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Sunday, 19th September 2010
Hello everyone,
We have now chalked up the first 6 weeks of our trip, so about halfway through.
We left England on 8th August and had a lot of rain for the first 2 weeks. We stayed in Calais that night then moved roughly east and spent the night about 5 miles from Arras, close to a WW1 battlefield. Took a look round Arras next day on the way through then parked by a canal, where we stayed, and went for a bike ride (yes, that’s right!). The next 2 nights we stayed by a canal again, this time in the big, old town of Charlesville-Mezieres. The sun managed to shine for us so we became fully fledged tourists and had coffee, then lunch, at a restaurant on the town square.
The change in weather didn’t last; we moved on to Sedan and bought tickets for a medieval tournament so of course we got a downpour halfway through and had to make a run for the ‘van. If we hadn’t put so much faith in the sunshine we would have taken our macs in with us. We (that is, John) drove on and parked overnight in the carpark below an old citadel at Montmerdy. It turned into a glorious evening and we were able to spend it sitting outside for the first time this trip.
We went to Luxembourg next day, into rain again, to complete our first week. We did a tour by the tourist bus method, our preferred way to footslog, when possible. We moved into Germany next day and spent the night at Trier, a town on the Moselle, which dates back to the Romans, at least, and it has an impressive town gate and amphitheatre to prove it. We had planned to spend a week or more at different sites along this river, but the weather was depressing and expected to stay that way for several days so we started to head south slowly. We stayed a couple of nights at Mettlach,a town on the R. Saar, which turned out to be the home of Villeroy&Boch, who seem to own the whole town, including the outlet centre.
On the Wednesday we moved on to Strasbourg and it turned out that that was where the holiday weather was staying too, so we stayed 4 nights on the outskirts and did quite a bit of biking along the Rhine as we were we parked on its bank, next to a big park. Biked into Strasbourg and had quiche Lorraine for lunch to be authentic. We spent time too in Kehl, a lovely little German town on the opposite bank of the river, shame about the food though, dinner that night was rough!
Moved again and the Monday found us in Mulhouse, looking round a car museum. They have the Bughatti there which Jeremy Clarkson drove for Top Gear, so John spent a happy afternoon looking at the boys’ toys. Back to heavy rain next morning; we drove into Switzerland through Basel and on down to Vitznau, where the sun was shining and we found a campsite overlooking Lake Lucerne with stunning views, but they needed to be because we were charged a king’s ransom to stay there for 2 nights. We stayed a further 3 nights, one on Zuger See and then 2 on Walensee. From there we made the short hop over the border and spent Sun night in Vaduz, Lichtenstein, which was very much smaller than we had expected – I think the hub of the banking world must be in the cellars of the castle, we only saw a couple of banks!
We had intended to drive into Austria from there, but rain got in the way again. The forecast for that side of the Alps was grim for several days so we changed plan and drove back through Switzerland and the San Bernadino tunnel to Italy, instead of spending time in Austria, where would have headed south at Innsbruck to Italy.
We spent a night at the foot of Lake Lecco and another at Sirmione at the foot of Garda. Both places were quite rough! We headed for Verona for a couple of nights, getting complete new rear brakes at the Merc garage en route. We couldn’t believe our luck when the bill was only €239! (A problem with windscreen washers a couple of days later cost €325). I wasn’t happy when I discovered that the opera which is staged in the Roman amphitheatre each summer had finished 2 days before we arrived. I shall be back so, girls, anyone interested in the opera run a bit further afield than the Albert Hall next year?!
Spent 2 days after that in Soave, so naturally had to check out the quality of the local industry. It’s a lovely little unspoilt village. We then spent a couple of days in Venice, but were frankly very underwhelmed; for us it didn’t live up to all the hype and I certainly wouldn’t pay €8.40 for an espresso, just for the sake of drinking it in St .Mark’s square!
By last weekend we had reached the Adriactic resorts, but found that the site had already closed for winter, so we headed inland a bit and finished up on the worst road we have ever encountered anywhere, it seemed as if there’d been an earthquake, it was so bad that John thought we’d finish up with busted springs on the van. The towns in that area were filthy and strewn with litter, they looked more like the local tip.
We drove down to Villa San Antonio, the “toe” and took the ferry to Sicily, arriving here 20 minutes later. We have been here since Monday afternoon and now plan to stay until the end of the month. We’ve had hot sun since we arrived, although it’s about to blot its copy book in a minute. We have been on a particularly good site for the last 3 nights, but will move tomorrow because we want to work our way around the island and finish up in Catania to take the ferry to Napoli.
Ok folks, that’s bored you for long enough with our travels, we plan to be back in England sometime towards the end of October.
Wednesday 13th October 2010
Hello again, final round up!
We travelled right round the Sicilian coast, staying 18 days in the end, beautiful weather and a lovely island. We went up Etna, by cable car, the day before we left. We didn’t take the Napoli ferry in the end; although we’d had a really bad drive down on the autostrada, John said he would risk driving back up on coast road, which turned out well, a lovely scenic drive and the road was in much better repair than the autostrada.
We stayed overnight on a little campsite at Punta di Cirella, we were camped a few yards from a sandy beach and the warm Med; I took a dip and it was 30th September, so not too bad!
From there we headed for Pompeii. John decided to drive along (up?) the Amalfi coast, but I don’t think he’ll do that again! Pompeii was incredible, put it your list of places to visit if you haven’t already been.
Next, 3 days footslog on Rome’s marble, well worth it but a killer on the feet. We left the Cistine Chapel until the last day, but the queues were as bad in the week as at the weekend so, unfortunately, that went unvisited because we not prepared to stand and wait for over 3 hours for tickets.
On the way up to Siena we stayed overnight on the outskirts of Montepulciano, an old Tuscan hilltop town. Siena was worth the visit but, after walking around Montepulciano that morning, we could have done without all the steps, so soon after the marble. We spent that night a few miles further on outside the walls of Monteriggioni, a pretty little hilltop village that a couple of English lads told us about. We met them at the camperstop in Soave and then they were on the same site as us in Rome.
We went to Florence from there and beautiful it may be, but our visit was too soon after Rome and we didn’t think it compared, added to which we didn’t get to the Michaelangelo museum because of the length of the queue again.
We drove west next day to Lucca, a lovely old town with the walls and all of the gates still intact. This site was another tip from the English lads, a good one because I had 24hrs wifi access and also managed to use the washing machines and driers to do 2 weeks’ laundry – life’s a drag!
Saturday 16th October – This is the final chapter!
We left Lucca last Saturday, the 9th, drove around the coast to Genoa and then headed north. A long day on the road for us, 6 hours including stops. We stayed overnight just west of Turin then drove west next morning and took the Frejus tunnel through to Modane in France. €46.40 for 13 kms so I’m now wondering how much the Swiss will charge for their 57kms one when they finally get it open! It was foggy when we entered the tunnel and bright sunshine the other side; it was also lunchtime so we went straight to a restaurant and had our best meal in 6 weeks. We do like Italian food, but still prefer French.
It’s Northwest all the way to Calais from now on and, weatherwise, downhill all the way.
This week we’ve stopped off in Nuits St George and sampled the local tipple but, plebs we may be, but we’ve never been wild about Bourgogne and still prefer the one that most of you have drunk with us which we found in Sadie’s village Ecomarche. It’s getting expensive mind you, we’ve stocked up today for home and had to pay €2.40 a bottle!
We are now at Doullens, only 60mls from Calais, so I have just changed our ferry crossing; we will be back on Mon morning, 18th, instead of Thursday. Short cool days, interspersed with showers are not that appealing after Italy! We have clocked up over 4500 miles so by the time we get home we will be not far short of 5000 in our 10 weeks away.
See most of you soon, notable exceptions being Britt and Roger, who are flying off to Gran Canaria on Mon to escape our winter.
The end of this adventure!