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.

Hear this Robert Zimmerman, I wrote a song for you

A little reluctantly we have left Malcesine after some lovely days walking and driven in to the Dolomites National Park.

You may have noticed that we have committed ourselves to using lyrics for the titles of our blog posts. We hope you have been able to correctly identify all the tracks. Deciding what lyric to use often takes longer than writing the post and everything we listen to becomes a possible blog title.

Driving through the Dolomites we were listening to David Bowie’s Space Oddity, having had the marriage-old discussion about which is the best Bowie album of all time (Anthony:Hunky Dory, Carol: Ziggy Stardust). We were paying close attention to the lyrics as occasionally David Bowie writes something that makes some sense and could be used on the blog and we have now re-interpreted the title track: Did Major Tom commit suicide? Your thoughts would be well received.

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.

I'm going to walk on up to the waterfront

Lake Garda seems a world away from southern Italy: We have had a trip on the cable car and walked through alpine flowers at 2,000m, we have played crazy golf and Anthony won and we have listened to buskers while sitting in a café, it is like a proper holiday.

In Malcesine we have found a small and possibly perfect campsite; it has no announcements about the children’s disco or water aerobics, instead it has views of the surrounding mountains and the castle, an olive tree by the van back door and is close enough to get our morning bread in the local shops and so does not need its own supermarket. Malcesine has plenty of retail opportunities; if we wanted to we could even buy the Daily Mail here. Anthony feels that all it needs is an Indian restaurant to make it perfect!

The photograph shows Carol walking up the Monte Baldo ridge: We watched Alpine Choughs swoop over the cliffs, saw azaleas, globe flowers and gentians and walked up hill quite a lot.

We take a holiday, lie around all day

After eight weeks away it is getting difficult to remember a time when we went to work and looked forward to weekends: We are starting to really get the hang of this independent lifestyle and at the moment it is difficult to imagine being anywhere but Italy. Most days will find us either cycling, walking or sightseeing. However, we do spend days at the campsite busy with laundry, cleaning the van, drafting up posts for the blog, checking the budget (yes, we do have an Excel spreadsheet for this!) or other chores.

We also spend time reading: Book club friends may be interested to know we have both read ‘Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow’, which we found to be a diverting Danish thriller and ‘The Testament of Gideon Mack’, which we both found pleasing, but frustratingly superficial. We both trudged through an Italian classic, ‘That Awful Mess on Via Merulana’ by Carlo Emilio Gadda and Richard Dawkins’ ‘The God Delusion’ has amazed us and launched some spirited discussions over a beer. A request to swop books we have finished with other campers from the UK has been a useful conversation starter.

Italian campsites seem to be all or nothing: On the coast and now at Lake Garda the sites have every facility and activity you could hope for and are bustling with campers: It is good to find fast internet access and be able to skype Matthew again. The area is very beautiful, as hopefully the photograph of Lazise, the town nearest to our campsite, shows.

To get here we left the Apennines and crossed the river Po, moving into risotto rice growing country. We are now on the edge of the alps and on the warm nights we dream about the fresh mountain air.