, there’s only so many times Clare can continue to lose and retain any sense of dignity so we made a break for the comfort of home!

From here we have a bit of time to sort things out; the roof rack broke in Mongolia, then broke some more in Uzbekistan and now needs a full-on repair; our oil change is about 3000km overdue; the fuel filter needs replacing; and there’s a few new bits of furniture we want to make for the car.

We also need to plan the next bit of our journey home…. the weird thing being that we could probably be in Frome in 5 days from here!

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