8 April 2025 – Classy Camping

Miles driven today = 93

Total Miles to date = 3,119

It’s been another less than impressive day on the weather front.  Drizzly for the most part with temperatures barely managing to break double figures.  I’m getting a little bored of ringing my Mum only to be told how fabulous the weather is at home right now.  Our tans are fading fast and we are getting more and more of our warmer clothes back down from the overhead storage, where we naively assumed they would be staying until we got back to the UK.

We got ourselves back on the motorway and continued eastward towards Thessaloniki.  But we had no great desire to see anything of Greece’s second city, making slow progress around its inner ring road due to the extensive long term roadworks which are currently underway. 

Once clear of the city we headed South into the Halkidiki Peninsula, which is where we are planning on spending our last few days in Greece before we head North into Bulgaria.  Much like a mini Peloponnese, Halkidiki has three downwards pointing fingers.  The provisional plan was to perhaps explore the first of these a little bit today, but having made the obligatory stop at Lidl the weather wasn’t looking much like improving so we headed directly for Oelia Camping near Nea Moudania to hunker down.

This place wasn’t initially on our radar as they don’t usually accept visitors until May, but I noticed recent reviews on Park4Night and it seems that, due to popular request, they have opened their gates a little earlier this year.  They have direct access to a nice sandy beach.

It’s usually a €23 a night ACSI site but all their pitches are on grass so to save them getting churned up in the wet conditions they are allowing vans to park up on the access lanes for just €15 a night including hook up.

All the other facilities are available and the sanitation blocks seem brand new and are probably the best we have experienced on this trip with piping hot showers.  They even play you soothing classical music while you are scrubbing your pots and pans after dinner.

Best of all they have a huge toploader washing machine and the first working tumble dryer we’ve managed to track down for ages, so we’ve spent the afternoon piling every conceivable piece of washing through them and now, with the exception of a fitted sheet which unfortunately got tangled up in the duvet cover, we’re in a position where everything is clean and dry and we probably only need to squeeze one more laundry day into the schedule before we get home.

So that leaves us free to go exploring tomorrow, although we may well come back here for a second night when we are done.  The forecast does at least seem a little brighter.  Let’s hope they’ve got it right this time!

9 April 2025 - Kassandhra