The queue at the North Macedonia/Greek border is massive, and for us it means a long wait in the blazing sun. It’s the height of summer, and one of the other nearby crossings is shut, so this is a busy one.

We take a detour to visit a British military cemetery just over the border. British troops fought alongside Greeks here in the First World War, in a fierce battle against Bulgarian forces. The allies suffered enormous casualties, and the area nearby was nicknamed “The Valley of Death.”

Back on our way again, it’s hot, but it’s a good road and there are stretches of shade. Everyone from the border seems to have gone a different way – probably heading for Thessaloniki – so it’s very quiet.

The dry Greek landscape is beautiful, and it really signals the final phase of Europe, but the dry land has us worried about wildfires. Swathes of Europe is in flames, including parts of Greece. Thrace had wildfire deaths last month, so we check updates regularly. We’ve felt how fierce the wind has been in the region, and how it can completely change direction from what’s predicted.

Richard upsets a man at a petrol station by replying that we’ve come from “Macedonia” when asked. I wince as the man’s face clouds over and he goes off on a rant. It’s mostly in Greek, but certain words are clear. He points back the way we came and I catch the word “Slav.” He emphatically points down at the ground and says “here Makedonia.” We haven’t left nationalism behind us. 

There is still virtually no traffic at all, which is wonderful, and we’re about to turn off onto an even smaller road. We stop at another petrol station, because there’s not many other places to get cold drinks. As we approach, a man wipes down a plastic table and chairs and puts them in the middle of the forecourt, because that’s where the shade is, and motions for us to sit down and have our drinks. 

The start of the next morning is through a wildlife reserve and beside a lake. There are flocks of storks and pelicans, herds of wild horses, and another cyclist: A visiting German, who is doing a morning ride around the lake, and stops to chat before zooming off on his sleek road bike.

Not long after, and Richard is flagging me down and motioning for me to be careful, which usually means there’s an animal for me to see. This time a tortoise is in the road, frozen mid stride in fear. He must be terrified, but there’s nothing for it but to pick him up and put him on the other side of the road. Richard won’t touch things like this, certainly not reptiles. We’ve seen lots of crushed tortoises on the roads, and for some reason it’s more distressing than the other roadkill.

There are even more ghost towns in this part of our route, and it’s hard to find places to stop. One town even has an enormous completely abandoned football stadium. I listen again about how motorways have such an affect on business, with Richard wondering if they get compensation. It really, really bothers him.

At the first small town of the day, the electronic temperature gauge outside a pharmacy reads 44 degrees. Greece, like Slough, is not fit for humans. 

As we continue on, my heart rate is not normal. The heat is making us both feel seriously awful, and I’m also a bit concerned that this level of exertion in this heat could be doing long term damage. It certainly feels that way.

In the afternoon it clouds over. Even though the temperature is high, the sun being behind clouds makes it a bit better. But there’s a massive headwind, because of course there is. We book into a hotel for two nights, because we just need to be out of the sun for a day to recover.

It’s even hotter when we set off again. We are desperate to find cold drinks and somewhere to stop. We pull up at what looks like a shop, but it’s a pharmacy. The pharmacist comes out and bustles us into the shade, offering us water and ice. I say it’s hot, quite stupidly. He retorts that yes it is, and we should not be cycling in it. 

He’s then joined by a customer, who says it’s his dream to visit England. He talks a lot about the royal family, and tells us next year will be thirty since the death of Princess Diana. He wants to know exactly how far we live from Buckingham Palace. “Go slow, be safe and give my kisses to England” is not a send off I thought I’d hear in Greece. 

Thankfully, a few miles on we come across an abandoned railway station, where there’s more shade and somewhere to sit. Still nowhere to get cold drinks. 

We have an awful climb near the end of the day. It is unbelievably, sickeningly hot. My hat is soaked, my T shirt is soaked, I have sweat dripping off my wrists, there is no shade and the hill just goes on and on. The worst things I’ve ever done just keep stacking up. A motorcyclist gives a wave and thumbs up as he passes. It’s funny how little things can lift your spirits, if just for a short while.

We collapse outside a cafe where we can finally buy cold water, and coffee to revive us. The owner takes a phone call and needs to leave, but he asks if we need the loo and if we have everything we need before he locks up, and insists that we stay at a table in the shade.

We have a roomstay in someone’s front room. The sofa’s uncomfortable, but the air conditioning is glorious. It’s a short but blistering walk to a grill place near the earlier cafe, where I have the largest gyros I’ve ever seen, for 5 euro. 

I’m very excited about the following day. We’re not going to the archaeological site at Pella, because it would mean too much of a diversion. As recompense we are visiting Philippi on our way today.

We’re high up in the hills after all the climbing we’ve done, and in addition to some ancient ruins we get our downhill rewards this morning. The mist down below looks so much like the sea that I doubt my geography. It’s gorgeous in the early morning light, and we can just cruise down in this to start our day. I stop and get the action camera fixed to the handlebars. I haven’t done anything with any of the footage we have, and probably won’t get round to it, but when we’re old we can look back at what we’ve done. 

We go to an alternative entrance to Philippi. I had imagined we could lock the bikes up somewhere and then just pop in to see the amphitheatre, but that’s not really how it works. There’s nowhere for us to leave the bikes, and it’s clear now that the amphitheatre is at least a mile’s walk away, and thoughtlessly they don’t have roofs or air conditioning. My solution is to leave Richard with the bikes, while I walk off down a path I’m not sure I should be on, with the promise I just want to see a bit of the site and then I’ll come back. Things get away from me, and I know he’ll be annoyed, but I keep walking because I think I’ll be able to get a good view round the next corner, and then the next corner. I find that someone has left a gate open to the dig part of the site, so I sneak in there and have a surreptitious look round. Or as surreptitiously as I can, wearing an almost luminous yellow t shirt. When I get back to Richard someone has come along to escort me out, so two people are now annoyed with me.

At the end of the day we have a spectacular descent into Riviera-like city of Kavala, where there is a small and neat archaeological museum, and an ancient aqueduct.

Just as I’m walking into a shop, the alert on my phone goes off and scares the living shit out of me. Alerts have never, ever worked on my phone in the UK, but somehow the Greek government has got through. There is an “extreme” fire about eleven miles away, where we came from today. It’s under control after a couple of hours, and there are no further alerts and no further threat of fire for the rest of the time we’re in Greece. 

The climb out of Kavala in the early morning is lovely, and we stop by the beach out of town to admire the views of the city in the morning sun.

I’ve put a GPS marker for a monastery I’d like to see, but it’s up a long, steep track up a hill and it’s 43 degrees today. If the ark of the covenant was up there, I wouldn’t go. 

We’ve got lots of flat today, which is a relief, so I can see a long way in front of me, and even sometimes Richard in the distance. My heart stops briefly when I see his bike almost laying by the side of the road, and someone rushing over across the road towards it. There’s a wave of relief when I get closer and can see that it was Richard running from the road. He tells me he went to get a tortoise who was in the way of a lorry, overcoming his reptile phobia because it needed help.

We arrive in the city of Xanthi. I’d really like to rest, but Greece is expensive and we can’t camp in this heat, so we have to make tracks. We stop to get a coffee and the owner of the coffee shop is a keen cyclist, so we have a good long chat. He shows us videos of an invention he has made which allows him to cycle on the rails of old railway tracks.

It doesn’t really get cool enough, even in the evening, to comfortably walk round. But Xanthi is a lovely place, full of Ottoman history and cultural sites, so we drag ourselves about as the sun is going down and spend some time seeing the old town.

The following couple of days to the border are into some of the worst headwinds I’ve ever experienced. Even when we’re on a 6% gradient downhill, we can barely get above ten miles-per-hour, and that is a struggle. We must have offended the Greek god of wind, or cycling, and at this point I’d do anything to make amends.

The amount of effort to ride for hours into it is exhausting. At the end of the day, no amount of sleep or protein can help us recover. I feel like I’m a video game character getting depleted all the time, and not getting my health back up before the next attack.

There’s a small road for us to take to the border, while the bulk of the traffic takes a motorway. It’s boiling, and the wind is awful. I get off and push up the last hill. I never do that, but it’s such a relief to not be cycling into the wind, it’s like a little holiday.

On the Greek side, the border is incredibly busy. Then everyone seems to disappear into the duty-free area and not actually go into Turkey, because the other side is empty and we breeze through. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed Greece, despite the ungodly heat and the insane headwind. But if I didn’t know this was Turkey, I would guess. There are lots of beeps and waves and greetings, and even though it’s a really short ride before the day’s end, there’s a feeling of comfort at being back in this country that I love so much.

A playlist for the ride: