Why travel in convoy? Do you do it or are you irritated by it?

Well I hate to say Mys but the Italians and the Germans are the worst for it, and they don't leave room between to overtake. I did express the thought at the time that they were probably lost and I would end up following them back the way I had just come I did read in Annie Hawes about the Italian travelling together thing. Some Greeks do like to travel to tavernas together in the evenings in a little convoy of cars, whilst speaking on the phone to each other, and that drives me mad too, we all know where we're going so why can't we just meet there, but if it's in the dark and uphill I'm at their mercy as my car will be left at home and I'll be with a mad Greek driver. Must say not really noticed convoys of motorbikes which is a relief, but I certainly hear about the many accidents,it's a dangerous business. You've just made me realise I've never seen a tunnel over here.

We have those memorial shrines on the side of the road too. They markthe spot where a life was lost and are very frequent here too. It is not only the foreigners but also the locals who cause the problems here. There is also a problem with drunk driving which is getting worse despite the new laws regarding it. I can understand, while reading and writing here, why I prefer to travel by train if I am going any long distance.

The foreigners here are more of a danger in general as it takes a while to adapt to the Greek way of using the roads and they can be clueless. The locals are more of a danger to themselves. Trains, you have trains? I know we have them but there aren't any locally, the buses are a much more popular mode of transport here and go much faster than the trains anyway.

I'll swap with you as we are coming up to the time when the roads here will be blocked by tractors, combine harvesters and all manner of other farm vehicles crawling along at a ridiculous pace and taking up both sides of the carriage way.

I can imagine how a donkey would signal that it was safe to past, it would be quite smell

Thanks thea, i'm still around such as i am, lol. Four lanes are great & u could get around folks like that. I travel pretty close to home don't do city driving anymore. Can't handle it!

Hi Jo, well when I first moved here I couldn't do city driving at all and used to park and walk. Then summer came and who can walk, it's insane. So I conquered the large town and drive round it no problem, but I did get shouted at three times yesterday for driving the wrong way up a one way street. They weren't shouting at me as such but making me aware it was one way, I'd already gathered that but did they seriously expect me to back up onto the main road

Hi Jo, hope you are well my dear, haven't seen you for a few days. I don't think I'd know what to do on a four lane road but I imagine it would be heaven to shove the camper vans in the slow lane. There is a dual carriageway on the other side of town which at first terrified me but now is much appreciated.

When we go out for a ride on the bikes we usually do not have a set destination. We just all meet in the morning and ride most of the day together their are some days when their is 30 or 40 bikes all together. Like last Sunday we crossed spivey mountain, and we we found this neat town called hot springs, in north Carolina, and we stopped and did some horseback riding, they took us up some mountain trails, and they have this place where you can get in hot mineral baths. But you need a reservation for that so we are going back next month. Im getting off the point, but when we ride, we never know where we may end up. so we can't met their so we all ride together and explore together.

Hi dlr, convoys or motorcycles aren't a problem here as they don't go in convoys, plus they would have had the advantage of being able to overtake the camper vans. I still don't really understand your reason for a convoy though, why not just travel two at a time and arrange a destination to meet up at. If someone breaks down it's easy to call on a mobile for one of you to come back to the rescue. As long as the motorcycles weren't travelling in convoy slower than the cars it could work here, but if slower on the narrow bits which is pretty much all of it, they would cause intense frustration.

Hot Springs North Carolina has such a lovely ring to it. With your activities there you don't sound like a large group of Hell's Angels which might be a bit intimidating. Anyway your explanation of all travelling together sounds perfectly reasonable and probably you have more suitable roads for it there. We don't get that here at all with bikers though there are many motorbikes weaving between the traffic. They probably don't do it here so as not to draw attention to themselves, the police would have a field day if they could write forty tickets at once for huge fines for not wearing helmets.

Oops The situation is really frustrating. What you can not report it to the competent authorities?

What competent authorities exactly, this is Greece The police do have one little trick though. We have signs around the village itself saying no camper vans, to make the point the signs are in picture language so there is no excuse for not being able to read them. They are there for a reason. Once you turn from the main road into the village the road becomes narrower and is one way in the summer. It is closed to traffic in the evening. The camper vans go down the hill and hit the road closed sign and are unable to turn left as the bend is too sharp for their vans. They can't turn round and go back up the road as it is one way and there isn't enough room to turn. So the only thing left for them to do is move the road closed sign out of their way and drive down the closed seafront. Then the police jump out of their car and give them an enormous on the spot fine. This is of course highly amusing to everyone trying to enjoy the evening seafront without traffic and good work for the police with a possible bribe involved. Some nights they can make a fortune if theirs an actual convoy.

Hi hsofyan, it the automative club like the classic car rallies mentioned above? If it is believe me I'd have no problem at all with that and my son would love to see one and would probably be able to point out all the cars. We don't get to see things like that out here. Here are roads are just so dangerous to start with, up, down, severe bends. The local users of heavy vehicles like cement mixer trucks are really good and do indicate when it is possible to overtake, although of course they would never indicate to pull over or to make a turning. But tourist camper vans seem to have no knowledge at all of how to behave and are very likely to run into a case of severe Greek road rage

Quite, it's pretty difficult to get lost on a road that only goes to one place

Hi Sweetchariot, well it cetainly sounds as thought your convoys have got their act together and act with manners on the road. There's nothing wrong with them travelling at normal speed but I doubt very much that their little yellow balls would work out here. The thing is with our local road, it takes approximately one hour to drive it to the next town. The road leads to the town and there is nowhere else to go unless you're taking a small side road upwards into the mountains. There is no possible chance of confusion, it's very simple. The road has two lanes, one goes to town the other comes back from town. The sea is on one side and the mountains on the other. There is no possibility of getting lost at all if they looked at their maps and realised this. The average local speed on the road will be between 60 and 90, possibly more, with care necessary on the many hairpin bends. The camper vans travel at 30 or slower, togther. I hope that explains my irritation a bit more as it is indeed frustrating.

With the simpleness of your roads, and the slow speed they are driving, I can certainly understand your frustration. Like you said, if they just looked at a darn map, they would have figured it out..lol

Hi Sandra, you've made me smile, the very thought of sixty of you in possible convoy, horrors. But you definitely have the right attitude and I'm sure your camper van would be welcome here. When I spot one on the road though there's a sinking feeling if they are in front of me as I can almost guarantee that once I get round the bend in front there are going to be more of them and that's usually spot on. Unless they are French, they travel alone. Most times I've been lucky and the convoy has been going in the opposite direction with a stream of irrate drivers behind them as they really do stick so close together that it is really difficult to squeeze between. There aren't that many places suitable for overtaking either. I'm sure one intrepid Greek would try and pass the full convoy of six but even for a Greek that would be really risky. Plus he'd have to get in front of all the others in the line in front.

Hi increidibleDNA, you've shocked me, I really thought it was a western thing not worldwide. So do you clog the roads up with your convoys driving along at a slow pace or are you really not a nuisance type at all. What's a coaster by the way? Here a coaster is a little mat we put on a table for a drink to stop the table gettng a mark.

Hi FFFrocks, your last two points totally agree with the point I made in the response above yours, do read it and see exactly what the road is like which I speak about. Your convoy may or may not go down well over here, you'd definitely need to leave enough room in between to overtake. Slowness here is the killer in this as it can easily add unnecessary time to the local journey which some people here actually have to do a couple of times a day, before and after siesta hour. The idea of pulling over at a designated spot to meet up is a good one and could be a lesson to those camper vans today.

Hi Chrysan, well the road situation you describe at the end is exactly as it was yesterday, it's a zig zag narrow mountain road, but the ironic thing is it only goes to one place an hour away apart from passing through a few small villages on route, so it is absolutely impossible to get lost on it. It goes from A to B only