Είναι όλους τους Έλληνες σε μένα

Asprovalta, east of Thessaloniki, Greece

Miles 4, 087

All 5 of us are sheltering from the rain in Penny. It's about 9am and the nearby beach resort of Asprovalta is doing its best to wake up. We stealth-camped on the sea front last night. The rain was lashing down as we arrived here having visited 2 local campsites that were closed, but as we gazed through the misting up windows at the churning Aegean Sea the sky cleared and we headed out on foot into the tiny seaside town. We've reached that stage in our journey where everything feels very 'out of season'. It started the night before we left Italy (the first time) and we stayed on a campsite where we were the only living souls apart from the owner. Now, not even weary owners greet us. Just chained gates and the ghosts of gleeful holiday makers long since departed. Even a lot of the hotels in touristy resorts like this one are closed. There are clues all around of how busy these places must be in the height of summer; shower points standing alone on the deserted beach, stacks of sun-loungers under tarpaulins, boarded up beach bars and brightly painted children's play areas left eerily desolate.

The locals are still here of course, and they have to eat, so one or two restaurants remain open. Last night, one was hosting a party, while its neighbour remained empty. The ghost town was instantly transformed when about 20 cars arrived pouring out smartly dressed family and friends from toddlers to pensioners. The balloons and clothing seemed to suggest this was a 'post wedding' party having waved off the happy couple. Next door's empty bar promised nothing more than those 3 syllables that have come to rule our lives. Free wifi.

While Jill emailed and researched Turkey I got chatting to a local man who was fascinated with the camper. He'd lived in North Carolina for 3 years (hence his effortless English) and recalled with fondness his own purchase of a massive American motorhome which he drove across the states several times. I gave him our website address, told him of our adventure and that we'd busked earlier that day in Thessaloniki, but the thing he seemed most impressed by was that five of us were sleeping in the confines of a VW T25.

It is a squeeze, I won't lie to you. But we're getting it down to a fine art. These days we don't even have to pop up the small tent to make storage. We stow all our luggage in the front underneath Edie's bunk, leaving the top bed (or 'upstairs' as we like to call it, despite the glaring absence of stairs) for Ella and Bethan while the bottom rock 'n' roll bed (that's a bench seat that flips down into a bed) for Jill and me. That might sound like 'hell in a tin box' (a phrase first coined by my wife on hearing I wanted to buy a campervan) but it's really not. Last night, for example, we strolled back from the bar, cooked some risotto, put the beds in order, settled down to watch a couple of episodes of Arrested Development (the brilliant US sitcom the girls have just discovered and downloaded from iTunes) before bidding each other "G'night" in our own tribute to the Waltons and falling asleep to the rhythm of the breaking waves.

Bliss. Stealth-camping can be great. And the price is right.

Mornings are trickier, I'll give you that. Blinking in the daylight you realise that people have got up and are getting on with their busy day. Commuters pass by on nearby roads. It's not quite as alarming as someone secretly moving your bed onto the centre of a busy roundabout on the A34 while you were sleeping, but if you imagine how waking up to that would feel, stealth-camping has the same unsettling edge.

Also, of course, everyone wants a wee, and if possible a shower. But if you can wait until the first coffee stop, or nip behind a tree, you get by. And you'd be amazed at the all-over-freshness you can achieve with baby wipes. (I'm sorry, were you eating?)

So here we are, about to set off on our mission to find a launderette somewhere between here and Turkey. First though, let me tell you about our Greek Gig busking in Thessaloniki.

To most Brits, and I include myself in this, Greece's second largest city after Athens, known as Thessalonika back home, is most famous as the airport destination you would fly to before being transferred to one of hundreds of package holiday hot spots. Halkidiki is the one which Jill and I graced with our presence back in '93. Brits were chasing the sun, Labour were in opposition and Take That were huge. It was a different time.

We explored the city properly over the last couple of days and really liked it. It can't compete with Athens for historical ruins, or even historical significance I suspect, but it has a thriving, young, energetic quality that's infectious. A maze of bustling backstreets twist amongst the occasional ancient arch or church and contain a myriad of interesting independent shops selling the kinds of things you don't really see anymore like vinyl records and coloured hair extensions (really, a whole shop of them). Even its 'posh end' seems understated. You barely notice shops like Louis Vuitton nestled among the chaos. It was really refreshing and different from any other city centre I know. It was also the venue for our busk yesterday.

The sea front was even busier than the day before, which was encouraging, but we were fighting a strong breeze which threatened to swallow what little volume we could create. We also found to our dismay that our Greek audience weren't half as smiley and curious as those in Italy or France. I don't know whether it was the language barrier, or whether we were just too quiet, but most people just walked past barely giving us a glance. Maybe it was the smell.

(We'd stayed at a proper camp site with showers the night before actually, so stop smirking)

The music, we hoped, would be universal, but the language barrier is definitely getting bigger. Dutch, French, Italian - you can see similarities to our own language. You learned enough over the years to hazard a guess. But Greek? It was funny when Ella first saw it written on a sign.

"They've got a triangle in it! And an M on its side! How are you supposed to say that?"

Today's blog title is a case in point. Go on, have a guess. What does it say? Be honest - it's scribble to you, isn't it? Of course you could always copy and paste it into Google Translate, but we didn't have that luxury when trying to explain our mission to baffled passers by. We stuck at it for a good half hour and I was surprised by the girls' determination to carry on, but we only raised €7, which seemed quite disheartening after the fun and buoyancy of Florence. One good thing was that we were featured on a local radio breakfast show. That's the morning DJ from Republic Radio, Algelidou Elena with her friend Samara pictured above. So a bit of media interest was good, even if the locals were immune to our charms. And as we all agreed afterwards, even a measly 7 Euros is 7 Euros UNICEF didn't have before we went out and made fools of ourselves. Every little helps.

Which reminds me, we need to find a supermarket. We're running out of baby wipes.

(Listen, you're the one reading this blog. If you don't want these gory details...)