This was my route biking after buying a bike rack in Thessaloniki from Theokotis Bike Shop. The bike bag rack was my interim solution until I could be reunited with my Bob Trailer in Vienna: mountaineering backpack, Daf drum and little biking backpack stapped in an unholy mess of bungees and cords to the back of my mountain bike using the newly purchased seat stem bag rack to support everything.

One afternoon in Thessaloniki I said goodbye to Varvara and Dimitris and headed with the stifling June heat up to OreoKastro, stopping on the way to swim at a pool bar for five Euros. Then on trhough Neohoruda, Pentalofos, Nea Filedephia and ending in Pikrolimni Lake. The lake had one complex with a small chapel which was an expensiveish spa where the cheapest room was 30 Evros and the bathing treatment in the mineral warm mud lake was another 6 Evros but when I told the owners daughter I was biking and had little money she said I could stay and eat for free, mashallah. She gave me a very nice room and they fed me as a guest: bless their souls.

I went out onto the lake, squishing on the stinky mud and sometimes sinking in to my ankels it it, eventually abandoning all and jhust covering my shole body, rolling and making mud-angels with the rich black earth pudding. I let it sit for thirty chilling minutes (the sun had gone down) and then rinsed off with water, not cleaning with soap until the next morning (by which time I felt cooked and fully radioactive).

Continued up next day through Neo Ginekocastro , Vaptistas and eventually on to Herso at about noontime where I ate a Spanakopita (the mainstay in Greece at 1 Evro per filling piece) and caught the 1:30 train up to Nea Petritsi where I began again biking towards the Bulgarian border. Along the way a misleading sign pointed left on a dirt road to Kulata and Bulgaria which I took, winding through a pretty river valley covered with arms caches and bunkers and reached eventually a dead end at a small military outpost after 12 K where rather than turn back when told I could go not further - I portaged my bike and all my stuff accross the waist-deep 100 meter river there and continued on the other side to meet up with the long line of trucks (and pass them a free man) waiting to be inspected and cross to Bulgaria.