Out of Thrace and into Macedonia. 

A chilly morning with dew on Pedds, parked in a side street. The curling lacquer on the roof was coming off nicely, but unfortunately now starting on the bonnet. How long before the car was completely stripped of this stuff. Hard to know.
I spotted the ice scraper in a side pocket and thought I’d help the process along. A man walking along with a bag of bread stopped to watch this mad Englishman de-icing his roof. I smiled at him and he walked on.
In the hotel the desk manager offered me a coffee.  While he was in the back making it I helped myself to a jar of boiled sweets for my onward journey. Putting them in my back pocket I had to sit on one cheek for comfort. He had a bad back and when I sympathised he then relayed his back’s life history. After twenty minutes another arrival allowed me to slip discreetly into the street.
Starting off I noticed some clutch judder. Oh oh..! But after the hammering I’d given Pedro for 80,000 miles I only had myself to blame. Sure it’d be fine once he warmed up.
We passed Kavala on the coast and then the ancient site of Phillipi. Named for Philip of Macedonia. I’d been around it on a blisteringly hot day in August when we’d had a couple a couple of weeks in Thassos. I took myself off on the 7 am ferry to Kavala. The bus on the other side had to toot its horn at the bus stops to wake up sleepy shop girls going into work.
I’d almost got heatstroke walking over the vast site seeing where St Paul had been imprisoned and reliving the days that Mark Anthony defeated Cassius and then Brutus in huge land battles. The result was the end of the Roman Republic,  Octavian as the first Emperor and the beginning of two centuries of Pax Romana.
Massively windy. The car rocked and the roof bars howled. But I loved driving with the windows down so pulled a light jacket from the back seat and put it on while holding the wheel  with my knees.
Then up into the mountains. A sign read University of Forest Taxidermists. Really? 
I stopped at the top to fill up. A tiny old-fashioned petrol stand with just two pumps with sight glasses, straight out of an Edward Hopper painting. The owner sitting out of the wind on a cane chair. I asked him if it was always so windy? ‘Yesterday nothing  and 35 degrees.’ he shrugged. 
Afterwards some fine views downhill to the left hand finger of the Halkadiki Peninsula.  The one called Kassandra.  The neck of this digit is so narrow you can almost touch the sea out of both windows. 
We reached Loutra where I was hoping to spend the night and catch a dip. But asking – and extensive walking – around told me I had missed out. All accommodation closed. The beach and the front were okay but behind it was a sprawl of bucket and spade shops and  rooms for rent. Closed. Not the charm I had been hoping for.
I found some grilled octopus to my liking and we left for Thessaloniki on a road  bordered by oleanders, still in flower. What a wonderfully architectural, elegant and generous shrub. I wished we could grow them at home.