5,000 miles across Europe in a £600 Saab - Part 1
There are many kinds of road trip, as this site demonstrates nicely. Some involve a shortish stretch of wiggly road and a fine-handling vehicle. Some involve the thrill of acceleration or a spectacular supercar. This definitely doesn’t tick any of those boxes.
It started with a complaint, a bicycle, and a girl. As they do. One son was working on the Greek island of Kos, running the audio-visual kit for a holiday resort’s entertainment. I thought I’d fly over to visit. But then he whinged down the phone that, despite being paid to endure glorious weather and a team of beautiful dancers, one of the local criminal enterprises, in the form of a bike hire business, had charged him a fortune for an unrideable bike. He needed one to get to work. Anything I could do?
Well, as it happened I had a few weeks spare before I started a new job, so just maybe, I thought, it would be an excuse for a road trip. Snag: I didn’t at that point own a car. Or a spare bicycle. Luckily, eBay supplied the answer to both with a cheap mountain bike and a mildly tatty 1989 Saab 900. Almost as cheap as the bicycle, it was the poverty-spec non-turbo version; wind-up windows, no frills at all. Perfect. Very little to go wrong, and Swedishly solid.
The girl? I’d just met somebody. It was all going well. But driving all the way across Europe with some loony she’d known for a few weeks was a big ask. However, being nothing if not brave, she immediately agreed to fly out to Kos, and join me on the scenic route back. That was that. Decision made.
The journey down across Europe was as fast and straight as possible. While nadgery little hairpinned roads can be a lot of fun, sometimes there’s great satisfaction in just settling down for a long trip and banging off some serious mileage. Out of London early, crack-of-dawn Shuttle, cut across Belgium, then into Germany. That night’s target was Nuremberg – known for its wartime rallies, of course, but a very pretty little town. Just don’t salute.
And that was when the Saab decided to throw its only major fit. Slowing off the autobahn, I noticed a rhythmic knocking noise from the front left which gradually got worse. Pulling off into a car park, I took a close look at the passenger side front wheel. Aha. It was actually loose. Great. Before I left, I’d taken the old beast to a specialist garage, where they gave it a clean bill of health apart from one CV joint gaiter, which they changed. And in an elementary mistake, they’d plain forgotten to screw the hub nut back up properly. As I’d been doing just over 100mph on an autobahn very recently I was not pleased. At all.
However, luckily I’d thrown a bag of tools in the boot and the biggest socket in the set actually fitted the nut so I screwed it back up, tightening it with a length of scaffold pole I liberated from a nearby billboard. Hope it didn’t fall on anybody later…
Panic over. The next morning, keeping a wary ear out for more noises I hit the road again, this time crossing Austria, heading into Hungary and aiming for Belgrade, which is a lovely city if you’re there for more than eight hours. Which I wasn’t.
The next day I found the first really spectacular bit of road – coming down the mountains from Serbia into Bulgaria, the E-80 is mostly bored out of solid rock, snaking through tunnels and alongside damp cliffs. Unfortunately it’s also narrow and first thing in the morning clogged with lorries, but splendid nonetheless.
That day was also the first experience of border crossings. Advice: get a green card from your insurance company, otherwise you’ll get slammed for insurance at every border. I found this out the hard way (also: get an insurer that will issue you one. Mine wouldn’t. Swine). Some also insist on selling you a motorway permit, which is a little annoying as in many cases I was in their country for a few hours. I think I forgot in Bulgaria, so I’m probably still on their Most Wanted list. Mind you, they’re certainly not spending the money on road repairs. The Sofia ring road has some potholes that would swallow a donkey. Oops, there goes a wheel trim. Better take them all off and go full rally style.
Day three ended in Gallipoli, AKA Gelibolu, Turkey, home to a famously failed invasion and a rather sweet little ferry which gets you across the Dardanelles Strait and avoids Istanbul’s hellish traffic.
And day four… well, Turkey’s enormous, isn’t it? But after a fairly dull drive, enlivened only by rounding a corner to find somebody on their front drive, hosing down and scrubbing their camel as you would a hatchback, I arrived in the tourist port of Bodrum, where I’d catch the ferry to Kos.
Another word on paperwork: The Turks and the Greeks love it. Taking a car between these two not-terribly-friendly countries is a trial of absent officials, rubber stamps and documentation. It takes some hours.
But roughly 2,500 miles after leaving London, it was finally time to deliver the bicycle, hit the beach and wait for the girl to arrive via Easyjet. Oh, and get ready for the journey back. But that’s another road trip for another time…
Words Chris Maillard Twitter
Photography Chris Maillard
ROADBOOK
Class: Long haul
Name: Extreme bicycle delivery
Route: 75-mile Beach Road
Countries: UK, FRANCE, BELGIUM, GERMANY, AUSTRIA, HUNGARY, SERBIA, BULGARIA, TURKEY, GREECE
Distance: 2,500 miles