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.