Martin & Joy's Blog

Area Verde Puntolago – San Giovanni di Incarico

Having had 3 or 4 days of no, or very poor, internet connection, I’ll try to do a catchup…

Fri, 11/7/14
I’d said in a previous post that we’d stayed overnight SE of Rome (where we got hit by thunderstorms!)… We have this app on our smartphones called “ProMobile”. It’s a German app that’s a guide to all of the free or low-cost “Stellplaetze” (“aires” in French; “sostas” in Italian; no equivalent and mostly illegal in the UK) across Europe. These are places where you can park a motorhome overnight, or for a couple of nights usually. ProMobile is a fantastic resource that’s supplemented by the feedback from previous visitors. The only drawback is that it requires an internet connection to allow you to do searches.

So we found this Sosta on ProMobile: I liked the sound of it because the description of it included mention of an “uriges” (ancient) restaurant on site. It was off the beaten track, and on a small lake.

The access was down a steep, narrow track. Being (mis)led once again by our SatNav, we started to get suspicious when it suggested we drive into and across the lake. I always get slight panicky on such narrow tracks as there’s no way of turning the van around; it’s just too big. So as we were heading off into the wilderness, we could see this figure on the other side of the lake frantically waving to us and beckoning us back again. Great, we’d obviously missed the turn.

I did manage to turn the van around by going only a couple of hundred metres further along the track and then doing a seventeen point turn in the entrance to a field.

Very enthusiastic owner of the land and restaurant – very pedantically guided us inch by inch to the best spot (we were the only campers there). He spoke a few words of English, we still speak practically no Italian (shame!). Within a couple of minutes, his expressive abilities and broken English had told us that he had bought the land & the restaurant having previously been a dentist. He runs the place (restaurant, Stellplatze and lake) out of love. It certainly can’t be for money as he gets very little trade, which is a great shame for him. He blames the economy – which is still poor in Italy right now. He has 3 dogs & two horses which – although the horses wear rope tethers – are not actually tethered to anything, but are free to roam around eating whatever they can get their mouths on.

We decided to eat chez-host. There was no menu. With gesticulations and a mixture of broken English & Italian, we managed to negotiate a vegetarian meal for Joy, and a less-than-veggie meal for me. The giant BBQ was fired-up and dinner was on the way. Accompanied by a thunderstorm.

Next morning, one of the dogs decided it wanted to come with us.

We would have loved to have obliged, but felt the owner (whose name we never learned) might have been upset.

Are we jinxed?

I really can’t figure out what’s going on with the weather: wherever we’ve been, we always seem to be subjected to thunderstorms. Whilst we didn’t get hit by one at Lake Garda, we could see them all around. When we were in the Appennines, we had several – plus heavy rain & a serious temperature drop before we left. In fact, it was the main reason for leaving to head South – the forecast being so unsettled.

We made an overnight stop SE of Rome. There was a thunderstorm, though we didn’t get wet.

We’re now on the adriatic coast at Torino di Sangro; SE of Pescara – where the sun always shines. I’m writing this in a thunderstorm. It’s not exactly teeming it down with rain, but it IS raining. OTOH, the temp is around 25 degrees so it’s not all bad! However, we DO need to cycle up to Fossecesia where – I have been led to believe – there is a bank cash machine and some shops; both of which are fairly urgently needed. And it’s raining.

It is allegedly supposed to improve from tomorrow. Bring it on!

Hello from Bolsena

Well…..I haven’t got round to writing much on here so far! Too time consuming with poor internet connection and frustrating!

Life on the road is very different but getting used to it. The lake here in Capodimonte is very beautiful this morning. We are camped right on the shore and I enjoyed a swim in the early morning sun. The water is very warm and the sand made it easy to get in. We parked up the first night at a motorhome stop just up the road which was quiet (apart from the football practice until 11.30pm at the adjoining sportsground. But the view and the birdlife was beautiful and all for 10 euros for 24 hours. No facilities though so we came to the camp site for a night for the internet and to “service” the van i.e. empty waste water, toilet, fill up with fresh water and recharge our electrical equipment!

Off again shortly….

Lago di Bolsena wildlife

Beautiful morning, if not a little cool.

Looked out of the window and saw this Little Egret strutting its stuff along the water’s edge:

And just to add to the wildlife…

Lago di Bolsena

We did end up staying another night at La Futa as it teemed it down on Tuesday & I didn’t feel like driving through it. Instead, we tried to plan a bit more where we should head towards: the forecast is still pretty terrible for most of Italy (and, it seems, the rest of Europe) with heavy rain & storms on the cards for the next several days. If we at least head South & down from the mountains, we might still get wet but at least it should be warmer. Those were our thoughts.

So we programmed the SatNav and here we are – at a Sosta on Lago di Bolsena. Great weather when we arrived,

but it hammered down overnight (say hello to leaky skylight at 05:30 this morning!).

Pretty lazy day today – cycled into Capodimonte: a small town built out on a volcanic headland,

and headed back fairly sharpish when we saw the storm clouds gathering.

We made it back just in time for a prolonged and fairly violent storm.

Lago di Bolsana is actually a crater of a long-extinct volcano; some 5 or 6 miles in diameter. Hence the beaches are all black sandy (where there IS sand). Again, a stunning location. We’ll stay here overnight again, and then it looks like we might head down to Naples & Pompei And, hopefully, temperatures in excess of 18 degrees!

Joy’s teds allegedly keeping an eye on the weather!

Time to leave?

Last night, it rained. A lot.

This morning, it’s wet, cool and very, very foggy. Well, we are at about 900m above sea level here. The forecast for the next week is pretty awful (very unusual for here in July), so we’re looking to head further South.

Trying to research our next stop not being aided by VERY idiosyncratic internet connection. Goodness knows where we’ll end up!

Mountain biking & Roman roads

Yesterday, we did a bike ride. The sheet of paper giving the rough route, kindly provided by the campsite said “It’ a easy route”. They lied. The first couple of hundred metres should have been a big enough omen of what was to come.

It would have been a great ride but for the fact that recent & current forestry work had all but destroyed much of the trails, with 3 foot deep tyre & caterpillar track ruts in many places.

Oh, and the impossibly steep climbs! They’re ok; you can push up them, but when you have impossibly steep climbs with huge ruts it’s a different matter. Joy started getting concerned about the thought that we’d have to come back down those climbs going in the opposite direction!

In truth, it was a great ride with the highest point being at 1210m above sea-level. The weather held out long enough for us to have a picnic in the sunshine at a slight clearing at the top. We never met a single other person on the trail except – right at the top, we saw the couple from the caravan opposite us at the campsite: they had walked up with their dog. We went on a few hundred metres before heading back. Oddly, we didn’t pass them again so not sure where they went (but they were back in their van last night!).

In some parts, we followed the Roman road (Flaminia Militare): some parts exposed and protected by signs, but most of it still buried. Perhaps a good thing as the unprotected parts have been eroded and most of the stones washed away where they are liberally strewn across the trail.

Here’s the route we followed.

Deutscher Soldatenfriedhof (German soldier’s cemetery)

Joy and I visited the Deutscher Soldatenfriedhof near the campsite early this evening. Over 30,000 German troops lost their lives in this area during WWII and are buried here. A large number of them are unidentified.

Very sobering, very moving, very sad, very poignant. A beautiful location, managed and carefully maintained by the German War Graves Commission. It lies at the top of the Futa Pass overlooking the surrounding mountains.

Florence / Firenze

Yesterday (Sat, 5/7/14), we went to Florence. Never been before, and everyone had told us we had to visit. Whilst we were so close, it would have been rude not to.

To tell the truth, I’m not really a city person or a culture person: I prefer beaches and mountains, but there’s so much history to Florence, it had to be worth a look. Joy had done some research & figured out the things we were to see & do.

There was no way I was going to take the motorhome into the city, so we drove down to the nearest railway station at S. Pietro A Sieve (remember that exact spelling), about 50 mins down the torturous mountain road) and parked the van there for the day.

Italian trains are brilliant, if not always on time, though I can think of somewhere else like that! And very inexpensive at just €3.40 each for the 1/2 hr trip into the centre of Florence. In typical Italian fashion however, the ticket machine wasn’t working. It’s always a struggle to use these computer-driven machines in a foreign language, and this was no exception. Despite it kindly offering English-language transactions, it still wouldn’t work (“Can’t connect to the network at this time – please wait”. Where might I have seen messages like that before?). After a couple of attempts, and with the departure time getting closer, I let the next person use the machine – reassuringly with the same result. However, she just went round to the cafe and we observed her buying her ticket there. Problem solved.

First stop in Florence was the museum of photography which – when eventually located – turned out to be closed on Saturdays. A pity, as it had an enthusiastic write-up.

Next stop was a fairly lengthy walk to the Piazzale Michelangelo, taking in quick visits of the Basillica di Santa Maria Novella and Chiesa di S.Trinita before reaching the river (Arno). There we had a fabulous view of the famous Ponte Vecchio (bridge), before walking along the river and taking in the most expensive ham & cheese sandwich in the world.

Piazzale Michelangelo contains a large bronze statue of Michelangelo’s David. It’s at the top of a steep climb in the sun. Fortunately, the last, and steepest steps, are in the shade, but we’re both fairly moist by the time we confronted David in all his naked, verdigrised glory.

Fantastic views over the city of Florence, photos taken, italian ice-creams eaten, and then the walk back – over Ponte Vecchio (these days a series of jewellery shops) to the Galleria degli Uffizi – the enormous former Medici building that’s now a famous art gallery.
As stated earlier, I’m no afficianado of fine art, but to see the originals of some of the world’s most famous works of art like Botticelli’s “Birth of Venus” and “Spring” was truly awe-inspiring, even though a clear view of it through the throngs of guided tours was difficult.

It’s now getting late having spent much, much longer at the art gallery than we thought we would. A dash back to the station to get our chosen train back, with the misgiving that we’d miss it. We hadn’t – it was delayed and still sitting at the platform. Rush to join the queue at the infamous ticket machine. My turns comes (English version kindly provided again). You have to enter your destination by spelling it out (Dropdown lists don’t seem to have made it this far). I spelled out our destination. Twice. Not found. I let the next people in the queue have the machine whilst I considered options in a slight state of panic. They faffed and farted for ages, before eventually deciding not to buy a ticket. Our train left. Naughty words ensued.

With an hour to wait for the next train, panic left & I was able to rationalise the problem and successfully negotiate ticket acquisition: You can’t request “San Pietro A Sieve”, or “SanPietroASieve” or any one of a hundred different possible permutations. It has to be – absolutely precisely – “S. Pietro A Sieve” before the automaton graciously accepted our desired destination. Tricky one this, as there was no obvious spacebar on the keyboard. Dropdown lists are wonderful things. Perhaps in the future?

Oh well, with an hour to spare, time to find a cafe & a beer. I’ve previously maintained that the most expensive beer I ever bought was a bottle Wiezenbier at Stuttgart airport. This has now been revised to a small cafe near the station in Florence where I was stripped of €14 for 2 half-litres of fizzy italian ordinariness. When we paid, the waiter helpfully advised that each beer would have been €2 less had we sat in the bar rather than outside. I was most grateful for this piece of advice and will surely memorize it for my next visit (not).

Back to the station, getting there a couple of minutes before the designated departure time. A glance at the departure board showed the train was leaving from a platform somewhere in the shimmering distance, rather than the platform in front of us where we’d arrived and from where the last train had departed. Platform 17 was a good 10 minute walk. We had 3 minutes. Deja Vu sets in. Running, with our knackered knees and with all the walking we’d done during the day, was not an entirely enjoyable experience in the by now sinking sun. We made it. The train sat resolutely out in the sticks of platform 17 for a good 10 mins more. Great. Italian trains; gotta love ’em.

Tuscany – camping La Futa

4th July:

Leaving Lazise on Wed, 2nd July, and heading further South, we thought we’d try to avoid the Autostrada for a while & see a bit of the Italian countryside (and save a bit of money in motorway tolls!). A couple of hours of negotiating bizarre junctions, our SatNav wanting to take us in every alternative direction but the one we wanted, and a million small towns and traffic lights made us head back to the Autostrada.

It’s starting to get late. The Italian campsite book I downloaded to my Kindle back in Heiterwang (download took 2 1/2 hrs) suggested an interesting looking campsite north of Firenze/Florence. What it didn’t say was that the climb up to the campsite – at 950m above sea level – was pretty torturous & the road surface was so bad, a blanket 30kph speed limit was in force over the entire stretch.

However, the campsite is fantastic.

We were going to stay one night and we’re still here! Probably the best campsite we’ve ever stayed at. They have a Pizzeria for when the urge to prepare one’s own meals fails us. The toilet facilities are really something else: tiled in beautiful Italian tiles, with hi-tech, self-sanitizing loo seats (a new one on me!), high-tech temperature-selectable hair dryers, and beautiful Italian design wash basins. And everything is spotless.

The views & sunsets are something else:

The staff are also the most friendly and helpful campsite staff we’ve ever encountered.

Yesterday, we got the mountain bikes out and decided to get adventurous by following a trail [sic.] leading to a section of Roman road that had been discovered only relatively recently. The staff had suggested the trail should be ok for mountain biking: the very first bit of track off-road suggested otherwise, at least for Joy. A helpful dutch lady walker we met at that point said that after this first bit it was much flatter. We believed her. She was either lying or delusional. We pressed on regardless. Even I took the safe option of dismounting at one or two sections. Worryingly, the trail seemed to be going mainly steeply downhill. The worry being the knowledge that we’d have to go back the same way!

Roman road sections discovered. Sign showed the section was dated back to 187 years BC. One really gets a feeling of the smallness of our time and space when confronted with such antiquity. The ride back did involve a certain amount of pushing uphill, but we made it without incident.