Mon, 21st July, 2014
We’ve arrived in Pompei! This is very exciting because – although I’d often talked about coming here – I never really believed we’d make it.
It was sad to leave Parco del Gargano: It was such a wonderful, friendly site, I could have happily stayed there much, much longer. But time waits for no man (or woman) and we have to be back at our daughter’s house near Stuttgart by the 28th July; in time for our eldest grand-daughter’s 5th birthday.
Also, we’d been practically eaten alive. The bugs & biting beasties must have been bred specially for us. And astonishingly, the shops don’t seem to major in insect repellents & bite-easing lotions & potions. I stopped counting at over thirty bites on various bits of my anatomy: some where they had absolutely no right to be.
We were woken (still in Gargano) in the wee small hours by what sounded like rain. Bugger! We’d jury-rigged a washing line between the awning uprights/legs, from which were dangling all of our towels, mountain bike shorts and other bits. Also, our bikes were outside, plus table & chairs. The awning is not supposed to be rolled away wet either (obviously its use would be completely impractical back home, then!). It was a hot night, too. The hottest yet, so all our windows & skylights were wide open.
When it rains, being in the van is not unlike being in a tent. I.e. it’s noisy. A few drops of rain, and it sounds like a monsoon. Trouble is, we still think it IS raining like a monsoon. We were both out of bed and running around outside at 06:00 taking the towels in, winding-up the awning, bringing in the table & chairs with just the occasional raindrop putting in an appearance. What is wasn’t doing in wetness though, was being more than made up for in pine needles. I kid you not: It was raining pine needles. Heavily. Ok, it was very windy up in the treetops, and the dead pine needles were being dislodged. Either that, or the squirrels & crickets have managed to collude and invent a new game.
Pine needle rain is not all that much fun. It hurts. Honestly. Especially when being driven by a force 6 wind. Everything was covered in pine needles. This evening, in Pompeii, I’m still brushing bloody pine needles from places where there shouldn’t be any such thing. The awning was full of them. No time to try to dislodge them. They lay like snow on the windscreen wipers. A Dutch family had unwisely chosen this period to move their tent 10 metres to a more favourable location adjacent to our van, just vacated by another Dutch family (most people at the campsite were Dutch; followed by Italians & Belgians. We were the only brits). This was a big tactical mistake. In the 25 minutes it took them to beat the groundsheet into submission in the strong breeze, it had disappeared under pine needles and the rain came down proper. They then abandoned their relocation activities and took up temporary residence of the open-sided, timber yoga hut. For all I know, they may still be there.
The drive from the Gargano promontory was made difficult by the gusty cross-wind. The van is a bit rolly at the best of times. There were a few scary moments of veering right across the lane, but we made it in one piece.
Look at the map of Italy, and it only looks like a stone’s throw from Gargano to Naples. Believe me; it isn’t. Italy is surprisingly BIG. And our van is surprisingly SLOW. It was just over 320km to Pompei, and the exciting bit driving-wise, was getting to Pompei itself. We’ve seen some “interesting” examples of Italian driving, mostly involving blind bends and overtaking, but Pompei drivers took it to a different level altogether. I may have mentioned that the van is somewhat ponderous: You can sometimes write an essay between hitting the accelerator and it heaving itself into motion. Italian drivers seem not to have a great deal of patience. Whilst I was trying to turn left out of a tiny road onto a busy street (only our SatNav could have brought us this way), I must have taken more than 5 seconds to pull out – which would have been impossible anyway. There was a thunderous roar of horns being sounded behind. For me? The car behind decided to pull out and overtake me – completely filling the wrong side of the road – just as another car was turning into our road. That was fun. He made it without any accident, and everyone seemed to accept that it’s perfectly ok to pull out in front of other cars.
The campsite here took some finding. It involved impossibly narrow streets; a yet-again errant SatNav; going the wrong way up a one-way street (if they can do it, so can I!); finding ourselves at the wrong entrance to the Pompei ruins at the end of a cul-de-sac exactly where the campsite wasn’t; getting some directions from the entrance gatekeeper who spoke remarkably good English; retracing our route back down the one-way street (the right way, this time); and eventually arriving at the chosen campsite by the main entrance to the ruins.
The campsite is everything a campsite shouldn’t be. It’s noisy; from the adjacent “round-Vesuvius” (Circumvesuvio) railway line; the enormous group of Californian students 15 metres away watching an Indiana Jones movie – outdoors, if you please; and thoughtless people dumping glass bottles into the recycling bin close by. But we’re not here for the campsite. Tomorrow, we’re on to the train to Herculaneum (“Ercolano”, as the Italians renamed it relatively recently) and the museum.
BTW, the weather is perfect: it’s rained really heavily in Pompei this evening so it’s wonderfully cool right now, and the forecast for tomorrow is for just 24 degrees with a chance of a storm. I was worried we’d get toasted in the blistering heat. I have bought (yet another) umbrella!