How quickly things can change ? How often does it happen that you have a plan and something happens that changes everything ? It must have happened to us times many over the years . Coming home from Venice - the volcano in Iceland erupts and an easy couple of hours flight home turns into an epic train, car and ferry journey home . The Greek sailors striking meaning no way out of Greece and the wait until the strike was over . A gite holiday planned with a flight into Bergamo . Cancelled due to the seat problems on the airplane . Covid getting in the way of Scandanavia . So many plans . So many times we up against the immovable object . Sometimes we have found ways round it but sometimes we have to just give in and move on. The last few days have been days of trying , days of disappointment and days when things just would not work . In the end we had to give in and replan . Perhaps that is what holidays are all about . Giving in, resigning to the fact that the plan has to be changed and
move on .We could have carried on trying to find a solution . Ring other but we were sure the answer would still be the same or go for a cheap and who promised everything until something happened .
Instead we concentrated on filling up Gabby with all the things we had taken out in order to fit the fan in. It was good to be putting the bedding back in, the medicines we needed for the trip and the books that I would read . We sourced a local weighbridge just to check out Gabbys weight on her axles and arranged to take her in a couple of days time . She needs new tyres on the front . They are five years old and still in pretty much good order with enough tread for a few more journeys . However Greece will eat up nearly 5000 miles and there is nowhere near enough tread to be safe . She needs a service and an MOT but that can wait until we return home . We checked passports for the umpteenth time . Feeling neurotic about the dates I must have taken the passports
out a few times to check the issue date was still in order , put them back only to get them out again . Brexit has caused us many more problems than we expected . Gabby needs filling with fuel and that will need to be done shortly even though the price of diesel is artificially high . Dont grieve . Anything you round in another form. I kept telling myself that as read the thought for the day from Rumi. There was no point in grieving . We could not cancel the ferry to Greece , we had no other plan and we were just going on with it but in another form .
The next few days we set to everything to suit the new plan . Should we go to the Dorking away match and try to park somewhere near to Leatherhead ? It would be different and nearer the tunnel . But then we would need a train in, there might only be 300 tickets for away fans and it was standing not sitting . Could we stand for 2 and a half hours ? The crossing day had changed too. Instead
of leaving the UK in the late afternoon on the Monday we were now booked for early morning on the Sunday . We had changed this some weeks ago in order to give us enough time to get down to Ancona . So change of plan for the first night stop. Out had gone Arras and in Les Islettes an aire we had used a number of times over the years . Whether Sarable and Altdorf would change remained to be seen . Fontanellato was a must see and had to fit in with the castle opening . Otherwise we would be seeing nothing on the way to Ancona other than the road and our overnight stops .
A map was copied from one of our books and a route drawn around Greece . We chose the places en route that we missed last trip and added a few new places in . These had been the lesser known sites . Last time we concentrated on Athens and the ancient Greek theatres and temples , the main monasteries and anything else we thought we needed to visit. This time we could be more selective and choose quieter
sites and take in what we had put down as our should see but needed more time .
