A spot tunnel trouble

First order of business for the day was to get over the ridge of hills down the centre of the island of Lefkas. It was a bit steeper than coming in to Vasiliki but still well within our means. The climb very rudely starts immediately you leave town, so we’d had no warm up, but after an hour and a half of climbing we were descending into Nidri. 

We made our way up the east coast of the island, finally leaving across a very inauspicious bridge that feels more like a pontoon. To get to the mainland.

Then we were confronted with the tunnel.

The Akto - Preveza tunnel goes under the entrance to a large marine lake, and if we were to ride around the outside of the lake it’s over 140km. So, we want to get through this tunnel. However, it’s closed to bicycles and pedestrians.

Bummer, but we had the hen from a local in Vasiliki that there was a bus that took cyclists through, and we confirmed this by Googling that other cyclists had used this service.

We arrived at the toll gate and as expected there were signs saying “No bicycles and pedestrians,” - ok, so where’s the bus. There were no signs but asking a toll collector we were given a timetable. It took us a long time to decipher it, but eventually we worked out the bus should arrive at 13:45. It was about 12:30 at the time, so no biggee.

We settled into a small bus shelter to wait, and wait, and wait. Eventually, and 14:15 we asked the toll collector again and he said he didn’t know, the bus would come. We rang the bus terminal number and got no answer time and time again. I went to check with the toll collector whether we could ride through just this once, but that didn’t seem like a goer.

Then Tiger managed to get an answer from the phone line. A nice lady said the bus would be there at 16:15, no news on what happened to the 13:45.

Mat least that meant we could go and get some lunch without missing the bus, so we headed 500m back up the road to the airport to grab a sandwich.

The airport gave us an idea, so we asked the taxi drivers if anyone knew a taxi van who could take us. No one had any suggestions. However, the airport had free wifi, so we could do a little searching and I came up with a taxi service offering vans. I called and a nice woman said a guy called Harry was on his way with a large Mercedes van.

…and soon after we were loaded into the van and heading through the tunnel. Best value 40€ taxi fare ever.

So now we’re heading up the Adriatic coast and had a lovely gnocchi and brie evening meal. Next stop Kavos party town and Sarina’s niece Paige.