Thessaloniki by night looked pretty cool, but that was probably just because we were pleased to be off the 15 hour train ride through southern Serbia, Macedonia and into Greece. The mountain scenery was indeed mesmerising, but the carriage was small and the border crossings slow.

 

After a night in a nasty ‘hostel’ we jumped on the first ferry to the islands. The night in the reclining chair on the top deck of the boat wasn’t much better but some rough Greek wine and day break over the flat calm Aegean made it all a little better.

 

Helen had a distant childhood memory of pictures of wild flowers on the island of Samos so we decided to stay on the boat until then (a tough decision, Chios - ‘the home of chewing gum’ - had my vote).  

 

A man on the ferry called Stellios told us that there were no campsites on Samos and that free camping was illegal (apparently the southern half of the island was destroyed in a wildfire a few years ago). However, he then proceeded to draw a map of the beaches on which he reckoned we would get away with pitching a tent. Top of his list was a series of coves an hour’s walk away from a village called Potami in the North West of the Island - “very naturalistic”.