Home » Greece » Training Camp in the Greek spring(2002)

As the winner of an article-writing competition in the Hungarian Bringa magazine, I could spend 11 days together with the Hungarian MTB squad in a training camp 80 kms from Athens, between 12 and 26 march 2002. We were in the friendly Hotel Bakos, in Loutraki, situated 3kms from the Korinthos channel and the Peloponnesus peninsula and at the foot of a 1300m high mountain. Although on ascents I prefer cycling looking around, taking pictures and making videofilms than cycling in a hurried style. So I was the odd one out from 24-26 head team. My goal was not to spend a good 11 days training, but to make nice cycle tours, enjoy the nature of Greece and to discover the north-east Peloponnesos.

Training Camp in the Greek spring(2002)

Ggg
2004-09-13 12:48:50

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The journey by bus took 28-31 hours. At the Serbian / Bulgarian border we had to wait for one – one and a half hours. In the south part of Yugoslavia and in Bulgaria there was not too much highway, and there were many pot-holes in the road, we could only travel slowly and we couldn’t sleep too much. The bicycles were brought by a small-bus .
In Loutraki we were accomodated in rooms of 2-3 beds in the Hotel Bakos, with B category. From the hotel we cauld walk to the beach on to the main-street or other shopping opportunities were in 2 minutes reach. In the main part of Greece, drinking from the tap is not recommended because of problems or the age of the water system, but Loutraki is famous for it’s mineral water, so we could fill our flasks full of water from the tap. Through out our tours we could buy mineral water at booths at every busy road. The 2 weeks of our holiday was characterised by the friendly 16-22 degrees temperature and – without one day exception – dry weather. This meant in a climate which is rich in vapour, that mainly at our morning start in 10 degrees centigrade (at ˝ 9 – 9 am.) we could put on short cycling trousers and on our upper part we should put on maximum 2 jerseys, one with short sleeves and the other with long sleeves. Through the day on calm, sunny ascents we bathed in our sweat. Other speciality of the weather was the lack of calm weather; it was nearly almost windy. On two days we had to face strong, stormy winds. It’s true that along the beach the wind is stronger, but on a tour of mine it occurred that on a 1500m high pass the wind almost blew me away. It was hard to make a short film, because the wind pushed so strong my arm and hand. I was happy with my wind stopper jersey.

The quality of the roads is almost as in Hungary (I think not about the roads in Budapest), so not so bad, but at crossing the rails I usually got from my bike and went through the crossing ...