KTM 990 Adventure S, Europe trip (Part 1)

Our trip started off on a stormy day from Athens, Greece. 

Headed off towards the port of Patras (a distance of 250km). All though the initial Attiki odos and national road to the ancient town of Corinth is great (with toll costs being around 3.5 euros), the road from there to Patras is probably the worst you will find in Greece, due to unfinished road-work (for the last few years). A shame really considering that this is the road that connects us to Europe. Mostly 1 lane in each direction with no protection from the oncoming traffic, it’s quite dramatic in the rain, especially at night and with a motorbike. The tarmac needs attention as previous lane-lines have been blacked out with a very slippery when wet paint... However the view both towards the sea on your right and the tall mountains on your left make up for it, especially in daylight. And when you approach Patra, you get a stunning view of the new Rio-Antirio bridge.

As we left our house late in the day, we just made the ferry to Venice for about 5 minutes. That was certainly due to our 999cc companion, as it took us and our 100kg load easily through the extreme weather conditions to our destination. The wind and rain protection the bike gives is great, and in combination with our new KTM PowerWear rain suits, we hardly felt any moisture on our skin for the whole trip. Fully loaded I managed to get 220km out of 16litres of regular unleaded fuel (at the time 1.85Euros/Litre, in Athens).

The ferry trip (Patra-Igoumenitsa-Venice) is a total of around 34 hours.

It sounds quite a lot but if you have a cabin then the trip can actually be regenerative.     

Arriving at Venice, I set the GPS with our next destination, Klagenfurt, Austria just 300km north-east. Our initial target was to complete the trip in small increments and as bad weather greeted us off the ferry in Italy, it seemed we would spend the night in this pretty Austrian lakeside town. However when we entered the first long tunnel in Austria we came out the other side, only with the need to pull over and unpack our sun-glasses.

This being the case we took advantage of it and continued another 350km to arrive in Vienna later on in the evening. 

But as we could only find a room with near 200Euros for the night, we decided to stay just north of the city where the accommodation was less expensive and gave us a traditional feeling.