Travels with Spaniels: Mountain roads, paddling dog and a meeting with Aristotle

It can be a strange experience traveling around Halkidiki in November. This is one of the great Greek tourist destinations. In the summer months, there are acres of sun loungers on white beaches, restaurants bustling with diners and beach cafes packed with cocktail-sipping holidaymakers. In November the contrast is startling. Everything closes down, the sun shades and beach goods are packed away, and peace descends. Thus it was, that in the two nights we spent parked on the beach at Sykia, we probably saw no more than half a

Big beach, small van

dozen people, a handful of stray dogs and, to Elsa's ongoing frustration, a lot of cats.

Even the small local supermarket closes over the winter months, as I discovered when I walked there to buy some much needed wine. Luckily this was Friday, so we still had one more day to stock up (all Greek shops close on Sunday). Saturday morning saw us walk the 3.7 kilometres along mainly unsurfaced tracks to the nearest village. One of the joys of this trip is the ability to park up in and enjoy rural areas where tourists seldom venture. In Greece this means walking past tethered cows in fields without fences, picking our way past abandoned cars with weeds growing through the chassis and dodging a skittish horse wandering loose in the middle of the road.

These little shrines are everywhere

We try not to spend more than two nights in one location, even if the place is as quiet as the grave. Having walked the spaniels around the headland on Sunday morning, and enjoyed a game of ball on the beach, we decided to move on. As we have mentioned before, we have three months in Greece, so the pace of our journey has slowed. We arrived in the small fishing village of Ormos Panagias in time for lunch and found a parking space in the little harbour next to a Romanian motor home. On our wander out with the spaniels in the afternoon we discovered that, as we had expected, most of the facilities were closed, the notable exception being a restaurant that seemed to be hosting some sort of event, possibly a wedding. To my disappointment no plates were being smashed but I was informed by my better half that this was only done for tourists.

Max does like a swim

Yet another walk along a long white beach gave the spaniels plenty of exercise the next morning. We decided to make the short trip back across the peninsula to a Lidl so we could do our weekly shop. Lidl has become our go-to for grocery shopping, not least because the majority of their products have English as well as Greek on the labels. We were also running low on dog food. We have to be careful what we buy as Max is wheat intolerant so we found a veterinary practice where the helpful receptionist steered us in the direction of some suitable food, bizarrely made in Ireland and rather expensive. However, no cost is too high to prevent the hazards of a dog with loose bowels in a confined space.

Everywhere looks like a travel brochure

We drove on to Choros Olinthos, the site of an ancient city which has been partially excavated. To our disappointment it was only open between 0800 and 1400 and we arrived at 1500 on Monday. Even worse it wasn't open at all on Tuesdays. We decided to cut our losses and head back to the village of Gerakini where we had identified a place to spend the night, and a very nice spot it turned out to be. There were a number of imposing buildings along the sea front, not least a huge house that appeared to have been designed by whoever built the Parthenon, complete with sculptures and engraved stonework. We also met the inevitable dogs and stray cats that seem to be a feature of Greek life.

A windy mountain road

The following morning our walk along the beach was enlivened by Max's fascination with the plastic buoys bobbing about in the water. Swimming has become something of a pastime for him and he insisted on paddling out to check that they weren't actually ducks. We called into the town of Polygyros to see if we could get a Greek data card for our Mifi, but were unsuccessful. I have been having a frustrating battle with Vodafone because their system for adding data to our card isn't working. Their customer 'service' leaves a lot to be desired.

Back to the van we decided to cross the high ground to the other side of the peninsula. It was a wonderful drive, climbing to a height of a thousand metres on a series of hairpin bends and enjoying the autumn colours that still linger in this part of Greece. We paused in Stagira on the way down, the birthplace of Aristotle, and visited the small science park that showcases some of the ideas of this brilliant man. Philistine that I am I can't hear his name without immediately bursting into Monty

Aristotle in casual mode

Python's Philosopher's Song (bugger for the bottle).

Tonight finds us by yet another beach near Stratoni where, once more, no one is around and everything is closed. The weather has clamped in a little and we have wind and rain. Hopefully, things will buck up again for tomorrow.