Charlie Charleston’s safely back in the UK, after covering more countries in 10 days than we managed in 18 months! Here’s his whirlwind story, as told by Sara’s brother, Kevin.

 

A few weeks ago I got a call from Sara to say that she and Geoff were planning to go to Australia in the New Year and asking if I could give Charlie Charleston a bit of garage space for a few months. I said of course I can where is he? Er Athens said Sara but it would be fun driving back to England. I thought about it briefly and decided it would be fun, recruited my son Charles as co-driver and flew out to Athens on New Years Eve.

 

Saturday 3^rd January 2015

Charlie Charleston’s first day under new management was a 520 kilometre jaunt from Athens north through Greece to Sarande in Albania, where we were told the authorities are difficult and the roads bad, ooer!

 

 

We headed out of Athens at 08:00 in the morning and Charlie motored happily along the coast past Corinth and Aigio and towards the Antirrio Rio Bridge over the gulf of Patras. However we were motoring a bit too happily and got stopped for speeding by the Greek rozzers. A puzzled policeman took one look at the heavily loaded, Dutch registered, French car, driven by Englishmen and waved us on our way with a smile. We crossed the impressive bridge and headed North towards Ioannina.

 

Just a note here for the Greeks; stop throwing crap out of your cars, especially plastic water bottles. The ditches are full and it looks terrible, have a bit of pride in your country.

All along the roads we passed numerous shrines, some of which are extravagantly decorated and contain pictures and mementos.

 

 

These, I am glad to say, given the number, aren’t just for road casualties but are mostly memorials for friends and relatives from the nearby towns and villages.

As evening fell we arrived, with some trepidation, at the Albanian border. I hopped out of the car to present our documents to the dour looking official in the booth. After a full range of frowning, humming, tutting and tooth sucking he looked up and asked with a smile if we would like stamps in our passports. We were in.

 

 

Sunday 4^th January

Our overnight stop was in Ksamil with the friendly Altin. This is a new development area on a former military site just down the road from Sarande.

 

 

Like much of Albania there are large numbers of unfinished buildings in and around Sarande, but it is clean and the people are friendly, even the cops wave as we go by. Just off the coast is Corfu and I think in a few years time this could be a holiday destination.

 

Our next leg was about 530 kilometres to Kotor in Montenegro.

Driving in Albania was a novel experience. There are brand new petrol stations everywhere, open all hours and people standing on every street corner. Judging by the stares we got most of them have never seen a 2CV before. Many wave.

We decided to take the coast road north over the mountains, ideal for a 2CV. The scenery was spectacular and some of the roads were very good. There were also some epic potholes and bits of road, which were no longer road.

 

 

That and the fact that the entire farmyard had been let loose on the highway kept us alert. We avoided goats, sheep, cows, donkeys, horses, chickens, turkeys, dogs and a pig.

 

After slogging around 800 metres up the, almost continuous, hairpins, much of it in first gear we had stopped somewhere past Himare, to take a photo of Charlie, when a man on a bicycle towing a trailer came down the hill, calling out in Dutch!

 

 

Johan from Maastricht had been on the road on his bike for the past 25 months and after chatting to him for a while we left him with a bottle of Coke and carried on up the mountain wondering if his brakes were good enough for the miles of steep downhill he faced, come to think of it how the hell did he ride a bike and trailer up there in the first place?

Down the other side of the snowy mountains we came into the seaside city of Vlorë, the former capital of Albania. Again the half finished buildings and palm-lined pavements suggest that this is a place with potential. In the meantime the chaotic traffic, and massive holes you have to dodge were all quite good fun. Nobody seemed to be getting uptight about it, not even the slightly scary looking guys in big black Mercedes.

 

 

The Sat Nav led us out of the city on the old, ruined and virtually disused road instead of the nice new dual carriageway, which is alarmingly 2 way on each side when it suits the locals. This would have been a pain in the bum but it was worth it for the fabulous communist style mural on the city boundary.

 

 

The sun was setting as we drove through Fier and Durres on our way to Montenegro. At the border we had a problem with Charlie’s insurance papers, which 15 Euros ironed out and we drove on into the night looking forward to a beer in Kotor.

When we arrived at the snow covered town of Cetinje, little did we know that we were only about 45 minutes away from Kotor via the attractive town of Budva, but the Sat Nav decided the best route was over a mountain pass. Charlie ploughed gamely through the snow-covered streets and off up the ever narrowing, steep, dark, snowy mountainside.

Only 20 kilometres to go the Sat Nav said and it looked as though we were reaching the summit – no chance! After saying several times to each other that this surely couldn’t be the right way we finally could go no further as the wheels spun on the ice covered road.

 

 

Ignoring the sat Nav’s attempts to send us up a goat track we went back down to Cetinje but we just could not find a way out of the town. Every road the Sat Nav sent us down was blocked with snow and it was not until a passing couple drew us a map that we were able to escape. We finally arrived in Kotor after 14 hours on the road.

 

Monday 5^th January

From the balcony of our riverside apartment in Kotor we were looking up at the massive rocky cliffs that soar up above the walled town and harbor. Kotor’s castle is built clinging to the cliffs with walls, turrets and chapels rising hundreds of feet up the cliffside, like something from Game of Thrones.

 

 

Kotor itself is a beautiful walled town with a harbor, in the gorgeous winding bay of Kotor, which is known as Boka. The market was in full swing when we walked around the town, which has bars, cafes and shops and is a proper functioning place that seems quite vibrant and inviting. I want to go back and sail around the bay.

 

This day’s drive was 320 kilometres up the coast, into Croatia, stopping off at Dubrovnik and then through Bosnia-Herzegovina and back into Croatia ending up in Split.

The first part of the journey was along the glorious, empty, winding road around the bay of Kotor in the winter sunshine. It was like going back in time and driving along the Cote d’Azur in the 1950’s Fab!

Not far up the road the joy of the day was rather spoiled when we come upon the traffic jam at the Croatian Border. These are both EU countries but this is a Police check and it takes one and a half frustrating hours to reach the front of the queue and to be waved through after a brief question.

Note to the Croatians, I would rather spend my time and money in one of your great cities than in a crummy traffic jam at the border, get it sorted out!

Our next stop was the old city of Dubrovnik, which was spectacularly empty, with the exception of a Japanese coach party. The old walled city is fascinating but is really a museum for tourists rather than a functioning city. There are bullet holes and other reminders of the 90’s Balkan conflict, which might explain the delays at the Montenegro border.

 

 

We carried on up the coast road to Bosnia-Herzegovina, which has a 20km strip of coastline, which we passed through without incident.

Arriving at the Croatian border there was another queue of traffic. No one seemed to be using the right hand lane with the green light so Charles zoomed straight up to the window by the barrier, only to be told off for running the police checkpoint! Luckily they decided it was too much hassle to send us back to the queue and so they let us go – result.

Later than we should have done thanks to the Police checks we arrived in Split.

 

 

Tuesday 6^th January

Split looked fantastic in the morning sun, with the white stone buildings and green palm trees of the waterfront highlighted by the clear blue skies.

 

We walked along the quayside, which is lined with bars and cafes and was bustling with people enjoying the Croatian National holiday. The old city and waterfront is lively and attractive and another place for the must re-visit list.

 

 

In order to spend some time in Split we decided to take the motorway to Zagreb, our next destination 410 kilometres away. Croatia is a mountainous country and to drive cross-country would have taken too long.

The journey was pretty boring. Charlie could only maintain about 85km per hour on the flat and much less on the uphill sections.

As we headed inland it became colder with more snow lying on the ground and even along the sides of the motorway and by the time we arrived it was around minus 3.

Our apartment for the night was only a ten minute walk from the city centre but when we pulled up outside the rather grim looking block covered in graffiti we were a bit concerned especially at the prospect of leaving Charlie out in the street overnight.

 

However our host Bo reassured us that the area was OK and then opened up the doors to the apartment block to reveal Charlie’s off street parking spot.

Following Bo’s suggestion we walked up to the old city and had a very good meal in a local bar, which brewed it’s own excellent beer.

 

 

The city is quite compact with a great atmosphere and is fantastic value for money.

 

 

The following morning we did a speed tour of the city, loved the trams and the old town and the world’s biggest (and best) hot dog. In fact I think Zagreb is my new favourite city, it would be a perfect place to spend Christmas.

 

Wednesday 7^th January

We spent the morning in Zagreb and then headed off for our shortest drive of the trip, a mere 140 kilometres to Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia.

The weather was wintry, with snow lying all around and it was after dark when we reached the city.

 

The Historic centre of Ljubljana straddles the river Ljubljanica and is overlooked by the hilltop castle Ljublianski Grad. The old city centre is very attractive and was festooned with the most fantastic Christmas lights I have ever seen.

 

The lights were strung all along the streets and the riverside and the theme of the Christmas lights was Astrophysics! There were stars, spiral galaxies and meteor showers. Physics equations and graphs of string theory were all represented in the light displays hanging across the streets and squares and reflected in the river. It was coordinated, stylish and clever and definitely rocket science!

 

 

After a brisk walk around the city centre we stopped at a riverside bar for a drink. It was very cold and sitting outside might seem like a daft idea but the seats were covered in sheepskin and we sat under an electric heater with blankets over our knees, very cosy!

 

Thursday 8^th January

We made an early start on the 250 kilometre drive from Ljubljana to Venice. It was cold and frosty in the morning, but as we drove into Italy the weather started to warm up and after 2000 kilometres of hills and mountains Charlie was enjoying the flat roads.

We crossed the bridge into Venice and tucked Charlie away on the seventh Piano of the multi-storey car park and lugged our bags to our apartment near the Campo del Ghetto, the original Jewish Ghetto area of the city.

 

 

Venice is fabulous of course and, as every good tourist should, we caught the No.1 Vaporetto along the Grand Canal. It seemed expensive at 7 euros, but in fact it is quite a long and very slow cruise down Venice’s premier waterway and compared to everything else it is actually quite good value.

 

 

I had promised Charles the most expensive cup of coffee in the country and we duly headed for St Mark’s square and parked ourselves outside the Café Quadri in the watery sunlight. Unfortunately there was no orchestra playing, but then we were almost the only customers. A coffee a chocolate and two sandwiches for 48 Euros!

 

 

Feeling faint from the drain on my wallet we left St Marks and spent a few more hours wandering the streets of Venice, seeing as much of the city as we could in between essential beer stops. Just around the corner from the stunning Palazzo Cavalli Franchetti was a most unusual art gallery that caught our attention, have a look at the photos.

 

We rounded the day off with a Pizza in a restaurant on the Grand Canal.

 

Friday 9^th January

Today’s journey was around 400 kilometres to the ancient port of Genoa via Mantua and Cremona.

The day started off in bright sunshine but we very soon ran into thick fog. For the most part we saw nothing of the landscape, although I am told we didn’t miss much, it being rather industrialised and dreary. However the odd interesting town like Montagnana loomed out of the mist.

 

 

By the time we arrived at Mantua the fog had cleared. This beautiful, unspoiled medieval town is known to the Italians as La Bella Addormentata (Sleeping beauty). It is almost entirely surrounded by lakes and is a UNESCO world heritage site.

 

 

We chugged into town and having had a quick look around decided to take some photos of Charlie in the Piazza Sordello at the heart of the old city, where there were a couple of cafes. There we met Mad Massimo, the motor mouth of Mantua. He was outside drumming up customers for the café, in his peaked hat. He never stopped talking and kept us entertained with his mad conspiracy theories and other fanciful stories whilst we enjoyed a sandwich and coffee.

 

 

Our next stop an hour or so down the road was the city of Cremona. The central area of the city with its cobbled streets and ancient buildings is delightful. It boasts the third highest brick bell tower in Europe and a Romanesque cathedral with a 13^th Century façade, which you can sit and contemplate from the handy café in Piazza Stradivari. This city is in fact renowned for violin manufacturers, the most famous of which is good old Stradivari himself. There are still violin makers working in the city and you can catch a glimpse of their craft in some of shops around the Piazza.

 

 

From here we headed off toward Genoa. Having spent most of the day enjoying flat roads we had to climb over the coastal mountains as night fell and with Charlie’s brakes smoking slightly we rolled down the steep winding road into Genoa.

 

Our overnight stop was a chic apartment in a pretty hilltop square overlooking more or less the whole of Genoa, including Via Garibaldi, part of the UNESCO World heritage site. We set off for an evening stroll along the street of extraordinary palaces and down to the Porto Antico.

 

 

Genoa is an attractive city sandwiched between the sea and the mountains. There are some steep streets and steps and we liked it, although it is slightly run down with a few dubious looking characters lurking in some of the alleyways and a fair amount of graffiti on some the world heritage buildings.

Stop spraying graffiti on historic buildings you philistines and get the place cleaned up, it’s a world heritage site and you need to make more effort!

 

 

The Porto Antico isn’t. I’ve got shirts older than most of the stuff there. It is a renovated and pedestrianised harbor, which has been done quite nicely but it was rather quiet for a Friday night, I guess it is essentially a tourist area and the locals go elsewhere to eat and drink.

 

Saturday 10^th January

The next morning we drove through Genoa and took the motorway towards France and our lunchtime stop in Monte Carlo. The weather was warm and sunny, what a change from a few days ago.

The motorway from Genoa is one of the more interesting ones, winding as it does along the coast with tunnels through the rocks at frequent intervals and views down to the sea in between. We got off the motorway at Ventimiglia and motored through the stylish town of Menton and along the winding roads to Monaco.

With the roof down Charlie set a new record around the Monte Carlo Grand Prix circuit, the slowest ever lap by a car. You can watch it on the video at the end of this blog!

 

 

However we did get more looks than the common or garden Ferraris, which were pretty much everywhere, wedged between the Bentleys and Rolls Royce. In fact we had seen our first 2CV on the road earlier in the day and kept a count. By the end of our trip we had seen 8 2CVs and 15 Ferraris. So exclusive car, exclusive town, we fitted right in.

 

 

After a bite to eat and a drink in a café overlooking the harbor full of extravagant Yachts we took a walk around (faster lap time than Charlie) and then set off along the Cote d’Azur towards Cannes where we planned to watch the sun set over the sea.

 

 

The drive was really pleasant until we got near Antibes, where despite being mid winter, the road was snarled up with traffic. We eventually crept into Cannes just in time and after a walk along the beach settled into our seats in an overpriced pavement café to watch the sun set. Apart from the annoying Russian drunk and the lousy service it was perfect.

 

 

From Cannes we had an uneventful trip to Aix en Provence to complete the 370 kilometre journey.

 

Sunday 11^th January

We left our overnight halt in Aix en Provence early for the 280 kilometre trip via Nimes, which is a rather beautiful little city, to our main objective for the day, which was the Millau Viaduct.

 

 

I had always wanted to drive over this 10 year old bridge, which for those of you who are not familiar with it is one of the biggest in the world. Designed by Norman Foster it is nearly 2.5 km long and 343 metres high – that’s more than 1,100 feet high!

 

 

I had forgotten how much fun driving in France could be if you avoid the motorways and main roads. Through Provence and along the virtually empty winding roads of the Languedoc countryside slow was definitely the way to go.

 

 

We had to get back onto the motorway to cross the Millau Viaduct. It’s BIG! It’s a long way down to the valley below from which the bridge looks even more impressive.

 

Having driven across and paid our toll we headed down to the valley to take some photos, where we came upon John from Performance Bike magazine doing the same thing. It’s a kind of tourist industry all of it’s own.

 

 

From Millau we drove north toward the Auvergne and our overnight stop in a farmhouse, 800 metres up in the Lozere mountains.

 

 

On the way there we were intrigued by a sign for “Pointe Sublime” and decided to follow it. A few kilometers later and wow! It really was a “Pointe Sublime” perched a thousand feet above the Gorges of the Tarn, which cut through the landscape like a small scale Grand canyon is a viewing area from which we watched the sun go down.

 

Monday 12^th January.

It was a very frosty morning and it took some time to warm up an icy Charlie before we could bid goodbye to our charming host and set off for today’s journey of just under 500 kilometres.

 

It was miles before the white covering finally melted from Charlie’s bonnet, by which time we were well on our way to the Volcanoes of the Auvergne.

 

 

Again we were chugging through lovely countryside along virtually empty roads and through the mountainous volcanic region to the highest point on the trip at 1,145 metres.

 

 

From there we continued north into the Massif Central and past the spectacular wrought iron Garabit railway viaduct designed in the 1880’s by Monsieur Eiffel of the tower fame.

 

Just before sunset we arrived at our friend Jackie’s house a little way north of Limoges to be welcomed with a gin and tonic, perfect.

 

Tuesday 13^th January

 

From Jackie’s it was a fairly straightforward run home of 670 kilometres, a journey that I had done many times, although usually much faster.

 

 

Charlie doesn’t really like motorways and so we kept to the country roads. It was going to be a long day’s drive with the wind and rain increasing. Luckily the wind was mostly behind us, you modern car drivers have no idea what a difference a strong headwind can make to a 2CV.

 

 

Apart from a shock absorber coming loose, which we were quickly able to rectify, it was a fairly uneventful drive, we even made it to the Eurotunnel early and although we got a few slightly puzzled looks made it through customs without incident.

Charlie is now recovering from his pan European New Year sprint in his temporary garage home. After 4,500 kilometres through 10 countries in 10 days he deserves it.

Our whistle-stop tour looks even more impressive at high speed. HIgh speed video, that is.. not high speed Charlie! If you are built more for comfort than speed – you can enjoy the sedate pace of the photo slideshow after the movie!

 

 

Kevin Holden