He looks through his window, what does he see?

We have driven many kilometres over the last three weeks; of course, in the Blue Bus, ‘it’s not the destination, it’s the glory of the ride.’  Driving has given us an opportunity to consider the differences between the roads in the different countries we have travelled in and it seems to us that Italian hairpin bends are easier to swing around in a long wheel-base van, than French ones; we don’t know if it is physics, maths or engineering, but certainly the Italian’s have learnt a thing or two about building mountain roads and they are generally wonderful routes to follow.  We are also interested to see that despite the apparent European-wide recession, in Italy they continue to have a road building and road improvement programme.  As much as possible we used the main roads, rather than the Auto Strada, and we noticed new by-passes still being built around a number of small towns, keeping the road building industry in work, something not a current activity in England.

We have been taking photographs from the passenger seat of the Blue Bus as we move from campsite to campsite, this creates some odd looking photographs, but some of them are interesting, showing the differences in landscape we have passed through.  We are not only interested in the tourist itinerary, the local industry and agriculture is also absorbing.  Travelling north from Entrevaux to Gap in France we came through an area of intensive fruit growing, further north the farmed landscape changed to a  more pastoral one and we once again saw sheep and cows in the fields and farms selling home-made cheeses.

The scale of the marble quarrying and shipping was fascinating as we drove along the Italian coast around Massa.  Another area that attracted our curiosity was on the road between Orbetello and Volterra in Tuscany, where the geothermal energy is utilised to run power stations; for a few kilometres the smell of sulphur fills the air, pipelines roam up and down the hilly Tuscan landscape and large cooling towers dominate the landscape, until you are once again in the typical Tuscan scenery of vines and cedar trees.

Where were you while we were getting high?

Entracque, in the Italian Maritime Alps, is at around 900m and so still gets a bit chilly in the evenings and mornings and there is still snow on the mountains.  However, during the day it is over 20C and sunny, so we can’t really understand why early June is considered out of season and all the restaurants are closed and the campsites virtually empty.

This lack of other tourists does mean that we have the footpaths mostly to ourselves, although the roads are busy with the Italian cyclists practicing for mountain stages up and down the hairpin bends.

The walking around Entracque is delightful and we have had two good days walking in the mountains, in cool woodland, above picturesque mountain villages, through sunny meadows and under pink coloured cliffs and always surrounded by wild flowers, numerous butterflies and countless insects.   The diversity of the plant and insect life is striking; we have seen varieties of orchids, including fly orchids, saxifrages, geraniums, mints and juniper, to list just a few of the plants; Swallow Tail, Apollo, Orange Tip and plenty of other butterflies we don’t know the name for; alders, hazel, walnut, larch, laburnum, beech, birch and other trees we have failed to notice.  This richness of nature takes our breath away, nourishes our wellbeing and makes us wish that the UK had even half this diversity and abundance.   The only disappointment is the limited number of birds we have seen;  Jays are everywhere, but we can see these in Manchester, we have enjoyed hearing the distinctive sound of Cuckoos every day and near Entracque we watched two Black Kites gliding above us.

Entracque is a pretty village with a range of medieval fountains, a café and a few grocery shops; our favourite deli and bakery is run by the friendliest of women, who talks to us in a mixture of Italian, French and English and tells us the origins of the cheese, bread and biscuits we can’t resist buying.

Me, I'm just a lawnmower

Over the last ten days that we have been in Italy, we have noticed that a regular sound and sight on Italian campsites has been strimming.  This activity will usually start around 8.30 and except for a lunch break, continue through the day.  It is always carried out by men; strimming has yet to become an activity appropriated by women in Italy.  The strimming equipment used is generally an industrial scale strimmer, rather than the lightweight Black and Decker ones you can get for your garden in the UK, these Italian strimmers are petrol driven and heavy.  The strimmee will be sporting a boiler suit and maybe some fluorescent items of clothing, although the latter do not appear to be obligatory.  We can only assume that the stony and undulating Italian land calls for more strimming on its campsites than other countries.
Of course, in the mountain villages you will still see farmers using scythes, as the man in the photograph is doing.  You might think that we have only posted on this subject so that we can use this particular lyric; you could be right.

We're gonna bring a case of wine, Hey, let's go mess and fool around, you know, like we used to

We could never hope to have the dedication to wine that our French camping neighbours at the campsite near Barola have.  They were out all yesterday, only returning briefly for a freshen up, before leaving again for the evening; and this morning they left the campsite before 09.00, after moving the nine cases of wine from their car boot into their tent.  In comparison, we are not even trying, buying just two bottles of local wine at the Cantina Comunale in La Morra.

We have travelled through a number of different wine regions since leaving Zeebrugge, including the Alsace region of France, Tuscany, where we bough Chianti and some excellent Montalicino and we are now in Barola in Piemonte, an area whose agriculture is dedicated to two crops, vines and hazelnuts (the latter we can only assume is to keep Italy in Nutella).

Camping Sole Langhe will rate as one of our favourite campsites; it is small, well maintained and friendly with clean facilities.  Having purchased a map in a well stocked book shop in Alba, we were ready to explore and set off, some time after our French neighbours, on a day of walking.  Striding out among the vines and hazel bushes is very agreeable; occasionally we would greet someone working, but generally we had the footpaths to ourselves.  Our route finding was going very well until we found ourselves on a rarely used track heading down to the river; we persevered through the bushes and brambles, wishing we had taken the long trousers option.   Carol’s legs were soon scratched and bleeding and then the track, such as it was, ended at a wall of trees and undergrowth.  As we retreated back up the hill, we discussed the Italian map’s caveat that it accepted no responsibility for its accuracy.

Gee it must be great riding with him

 We have chosen to drive on peaceful country roads through Tuscany, following the hills up and down, negotiating hairpin bends and meandering through hill-top villages and towns.  On these routes we always see cyclists; these are generally on their own or in pairs, in team lycra and are seemingly tackling the ups and downs with hardly a bead of perspiration.  Going down some of the hills they can move faster than the Blue Bus around the corners and this is fine.  However, having a cyclist on your rear bumper is one thing, what is heart-stopping is when we are going up the hill and a cyclist is riding down and taking the racing line round a blind bend; we see him correct his path and seem to skip to the right.  We hate to think the mess Italian lycra would make of the van’s bumpers.

At the well run and peacefully located Camping Vale Gaia near Cecina, they had a folder full of cycling routes from the campsite and we browsed through these to find something suitable for a day out.  Most of the routes were around 80 – 100 kms, which on the ups and downs of Tuscany is more than Carol certainly wanted to tackle.  We felt like a pair of English wimps choosing the 40 kms route, but had a good few hours cycling and managed to sample more Italian ice cream on the way and fit in a paddle in the Med. 

On our way north we had a short stop in Lucca, a handsome walled city between Firenze and Pisa and a cyclist’s heaven.  Most of the narrow city streets are traffic free and on top of the walls is a tree-lined traffic free road and footpath.

Roll up for the mystery tour

We met Karin during our year long trip in El Rocio in Spain and felt an instant rapport with her.  Karin is Italian and we had kept in touch and knew she had moved back to Italy, so once we had decided we were visiting Italy this year we planned to meet up.

Karin is currently renting a house near Sorano and we made our way there from San Gimignano.  Karin showed herself to be an excellent host and holiday guide and we felt very lucky to have the chance to see some magical places we would never have found on our own.

The Vie Cave, or excavated roads, are an impressive road network in the Sorano area, built to link Etruscan necropolis and settlements and later incorporated in to the Roman road system.  The roads are deep trench-like routes excavated from the local tufa rock and Karin took us along the Via Cave San Rocco, a steep shady section of Vie Cave that took us down to the river Lente.

After Sunday lunch in a local restaurant busy with Italian families, we followed Karin to an unmarked layby and followed a path with no indication of where it led, along a river and through meadows of poppies and fields of cattle to a large secret hollow into which a three-tiered waterfall fell.   This enchanting grotto was peaceful and cool on a hot sunny afternoon and we all found pleasure in spending time there.

From the waterfall pool we took the steep path up to the cliffs, where an early Christian chapel, the Eremo di Poggio Conte, had been carved out of the tufa overlooking the waterfall; the effort that had gone in to this hidden gem was impressive, the chapel had leaves and columns carefully carved in to the ceiling, with patterns painted on the rock for decoration and an elegant carved doorway.

Thank you Karin.

Now I won't settle for less

Up to now we have been lucky with Italian campsites; we have had hot water for washing up, good, clean showers and standard northern European toilets.  However, we have stayed inland and the Italian coast is always a different story.

The campsite at Feniglia, near Orbetello, was the worst that Italian campsites can be.  We arrived at around 19.00 hours, tired and ready for a brew, so in no fit state to even contemplate not accepting whatever the campsite offered.  The price was 29 Euro for a night; this is expensive for us, but if the facilities are good we thought it would be worth paying.  As it is still the low season, we have mostly used ACSI discount sites this holiday, at 14 or 16 Euros a night, these sites are excellent value.  The campsite at San Gimignano was our first exception and was a fantastic site, with newly modernised facilities; despite its unrivalled location, it charged 23.50 Euro.

At Feniglia, our pitch, a rather grand name for the bit of ground we were ushered to, was surrounded on three sides by other vans, one within a few centimetres of us.  We continued to try and see the good things about the site, until we tried the sanitary facilities.  In our nearest block, three of the four toilets were the squatting variety, the rooms were grubby and there was not a scrap of toilet paper in sight, nor a millilitre of hot water.  To have a hot shower required the purchasing of a coin for a further 50 cents; this gave enough hot water for a quick shower, but after a day walking in Tuscany, as the light flashed on and off to warn the time was almost up, I was still trying to scrub the Tuscan dust from my feet.

The lack of hot water extended to the washing up sinks, we were glad it was a bread and cheese night for us and we could manage the washing up in the van.

Needless to say we didn’t stay more than one night.  The photograph is our 'campsite' for the night at Karin's Tuscan retreat.

I'm satisfied I've got this far

Driving and moving on with the van is very much part of our holiday and Tuscany makes this a very enjoyable part.  The scenery is varied and beautiful and there is always something worth stopping and seeing.










In the 150 kms or so from San Gimignano to meet up with our Italian friend Karin in Sorano we enthused about the fields of poppies through the Elsa valley, we  enjoyed a beautiful lunch spot with views over fields of vines and mountains, we drove over Monti Amiata; through firstly thick dark pine woods and then into the dappled shade of beech woods, seeing more trees than it feels we have in the whole of England and we stopped at Abbadia San Salvatore for a coffee and a stroll around the historical medieval town centre.

I have scaled these city walls

The opportunity to taste World Championship Award winning ice cream was enough to get us to San Gimignano, a particularly attractive Tuscan hill town just north of Siena that is a popular visitor attraction.

San Gimignano’s skyline of towers is the result of rivalry between different nobles; today only one of these towers can be climbed by the public and to earn our gelato we firstly walked to the top of the Torre Grossa to enjoy the view of the town and the Tuscan countryside of olive trees and vines beyond and walked all around the medieval walls; the latter an excursion that few of the thousands of visitors appear to do, as we mostly had the path alongside the impressive walls to ourselves.

Finally, we were able to enter the Gelateria di Piazza and spend some minutes selecting from the diverse range of flavours, only briefly distracted by the framed photo of Tony Blair among the famous previous customers displayed on the wall.  We both chose Pistachio flavour, Anthony twinned his with a traditional Stracciatella, Carol added a champagne sorbet and everyone of them tasted fantastic.

High, higher than the sun

From the campsite in Switzerland, near Locarno, to our current site at Passo della Futa in Tuscany, about 30 kms north of Firenze, is just over 350 kms in distance, but it feels we have travelled much further.  It’s not just the language, everything about Italy is different; warm coloured stone farmhouses, roads littered with signage, very crusty bread and gregarious people;  it is good to be back.

After paying a small ransom to use the AutoStrada so that we could cross the Po and arrive south of Bologna in a day, we emerged from the van hot and tired at this lovely terraced campsite at 900m with distracting views across numerous tree clad hills.

On our first evening we sat absorbed and happy; watching the sun fall down behind the hills from our pitch with a view.  The next morning we were surprised to wake and find we were in the clouds and it took a few hours for the sun to once more find its way through.

To check anyone’s sunny mood, 500m from the campsite is a German Military Cemetery, an imposing monument built in the 1960s and immaculately maintained by the German State.  We always feel an obligation to stop for a moment at such place and reflect on the lives of all the young men who died for a war.  We had directions from the campsite and continued on a marked path through beech and pine woods, with brightly flowering hawthorn bushes and thyme underfoot, reaching a cross on a hill with a stone altar underneath.  We had lunch in this elevated spot and watched the insect life busy on the flowers around us.

Holiday spending May and June 2012

Our holiday was 27 days long and we traveled about 2,000 miles.
Spending was as follows:

Euros
Diesel       538
Food / supermarkets   662
Campsites  404
Cafes and restaurants 215
Tolls & transport  125
Other  131
TOTAL    2075 (approx £1680)


In addition the ferry cost £436 return Hull to Zeebrugge.

Campsites in Italy

Camping La Futa, Passo della Futa, Firenzuola
A fantastic site, terraced and grassy with some hard-standing.  You can't really beat the beautiful views over the hills from all the pitches.  There are good hot showers and plenty of hot water in the clean facialities.  Free wifi is available at the bar.  Bread can be ordered, useful as its a long way to any shops and a few basic groceries are sold.  The owners are helpful and friendly.






Camping Boschetto di Piemma, San Gimignano
A well organised site with modern and clean facilities and plenty of hot water.  Some trees on the site provide shade.  Wifi is available at 3 euro per hour.  The site provides easy access to San Gimiignano, either by bus, bike or walking (15-20 minutes).  The site restaurant is excellent and is used by locals, as well as campers.


Camping Feniglia, Laguna di Orbetello
The pitches are marked, but very crowded.  The facilities are dated and scruffy and there is no hot water for washing up.  An extra charge is made for hot showers.


Valle Gaia Casale Marittimo, near Cecina
A large and well equipped site with very good sanitary facilities.  There is good shade for the majority of the pitches, but we stayed on a higher level pitch with less shade, but better views.  Wifi is available at 2 euro for three hours and can be accessed from some pitches or from the bar and pool areas.  The site has swimming pools, cafe, restaurant and shop.


River Village Camping, Ameglia
Lots of tree cover and a scruffy and unkempt looking site.  The toilets were clean.  Free wifi can be accessed around the bar.

Camping Sole Langhe, Vergne, near Barolo
A small green site in a village with a shop selling bread and groceries five minutes walk away.  The facilities are very clean and good.  Wifi costs 3 euro as a one off charge.  The pitches are marked and a good size.

Campeggio Valle Gesso, Entracque
This site is in a lovely position.  It is a large site with marked pitches and a lot of permanent caravans, but these are separate from the touring pitches.  The facilities are clean, but a little shabby and coins are needed for showers.  The owners are friendly and in high season they open more modern facilities.  It is about 15 minutes walk in to Entracque, which has some small shops; otherwise bread can be ordered at the camp site.

They call me baby driver

We play crazy golf whenever we get the chance, but Menaggio on the shores of Lake Como was the first time we were aware of playing on a world mini golf sport federation course. It was also the first time in Kubicki family history that Carol had ever won!

Menaggio is a pretty little town where you are never more than 100 metres from an ice cream shop and with plenty of opportunities to catch boats to other pretty little towns. The 1930s Lido in Menaggio is a fantastic curvaceous building of that period, recently renovated and has a micro-brewery. It contrasts with the rest of the town, which is more typical of northern Italy.

After four nights in a hotel, getting used to our own bathroom, a swimming pool and a buffet breakfast, we are wondering how we will adjust to life in the van again. It has been so good to spend the last ten days with Matthew and Rachel; next time we see them it will be Christmas.

Glaciers melting in the dead of night

Naming your National Park the Gran Paradiso is to raise expectations and ours were very high. Of course, as we were spending the week here in the company of Matthew and Rachel and a bathroom, it was very likely we would have a splendid time. The stone chalet we stayed in was beautiful, on the edge of the picturesque village of Planaval, with a view from the balcony along a green valley to a glacier, you could not ask for more.

Matthew and Rachel were keen to see Marmots and we saw so many they seemed as common as rabbits in England: We watched Marmots eating, collecting grass for their nest, in pairs fighting and grooming and lots of Marmots sitting on rocks being the look-out. Matthew and his expensive camera took plenty of photographs, one of which we have borrowed for the blog.

We spent the week taking alpine walks, playing ping-pong, trying out the local trim trail, gazing at glaciers, watching a promenade play around the lanes of Planaval and catching up on events from the last four months. We enjoyed remembering that with more than one electric ring you can cook the pasta at the same time as the sauce and got used to being able to be in different rooms to each other.

Stopped into a church I passed along the way

As intrepid travellers we have discovered the National Park Dell’Adamello in Lombardy: This isn’t at all true, as the area is busy with Italian tourists. However, it does not feature at all in our Rough Guide, in the way that Preston does not feature in the Rough Guide for England, but then charming as corners of Preston are, it is not a rugged and mountainous area thronged with Italian tourists.

We have found that camping and walking in Italian National Parks is a pot luck activity. There is a lovely campsite here and although there were no walks signed from the top of the cable car, there were signs as we walked and we managed to spend a pleasant few hours hiking. We stopped for lunch at a small church, Santa Giulia, at 1860 m; helpfully provided with a lovely view, a drinking water fountain and plenty of sturdy picnic tables. The simple rustic church was a cool space to sit in and the two elderly ladies in pinafores who were busy in the church kitchen smiled their greetings. Every Italian family group we met stopped and asked us whether they were on the right path for the church and apologised when we struggled to help them; we think they just like to stop and talk.

Imagine there's no heaven, no religion too

As two happy atheists we consider all religions superstitious and un-necessary: The rituals and beliefs of Southern European Catholicism are particularly in your face.

We have seen many road-side shrines in Italy, Austria and Slovenia: They are generally well looked after and usually have a plant or fresh bunch of flowers. The example in the photographs belongs to a farm in the Savinja valley and must be a contender for the best painted shrine prize. The picture of Jesus apparently blessing the village with fairy dust is quite amazing.

The Rough Guide writers are clearly interested in religious architecture, sometimes it seems to the exclusion of anything else and they really should re-name their books 'The Guide to Churches around Europe', as this seems to be the only place of interest the towns we visit have.

However, we do like to visit cemeteries, as these can tell you something about the people. Italian cemeteries are always very tidy and the photographs on the grave stones helps to make the cemetery feel more alive than you might expect. In Barrea we walked up to the cemetery to see the sunset and were surprised to find three people also there, sweeping the paths and watering the plants, the cemetery felt very much part of the village.

Small and white, clean and bright

After many years of looking, we have found Edelweiss in the Dolomites and beautiful it is too. Not surprisingly, this bought on a serious case of Sound-of-musicitis in Carol. Anthony's treatment is the Manic Street Preachers intravenously and a full recovery is expected as soon as we leave the Alps.

We are disappointed how few birds of prey we have seen in Italy. However, we have enjoyed seeing Spotted Fly Catchers on a number of campsites. This delicate and unassuming bird sits on a post and occasionally swings off to, we presume, catch a fly.

Saturday has been spent cycling from Cortina: Mostly uphill, the only direction there seems to be in Italy, but at least there was apple strudel at the top. On the way down we had a very close encounter with an Adder. Fortunately, the pharmacy vending machine has venom remover.

On Sunday we visited the restored mountain trenches from the first world war at 2,200 m. Here the Austrian and Italian armies fought throughout the war and hundreds of thousands of lives were lost. We saw lots of Marmots and even more Edelweiss.

Must be funny in a rich man's world

For those interested in financial matters, we are spending an average of 400 Euros each week in Italy, about half of this on campsites and supermarket food.

We have grown used to the expense of some of our staple items: Soya milk at 2 Euro 80, something we could buy in Morrisons in Eccles for 63p. Peanut butter has become a luxury item, as has basmati rice for our curry nights.

On the plus side, the fruit and vegetables are excellent and reasonably priced and wine is not expensive. We can also buy hundreds of different shapes of pasta. These are all numbered and our favourite penne is number 71.

Because there's something in the air

You may be surprised to read that Italy smells wonderful: Everywhere we have encountered amazing fragrances. At a campsite on the edge of the Dolomites there was a sweet perfume we could not identify at first; we tracked it down to the walnut tree laden with fruits. On the Gargano as we cycled in the heat of the afternoon, the roadside smell of lavender and rosemary would waft past us. Walking and camping in the woods the scent of pine is often strong and the beech woodland has a warm earthy smell. Sasso Marconi campsite had an aroma of mint in the warm evening air. In Gubbio we were pitched opposite a newly mown hay field. At the huge salt pans south of Manfredonia we could taste the salt in the air, more than smell it. The marvellous fragrance from the bakeries makes you want to go straight in and buy fresh bread and pastries and the sweet smell of ripe cherries, strawberries and tomatoes linger in the van after we have been shopping.

In the Dolomites we are reminded that one of the good things about camping is being in the open air and enjoying fresh smells after rain. At 1,200 m above sea level in Cortina D’Amprezzo the air is cool and the weather is unpredictable. However, the pink, craggy Dolomites are spectacular; looking like giant coral reefs and here Italy very gradually merges into Austria.
Our first morning here was spent completing chores: Carol fixed the cushion cover with the broken zip, while Anthony used his technical skills to mend the tap, which was mysteriously running when we flushed the loo. When asked what he’d done, he said he had no idea, he had simply taken it apart and put it back together again; this will be familiar to his ex-colleagues at the Uni.

I think I saw you in an ice-cream parlour

The café is an Italian institution and we have visited a few over the past eight weeks. One of our favourites was the café in Corigliano in Calabria: We stopped here at 8.30 in the morning, anxious after leaving the van in the hands of the VW garage to be fixed. The café has a large space with just half a dozen tables and a long counter: Italians came in and stood with their coffee and croissant, reading the newspaper before going to work; the coffee came with a glass of water; the staff welcomed regulars with some small talk, no one stayed long.

Sometimes in the evening we get nibbles with our beer, nuts, crisps and olives: A café was the first place we tried the spicy, dried sweetcorn nibbles we’ve come to enjoy. In Bologna we were presented with a plate of biscuits with our coffee. Once we realised we did not have to pay for these extras directly we tucked in.

The café is a useful place to watch people, practice our Italian by reading the newspaper or watch the TV, support the local economy and almost the only place to find a toilet in Italy.

The photograph is Bardolino on Lake Garda, which has plenty of cafes.