Bad things happen in threes: an unfortunate incident

They say bad things happen in threes. I think we just had number three. In June there was the van accident; in July there was the mountain bike theft; and yesterday we had another unfortunate mishap. 

It was Day 1 of cycling in Crete and we were 40km or so east of the capital Heraklion when I suddenly noticed one of Frank's two rear panniers was missing off his bike. We both believed it could only have fallen off on the last short section of downhill and slightly bumpy road. So he rode back up that hill with no luck. He then asked a local guy to drive him further back up the road to search. Again no luck.

 We were baffled. The last 2km was the only section that I wasn't right behind Frank. Coming down the bumpy hill was the only place he got out of my sight. So how did I not see the pannier on the road? Was I that focused on the road and traffic? These are decent panniers from MEC that seemed to have a good locking mechanism. How could it have fallen off? Maybe it just wasn't properly secured when we left in the morning? We know it wasn't stolen off the bike as it never left our sight.

Anyway, we headed back to the nearest police station to see if it might have been picked up and handed in. Of course it hadn't. But we filled out the necessary report and resigned ourselves to the loss. The good thing about this was that this pannier contained all Frank's clothes, his toiletry bag and his new hiking boots. Not that that in itself is good…..it's a lot of money’s-worth and damned inconvenient. But it would have been so much worse had it contained his passport, money, camping and cooking gear and bike tools, which would have been far harder to replace. So for that we're very thankful. We'll get over it and manage to carry on.

Outside the Police Station in the village of Herminosis


In that seaside village, we managed to buy Frank a new shirt, some swim shorts and underwear and a toothbrush, so we're good to go!

Happily, 5km further on we found a gorgeous campground by the sea, with a fine swimming pool overlooking the waves. And there was hardly anyone there. The clientele were all older couples like us, some in tents and others in camping vans. Our neighbours in the adjacent spot were a friendly couple from Holland named Bart and Jeanette. It cost us €14 for the night, good value considering the pool, hot showers and full kitchen facilities, and all very clean.

Campground view from the tent in the fishing village of Sissi


Comments

  1. Iveta bxSeptember 21, 2018 at 10:43 AM

    That campground looks lovely - at least you found a nice place to recuperate from your recent loss 🙂.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Iveta bxSeptember 21, 2018 at 10:44 AM

    This comment has been removed by the author.

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