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A Greek oddity by bike

From the Mail on Sunday
Although Greece is one of our most popular holiday destinations, it seems barely anyone - let alone on a bicycle at the age of 67 - has been to Thrace. Indeed, where is it? And why do so few people venture there? I wondered.
The only thing to do was to take my bike and investigate this north-eastern region of Greece, bordered by Bulgaria and Turkey. Flying to Thessaloniki, I rode to the railway station, where I bought a first-class ticket to travel overnight to Pithion, on the Turkish border. They seized my bicycle and promised to put it on the train.
The train jiggles along. People get on and off, talking loudly regardless of those trying to sleep. Then you suddenly wake, and you're nearly there. Shortly before Pithion a nice old couple sitting near me began pointing with some excitement at a bridge. The land on the other side was Turkey and they made it seem as if we were looking across the Iron Curtain.
By the time I reached the platform someone had taken my bike off the train - and I set off on the 300-mile journey back to Thessaloniki, in easy stages over a fortnight.
I then became aware of one of three excellent reasons for going to Thrace - the cycling is superb. The gently rolling, empty road followed the Evros river. To the left was Turkey, to the right the Rhodope mountain range. Beside the road were cornfields, sunflowers, melons and vines.
At Dhidhimotikon I found Byzantine remains and a church in which a priest was intoning before a congregation of two women. Then a man with very shiny shoes came in, lit a candle and went behind the screen to have a chat with the priest. Intriguingly, I saw the man outside later with a handful of lottery tickets.
Some 19 miles on I came to Soufli, where I toured wetlands through plantations of every kind of vegetable to the banks of the river Evros. The river is so beautiful that I photographed it, although photography is forbidden and should only be done by Turkish spies.
I also met a heron, which brings me to the second reason for visiting Thrace. I am not a twitcher, but Thrace is a twitcher's paradise. I discovered too late that at nearby Dadia there is a nature reserve with 26 of the 39 known species of birds of prey. Birdwatching comes further into its own at Porto Lagos, where Lake Vistonis is said to shelter 200,000 birds.

Read more in our destination guide to Greece.