It’s been over a year since I last saddled my backpack and commenced a new voyage, two years discounting a whistle-stop fortnight in Greece, and so there’s been a copious amount of time to mull over my long-term travel plans (as well as my receding hairline and rapidly sprouting ear hair).
Thessaloniki, as well as scoring very highly in Scrabble, also scores very highly in my ranking of Greek cities – coming top (out of two). Whilst Athens is geared entirely towards wealth, tourism, and sophistication, Thessaloniki is more focussed on graffiti, pollution, and drifters selling meat from unmarked carrier bags. It has an edginess that could easily be mistaken for Barcelona’s Eixample district, Haut-Marais in Paris, or the industrial estate at Slough. I quite liked it.
Cloud-piercing mountains, bottomless gorges, and ancient monasteries are not usually three things that spring to mind when thinking of Greek sightseeing. However, I was reliably informed that the northern reaches of this once great land are awash with exactly these kinds of sights; sights that the average inebriated Mediterranean island-hopper would struggle to believe belonged to the same country as Faliraki’s Bar Street.
You re-join me in an overcast Athens and having been far too petrified to drive my enormous hire-car through the frenzied Greek capital, I was extremely grateful that I could finally abandon its narrow streets for the safety of wide, majestic highways for the first time.
Where is every seventeen-year-old Brits favourite destination for snorting copious amounts of cocaine from sun loungers? For balcony hopping in half-built concrete hotels until dawn? For losing their virginity after a foam party against a palm tree to a pink-eyed shot seller from Chelmsford? The answer: Greece.
Snorting cocaine and sipping on caipirinhas from Pablo Escobar's Colombian rooftop was what I imagined I’d be doing now. Instead, I find myself reverse-snorting phlegm and sipping on Horlicks from Dai Lampost's Kidwellian patio. No, I don't have any particular virus. My body is just bracing itself for a prolonged, frigid winter, trapped inside the reeking bowels of a small Welsh town.
January 23rd, 2015. A plane touches down at Honolulu International Airport bearing an anxious - and extremely inebriated - Welshman with a large flag and a foolhardy plan. That Welshman was Max Boyce (he planned to climb Mauna Kea bollock-naked whilst playing ‘I’m Going Home to Swansea Town’). Also on that plane was another Welshman, with a slightly more reasonable plan of visiting every country in the world. This, folks, is the naissance of Hit The Road Jack.
A few weeks ago, I came across the blog of a compatriot called Amy, who runs Wandering Everywhere. She was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease in 2014, an incurable and lifelong illness that causes the inflammation of the digestive system. This manifests itself in a many number of symptoms which could have discouraged her from travelling altogether. Instead, she's doing the exact opposite.
Most Satisfied Street Dogs? Most Edible Jollof Rice? Most Corrupt Officials? These are the Olympic medals that no one asked for, but I will hand them out anyway. Welcome to the first, and only, West African Olympics! Having completed a three-month backpack through this magnificent and unique region, I deem myself eligible to conduct the most meaningless sporting event since the Mauritanian Camel Wrestling Championships of 2015 (it’s a real sport).
Earlier this week, I was delayed in Dakar, after my plane from the mainland decided to take the week off. Now, in the final four days of my voyage, I must endure the most stomach-churning of ferry crossings one could possibly imagine; to some of West Africa’s remotest, and yet most active, isles.
