Category: Places

21st Oct – 29th Oct 2024

In my head, when I have thought about coming to Italy for the first time I have pictured myself in Tuscany. My mental images of the place being a mélange of all the pictures that I have seen online and in magazines, blended with a sense of Provence in a French summer. In my imagination it has been sunny and warm with the tall thin cypress trees and the renovated, tercotta-tiled villas sprinkled across the hillsides groaning with grape vines and olive trees. Some of this was true.

October can be a beautiful month here. The oppressive heat of summer giving way to more benign temperatures in the mid-twenties and the sunshine is theraputic rather than murderous. Or it can be wet and cool. Our experience was mainly the latter, unfortunately.

We headed into the hinterland of Tuscany, which really was beautiful and it reminded us a bit of our home county, Shropshire (autumnal vineyards, fruit laden olive groves, terracotta roofs and hilltop medieval villages aside). The roads were fairly winding and tortuous, giving Nick and Davide a bit of a challenge and making it noisy driving as the contents of the cupboards rattled around. We had a lunch/laundry stop in a town called Bolsena, situated on the lake of the same name. This is the largest volvanic lake in Europe, the last erruption being documented in 104BC. For some reason we were surprised to discover that Tuscany has many large lakes. Most are natural, but there are several reserviors created for hydroelectric porpoises.

Our next stop was a town called Lubriano. This is not only noteable on its own merits as an attractive old town built along the edge of a steep ridge, but it is what it looks at that puts it on the map. Across the gorge from Lubriano sits the curious town of Civita di Bagnoregio.

This is the medieval hilltop town of all medieval hilltop towns. Originally settled by the Etruscans about 2500 years ago, it is perched atop an isolated rocky outcrop in the middle of a wide gorge. Easy to defend, but a nightmare if you want to pop out to the shops…. Unfortunately the rock of the crop is not the hard stuff, it is the ‘tends-to-crumble-over-time-and-wash-away-in-the-rain’ stuff and so the town has become smaller as the centuries pass and bits fall away. It is a shadow of its former self and now has only 16 full time residents. It is, however, still a quite amazing place to see and visit. Since the 1960s it has be accessible by a long and steep footbridge, along which the residents are permitted to whizz up and down on their mopeds at certain times of day. They then transfer to their cars which are parked at the bottom of the hill under the footbridge, popping to the shops still being a pain in the proverbial. The little bar which managed our campsite organised us a ‘shuttle’ so we could go and see Civita, a gnarly 7km road journey away. We went in the late afternoon thereby catching it at sunset. For ‘shuttle’ read ‘some chap called Mario in an ancient car with no outward signs of having any taxi licence or formal status as a passenger carrying vehicle‘. He may have been the father of the lady in the bar. Mario dropped us off and gave us his number so that we could call him for a pick up later. No money changed hands at this point, but we were essentially marooned, so he was confident of his fare.

Civita was quite a marvel. A small toll is charged to walk across the foot bridge to the town and then a steep climb delivers you to the hill top and its warren of narrow streets and ancient buildings. There were a few bars and souvenir shops open for business but it felt very dead. We could see that many of the old homes were now tourist accomodation and that this late in the season, most of these were vacant. There were a few view points of the surrounding valley and hills but the worst view of Civitia is from Civita. We sampled a few wines in one of the bars whilst being amused by the antics of some of our fellow tourists – one can flâneur in Italy too – and waited for the sunset hour. Once it arrived we strolled back down the bridge and found a perch at the bottom to appreciate the town in the changing light.

As we sat there taking our photos we were approached by a woman in her late thirties, who slightly bashfully and in perfect English asked us if we had captured her and her boyfriend in one of our photos as they had walked down along the bridge towards us. Both of their phones had run out of power and they had no photos of themselves here. She asked if we had, could we forward it to her? Nick did his usual trick of extracting an extraordinary amount of information from her in about 10 seconds finding out that she was Swedish (hence the accentless English), her boyfriend was Italian, this was quite a new relationship and she ran a company in Sweden that combats food waste. Yes we had captured them in a photo, but that wasn’t going to cut the mustard! Nick morphed into David Bailey, performing a mini photo shoot for them, with multiple poses, and sent the photos to her later. This was a travel interaction entirely of the modern age. Night finally fell and the town disappeared from view. They do not waste any money on lighting this place up after dark. Happily Mario answered his phone and came back to take us home again.

The next day we headed into Umbria, destination Solomeo. In the past Nick had read an interview with the cashmere business magnate, Brunello Cuchinelli, whose billion euro luxury knitwear empire is still based in this small town where he grew up. Rather than move the factory and adminstative arm to somewhere fancier and more urbane as it grew he decided to plough his money back into the town, building a new, sensitively designed factory here, buying up and restoring the crumbling old town infrastructure to house the offices and provide improved housing and facilities for the locals and his workers alike. He pays well, treats his workers like family, prioritises and promotes work/life balance and has created a small eutopia where once was a dying community. We decided to go and see it. It was a very pretty place, but did not cater to tourists. There was no factory shop, no Cucinelli ‘museum’ and no cafes or restaurants for non-workers. How refreshing in our modern times! It had been a bit of a pointless diversion, and there was no reason to stay here, but we were not upset. We had time to push on to Siena, so back to Tuscany, everybody!

We arrived in Siena an hour or so later and found a place to park within walking distance of the city centre. This was a big, free, multi-purpose car park. The main purposes seemingly being: rat run, lorry parking, camper parking, place for motorbike skills training, place for young people to congregate on their noisy trial bikes and to raz around trying to impress each other. Luckily some heavy late afternoon rain put paid to the noisy youth antics and the rest wasn’t an issue once night fell. The next morning we headed into the city. The rain continued but we were prepared. Siena seems to reside in that Goldilocks sweet spot as a city. It is not too big, not too small. It attracts tourists, but not too many. It has a plenty of old buildings, squares and streets but is not too spread out. Oh and it has the Mother of all Markets.

Siena’s main claim to fame is the Palio. This is a bat sh*t crazy horse race that takes place around the perimeter of its main square in the middle of the old town a couple of times over each summer. There are crowds, grandstands and a ton of imported sand. It is a religion here. It was hard to picture the spectacle of the event on this fairly quiet rainy autumn day but an internet search was informative! We interupted our touristic meanderings to tackle a bit of admin, which was to source a new sim card with data for our router. As the days get shorter our evening streaming hours are increasing and we are deep into Season 2 of Mad Men. What a show! Why have we waited 10 years to watch it? Oh, I know, so that we can binge all 7 seasons without interuption. I strongly recommend that you watch it if you haven’t already.

Around the city their are many statues of a she-wolf suckling a pair of human babies. Legend has it that the young twins, Aschius and Senius (for whom Siena is named), fled to the forest on two horses, one black and one white, after their wicked uncle, Romulus, murdered their father, Remus, and usurped his throne. The children survived by being suckled by the wolf and after they grew up they founded the city. The black and white flag, representing the horses, and the image of the suckling wolf remain potent symbols of the city. But I have questions…

The most obvious is, couldn’t someone have come up with a slightly more original origin story than one that involved a second generation of ‘twin-babies-raised-by-suckling-a-wolf-having-fled-a-murderous-throne-usurping-relative-who-then-went-on-to-found-a-city-named-after-just-one-of-them‘?

And secondly. If they were such young babies that they needed to breastfeed from a wolf for their very survival, how did they manage to ride horses into a forest?

Our Siena mooching was a little dampened by the rain, but there was a ray of sunshine that significantly brightened our day. Porchetta! On our way home we detoured through aforementioned ‘Mother Of All Markets’ which was arranged around the outer walls of the Medici Fortress, in itself quite impressive. This weekly market is the biggest in Tuscany and obviously attracts shoppers from far and wide judging by the number of nearby parked coaches and packed car parks. It was for the most part selling ‘wares’ which mostly describes the plethora of synthethic clothing items that you wouldn’t want to be wearing whilst standing too close to a naked flame, but there were a few food stalls, including a marvellous one selling the opium of the Hampsons, roast pig in a bun. We purchased one each, resisted the urge to just scarf them down there and then, beetled back to the bus, added some cheese, warmed them under the grill and enjoyed our dopamine lunch high in the warm and dry. Mmmmm.

Porchetta devoured we headed back into the countryside and the region of Chianti. Our destination, the small town of Castellina in Chianti, plucked from obscurity on a recommendation from our good friend, Dean, who came here eons ago. The good news about old, rural Italian towns is that they are mostly unchanged by the passage of eons of time, and this was a great spot to stop and visit for a couple of nights.

Think Chianti, think wine. Think of the traditional fiasco, the squat bottles wrapped in straw baskets. Historically this was to protect them during transport and to be able to provide a flat base for the original round bottomed, hand blown bottles. Once synonymous with Chianti, now only a few wine makers bottle wine in fiasci, most having gone to the more standard-shaped bottles. We, of course, directed our wanderings into a cave on the edge of the town.

They had wine production and sales here but no tastings, so with a moderate ‘cart-before-the-horse’ technique of wine buying, we purchased a couple of bottles (including a fiasco) of the local brew here, then found their wine shop in the centre of town in which to do some wine tasting drinking. Here they had one of those self-service wine dispensing machines that takes cards. Coupled with a small plate of nibbles, some interesting chat from our host, and a self guided tour of their small 600 yr old wine cellar, we had a pretty happy hour. At four o’clock in the afternoon.

The symbol of Chianti is the black cockrel. It adorns any and everything deemed to be authentically Chianti. This has its origins in a legend from the Middle Ages when the Republics of Siena and Florence were fighting a bloody war for control of the Chianti area. There was proposed a competition to decide the matter once and for all. On a specified day a knight from each of the towns would ride off at dawn towards each other and the border would be drawn at their meeting point. The start time for this would be dawn, determined by the first crowing of a rooster. Siena chose a white cockrel, who was much pampered and because of this he was happy as Larry, had a lie-in on that day, not waking and crowing until after dawn. Florence chose a black cockrel who was shut in a tiny cage and not fed for several days. He was really pissed off and started shouting about it well before dawn. Thus Florence’s knight had a very cheeky head start and consequently the Republic of Florence took ownership of a much larger chunk of Chianti than Siena, a situation that persists today.

The gloomy and damp weather continued here, slightly curtailing our plans to go for a longer walk but we did get to appretiate the charms of the town of Castillana, explore an unusual nearby cemetry and do some laundry. Sometimes travel is low key.

Our visit to Florence was another of our anticipated ‘big ticket’ destinations of the trip. A place that many people have expressed as being one of the most beautiful cities that they have visited. I was looking forward to it. Our choice of camping spot was heavily influenced by its proximity to the location of the city’s Parkrun, which was to be my last of the trip. The ‘spot’ was a free car park in a residential city suburb that was on a bus route into the centre of Florence. Pretty ideal. We arrived and were lucky to snag the last space big enough for us, pleased not to have had to resort to our non-existant Plan B. We had three nights here, giving us two whole days in Florence and we spent the afternoon organising our plan of attack and booking tickets to the Ufuzzi, the famous art gallery.

Day one in Florence started with the Parkrun that was in a small park a mere 500m from our spot. It was another event where the field was bulked out with a bunch of British tourists. It is amazing how many UK Parkrun enthusiasts turn up at various events elsewhere. The locals are quite bemused but very welcoming. I wonder whether the next 20 years will see the snowballing British enthusiasm for this event be matched in other countries. I hope so.

Post run (no records broken for me) we showered, had brunch and caught the bus into Florence. We were moderately overdressed as the weather improved considerably as the day progressed, but that was better than the reverse situation. Our meanderings took in many of the streets of the old town, random small churches and official buildings. Everywhere you looked there was an impressive statue or a fountain, sometimes combined.

The main sight of the city is the spectacular Duomo, or Cathedral Santa Maria del Fiore. Built between 1296 and 1436, its pink and green marble edifices dominate the square in which it sits and its huge octagonal dome, designed by the architect Brunelleschi is still the largest masonry dome in the world. The queue to get in was ridiculous so we just admired it from the outside, as is our usual technique of sightseeing.

We saw the other sights of Piazza della Signoria, Campanile di Giotto, Palazzo Vechio and Ponte Vecchio and on multiple occasions braved running the gauntlet of the market stalls around the Mercato Centrale. More than 50% of the stalls were selling copious quantities of ‘Italian made’ leather goods, but I am not sure how genuine their provenance was. They all looked a bit too samey to me.

We continued our strollings across the river, starting to think about the next meal. Nick had his eyes on another Bourdain establishment, but unfortunately it was shut. By the time we had walked back towards the main central area of the city we were hit with that inescapable truth of eating out in Italian. The good restaurants, catering to locals and serving good quality, authentic food are open for lunch and then dinner. If you are hungry between 3.30pm and 7.30pm then you are in trouble. Either you stay hungry or you are committed to eating at one of the throng of lesser restaurants catering to tourists. We did several laps of the centre, wishing this not to be true, getting hungrier and more irritated with each other, finally caving and picking the least tacky place we could find. It was food, it was disappointing, it was a lesson learnt. We went home.

The next day we were back in the city and during another hour or two of wandering we stopped for a pitstop whilst exploring the indoor Mercato Centrale. On our way round we came across this stall creating cheesy goodness by just rolling cooked ravioli or gnocchi directly inside a round of parmesan. Mmmmm. Despite how lovely this looked we decided that we needed to sample the local delicacy of a lampredotto (tripe) sandwich. This is strips of a cows 4th stomach, slow cooked in a tomato sauce and served in a bun. We shared one between us and caused a fine old mess in the act of passing it backwards and forwards. It was quite tasty, but I think that was mainly due to the sauce. I wouldn’t rush to have another one. In the market the food was served street style, but the drinks were served to the tables by wait staff. It seemed rude not to have a glass of white wine too.

In the afternoon we had tickets to visit The Uffuzi. More acurately titled the ‘Galleria Degli Uffuzi’, this is Florence’s premier art museum and houses the world’s greastest collection of Italian Renaissance art in the enormous U-shaped ‘Palazzo degli Uffuzi’. Originally built in the 1500s as a government administration building, the Palazzo still bears the mark of its origins, with ufuzzi meaning offices in Italian. It also is home to an unfeasibly large collection of sculptures, many from Ancient Greece. It was an epic place to visit, both in quantity and quality of the artworks, and in the sheer size of the building and number of visitors. The info advised allowing 3-4 hours for a visit. We managed to stick it out for 2 hours, doing a moderately abridged ‘rapi-tour’ of the place, dodging the crowds and whizzing past pieces that didn’t interest us. There were some key works by Botticelli, Michaelangelo, Räphael, Carravagio and Leonardoda Vinci, so we feel that we have ‘done’ some greats as well as generally soaking up some culture.

There was also this sculpture that looks uncannily like my father. He said it didn’t look like him as it had no glasses, but I fixed that.

Florence had been lovely, with some quite beautiful sights to behold. We had seen a lot of them and our Old Sh*t appretiation batteries were running very low. Our next planned stop was Pisa. Did we need to see another old city with a tourist-trap hot spot? Mmmm…… Could we really bypass Pisa and its famous tower whilst passing so close by? No, of course not! To Pisa we go!!

We really did just make this a whistle-stop visit. We arrived at lunch time, found the only campsite in the city, settled in and set off walking into the centre mid afternoon. Once we had made our way through the ubiquitous non-scenic, residential neighbourhood of appartment blocks we arrived in the old town and found the river, both of which were charming and beautiful. In fact, I may go as far to say, were generally more pleasing on the eye than Florence.

We initially walked a short distance away from the centre to find ‘Tuttomondo’, a large mural done by the renowned American mural artist Keith Haring. This is on the rear wall of a church and one of the last he painted before his death a few months later from AIDS in 1990.

We walked back to the old town and went to find the tower. This was obviously not difficult. It was just a question of continually walking in the direction where there were more people than where we were at any particular moment in time. We felt like homing pigeons, equipped with an innate talent for navigation.

For all the photos that I have seen of the Leaning Tower of Pisa, I was still quite suprised by it. I was suprised with how small it is, how beautiful it is, how clean and well restored it is, and, most suprisingly, how ‘leany’ it is. I was also suprised by the other two handsome buildings sharing the large Cathedral Square with the tower, namely Pisa Cathedral and the Pisa Bapistry. They both are also worthy of photographs. The whole area has large grassy areas, creating some separation from the crowds and improving the views. The Cathedral and Bapistry also have some degree of subsidence due to their unstable foundations, causing the brain to be slightly confused as to what constitutes the normal horizontal and weirdly, in all my photos the tower seems to be leaning less than it is in real life

I could write a paragraph here about the history of the tower, its lean and the massive job between 1993 and 2001 to correct its tilt from an alarming 5.5 degrees to an acceptable 3.97 degrees, but I am tired of all that history stuff.

We appretiated the buildings and the tower in the light of the setting sun, ate pizzas in a tourist restauarant at 5.30pm, because, well, that was the time we were hungry and we had obviously not learnt our lesson, and then we walked home in the dark.

Our time in Tuscany had come to an end. It had been quite different from how I had pictured it, but marvelous nonetheless. From here we continued northwest, and back to the coast of the ‘Italian Riviera’

13th Oct – 21st Oct 2024

I feel that all our travels through the historic old towns and cities of Europe to date, and all our admiration of ancient churches, castles and streets and squares, has been preparing us for this part of this trip. Like runners preparing for a marathon, we have been in Old Sh*t training. We have put in the kilometers, our gaze has fallen upon many an olden thing. Are we now ready for the main event? We have seen ‘old’, but that was mostly late Middle Ages/Medieval/Renaissance old. Now we were going to experience ‘way older than that‘, and flipping loads of it. All at once. Lace up the shoes, Hampsons, it’s time to visit Rome and Pompeii.

I don’t know who else spent hours of classics lessons in their early teens learning about the tragedy that befell the town of Pompeii on 24th August 79 AD when Mount Vesuvius errupted burying the town under 6m of hot ash and pumice stone and annihilating all its inhabitants with toxic gas, but I did, and this place, and it’s history, is seared into my childhood soul. Nick felt the same. Of course we were going. That Pompeii is one of Italy’s most visited tourist destinations was the moderate downside that we were just going to have to deal with.

We booked a campsite almost next door to the main entrance of the ruins, or scavi as they are known here, and headed across the lower leg of the country to arrive in Pompeii, mid shin, on the Bay of Naples. To get here we had to pass by the Sorrento Peninsula, home of the Amalfi coast. This was a place that we would have loved to see but one that is just not practical in a motor home. Narrow, steep roads and a dearth of flat land make it better suited to a future trip in a convertible car.

As the motorway snaked its way towards the coast and to our destination there it was. Just there. Mount bl**dy Vesuvius! Just an everyday sight for all that live here in its shadow. But to us, a mythical thing. We arrived, installed in camp, and set about our plan of attack for our visit the next day. The reality of visiting the ruins is that unless you book some sort of tour, the queues are riduculous. The other reality is that there are about 57,000 outfits offering tours, of which only a few are highly recommended. We made our choice and booked on line. At the allotted time of our tour the next day we arrived at the meeting point, along with about 100 fellow tourers. This looked bad until we realised that the company had five tours in various languages all starting at the same time. Not so bad.

Our guide was a very tall, angular and dishy Italian chap called Vitale, who had no need of the ubiquitous tour guide prop of an jazzy umbrella or eye-catching scarf tied to the top of a long stick. We just followed his eye catching cheek bones and silky pony tail that soared a foot above the heads and shoulders of all us lesser mortals. Vitale was a font of Pompeii knowledge, it being his job n’all, and expertly guided us through the hoards of other tour groups and folk doing their own exploring, strangley managing to sweet talk us to the front of many queues controlled by lady docents. There was masses to see and a lot of information to take in, so I won’t even attempt to summarise it all here, just share a few factoids that stood out to me.

Did you know….

…that if the wind had been blowing the other way on the day of the erruption it would have been nearby Naples that copped it? As it happened, they barely had to bring the laundry in.

…that the ruins were only discovered in the late 1500s, major excavations only commenced in the mid 1700s and by the 1960s it had been significantly uncovered but then left to decay? There is a new area being excavated as we speak.

…that no actual bodies were found? Those had long since decomposed. What were left were hollow voids in solidified ash. The archeologists made plaster moulds of these, creating models of the people that died. For some reason it still felt weird to take any photos of them.

…that Mount Vesuvius had given plenty of warnings of an imminant erruption in the form of numerous earthquakes? A big one in 62AD had caused lots of damage and fires, leading to many buildings being in a state of partial repair at the time of the erruption and causing many people to have already left.

…that the Romans were quite preoccupied with the images of male genitalia? These were seen as a talisman for good luck and prosperity and were liberally used to decorate their homes. Obviously I had no scrupples about taking any photos of those.

…that inexplicably the brothel is one the most popular buildings of Pompeii with the tourists? It’s just a bunch of rooms, people. No plaster models of victims who died ‘in flagrante’ to be seen here.

…that Pompeii was once a port town, but the erruption changed the topography of the area and it is now 2km from the Bay of Naples?

The whole place is just so amazingly preserved. There are loads of beautiful and detailed frescos and countless excavated homes, restaurants, shops, temples, water fountains, roads, baths, the forum, the Basillica, an amphitheatre. It was also very apparent that the Romans were WAY ahead of the rest of Europe when it came to living standards and personal hygiene.

After our three hour tour ended we dragged our weary bones back to base and considered the rest of our day. It was 2pm. Option one: relax and do nothing. Option two: go to Sorrento in the late afternoon for a mooch around and an early dinner. Option two prevailed. Our well placed campsite was also a mere stone’s throw from the station and an hour and a half later we were on the very full, overheated, standing-room only train to Sorrento.

On arrival we gave the main areas of the old town our usual treatment of ‘walking about’, saw the quite unusual deep ravine right behind the main street that is the site of a now defunct water mill, and then set about finding a spot with a view for a sundowner drink. Lonely Planet did us proud again, leading us to the bar of Hotel Bellevue Syrene which had an amazing terrace and an epic view of the Bay of Naples and Mount Vesuvius.

Here we enjoyed the changing light as the sun disappeared behind us, watching the scuttle of boats returning from a day on the water, and drinking some delicious wine. It was very fancy with free nibbles and everything. We offset the sizeable drinks bill with a cheap and cheerful pizza dinner – we are nothing if not adaptable – and the train home, with excess pizza in hand, was another standing-room only affair. We were glad to get home and glad to have managed to have squeezed a little slice of the Amalfi coast into this trip.

From Pompeii we continued north to Rome, by-passing Naples on the way. This motorway journey was busy and frenetic, showcasing the Italian driving attitudes and skills in all their glory. The main facts of the case are: Lots of Italians drive small, economical cars. Perfect for whizzing around congested cities, not so good for making decisive overtaking manouvres or joining motorways at an adequate speed on the ridiculously short slip roads on Italian Autostrada. Italians also don’t worry too much about indicating. That would imply that they are aware that they may be someone behind them to indicate to. Italians handle a car as if it is a droplet of water in a river. The general dynamics of ‘flow’ past and around other objects is the ethos of their driving, rather than conventional ‘rules of the road’. Once these principles are embraced, stress levels whilst driving can fall. Nick is slowly managing to embrace these principles. And so to Rome!

Our Rome camp was a utilitarian place within spitting distance of a tram stop that meant that we were only 20 minutes from the centre of the city. Very handy. We had planned four nights here, so three full days to ‘do’ Rome. We spent the afternoon of our arrival day doing some planning and logistics. What to see. What not to see. Where to eat and when. We hit the guide books and the internet and made some decisions. The first, and hardest, decision was to part with a not inconsiderable amount of money to do a Vatican tour. Trying to see it ‘solo’ involves a lot of time spent in queues and we thought that we’d get much more out of it with the wisdom of a tour guide. This was going to be the one and only Vatican City visit in our lifetime. It was now or never. We bit the bullet and booked a tour for the next afternoon. The other sight that neeeded significant pre-planning for a visit was the Colosseum, next available tickets being the afternoon after that. We also booked a ticket and time slot to go into the Pantheon. All this organising and spending money on tickets and tours was exhausting and alien to our usual ‘wander and admire from the outside’ technique of sightseeing. We needed a lie down.

There is so much to see in Rome and much of what it has to offer is so ancient, so well preserved and so famous that it is quite overwhelming. There are obviously also many, many other people who are here for the same reason and this definitely creates crowds to be endured. We joined the salmon run.

The Vatican is a place of extremes. It is an extremely small country, with only 121 acres of land. It is extremely light on women with only about 5% of its 450 citizens being female. It has an extremely convoluted security and walking route to get in. It is extremely popular with about 6.7 million visitors per year. It is extremely full of priceless artifacts, paintings and sculptures, the collections amassed by various Pontifs thoughout the centuries who spent an extreme amount of money making the place look nice.

The Sistine Chapel was extremely beautiful but so full of people that there was ‘shuffling room’only. It was hard to find a spot to stand still so to be able to look at the frescos and Michelangelo’s famous pieces. Viewing was hard on the neck. The rules of ‘no noise and no photos’ was ignored by many, including me, and I was extremely naughty and took a quick snap. I felt that I had paid enough money and deserved one.

Our tour tickets ensured us a ‘back door’ entry to St Peter’s Basillica thus avoiding a long wait. This is the Catholic Church’s HQ, its flagship store, a main showroom. It is extremely massive. So big that the usual scale of a church or cathedral is lost. There is almost no seating meaning that the space is undefined and open, with huge spans and domes, sculptures and art. Of all of the tour, this was the most impressive bit. Our guide was not permitted to continue the tour inside, so she said her farewell and cut us loose at the enormous door so we could look around by ourselves. We did a loop and then headed for the exit across St Peter’s Square.

The Vatican had been interesting, but not worth what we had spent on the tour. As non-Catholics our visit had not been about faith or pilgrimage, it had been solely about seeing, and what struck me was the embarrassment of extreme wealth that had been tied up over the ages for the use, enjoyment and worship of so few. We wandered back to the tram stop via a rosé pit stop and headed home.

Day two in Rome was a biggie with many kilometers covered on foot. We started our day with a tram and then a bus ride across town to see the Pantheon. On the bus we met a young honeymooning couple from Texas who had come via Florence and Paris. He was bemoaning the lack of good beer in Italy and that the burgers in France weren’t as good as in Texas. We agreed with him wholeheartedly, whilst politely and subtley intimating that perhaps these countries have other marvels of food and drink to offer that might be different from those in Texas. Not sure if he got it. It was very hot and crowded on the bus so we got off early and walked.

The Pantheon. Classical facade with columns, amazing domed circular room. Lots of colourful marble everywhere. Nice and symmetrical. Loved it.

From here we set off across town towards the Forum passing, amongst other things, the Victor Emmanuel ll Monument, aka The Vittoriano/The Typewriter/The Wedding Cake, a veritable spring chicken of a magnificent construction having only been finished in 1935. It is one of Italy’s national monuments dedicated to the first king of a united Italy and houses the Tomb of The Unknown Soldier.

We passed the Largo di Torre Argentina, an archeolgical site uncovered in 1929 that was 20 ft below street level and has the remains of four ancient Roman temples and the site of the Theatre of Pompy, where Julius Caesar was murdered in 44BC. Now it is a cat santuary in which about 200 cats are cared for. All just lying around amongst the ancient ruins, being fed by volunteers. ‘Et Tu, Kitte?’

The Forum is madness. A large gap in the fabric of modern time and space where an ancient Roman time portal sits. It is a massive swathe of the ruins of buldings and arches and columns and squares and temples and roads and ramps and steps and shops. Here was the heart of the city for many centuries. Built and rebuilt, modified and renovated, added to and demolished. A place to meet, trade, govern, judge and worship. Just here. The ancient past poking its head into our present. All those people from the past getting on with their lives in their own present with no idea that we would be so captivated by what they had built, and left behind, so far into the future. Sometimes I get overwhelmed by history.

We did a bit of the Palatine Hill and then needed a sit down and a sandwich which revived us sufficiently to continue cruising around, soaking up more Old Sh*t that I don’t even know the names of. It was everywhere. Ruin here, ruin there. An arch way! A column! A temple! Here was a market place. Over there was a palace. All over the blimin’place. Good job we had trained for this.

Throughout the day we were repeatedly approached by hawkers selling identical bracelets. All young African men, all with the same patter. ‘Nice shoes! Where are you from?’ ‘Have a bracelet for free, I’m celebrating – my wife just had a baby yesterday!’ Classic, basic sales psychology that they obviously all learnt from the same person for whom they were working. It must get results though. We passed many a tourist sporting a wristful of bracelets or being encouraged to look at a photo on a phone that I am sure was a generic newborn baby. We started preempting the patter by complimenting them on their shoes first.

Finally our late afternoon time slot for our Colosseum visit had arrived and we headed there. This is another place that is an ancient history lesson hard-hitter with near mythical status and consequently another very popular spot. We joined the procession around its walls and paid a little extra to be able to get onto the central arena area. It is hugely impressive and we were able to appretiate it in the golden hour of the day. I felt the history time warp here too, being conscious of the past presence of all the people who had sat here and watched the gladiatorial spectacles and all the lives lost for their entertainment. I am a logical, practical scientist type, but sometimes I get a bit adrift on the time contiuum.

Post colosseum we found a bar nearby and had a much welcome sit down and aperitif before walking to our final appointment of the day: dinner at Trattoria Morgana, another Anthony Bourdain destination. We spent the entire meal chatting with our closely situated table neighbour, an Australian called Tess. She too was on a Bourdain pilgrimage and was very good company. The highlight of the meal was a starter of fried octopus on a bed of warm hummus with fresh rosemary. Unexpectedly wonderful. Then we went home, but not before exchanging contact details with Tess and threatening to visit her next time we were in Melbourne.

Day three in Rome took us past the small church of Santa Maria della Vittoria to see a renown sculpture called The Ecstasy Of St Theresa by Gian Lorenzo Bernini. This was beautiful with some delightfully kitch golden rays of light reflecting some actual rays of sunlight coming from a hidden skylight. Artistic genius.

We continued up to and through the park of Villa Bourgese and past the National Gallery of Modern Art. We were going to go in, as an antidote to all the Old Sh*t, but decided we didn’t have the cerebral cortex space spare for any major inputs. Confusingly it is located in the the quite old, 17th century building of a former Barefoot Carmelite monastery.

Our wanderings had a lunch purpose from here and the committment to our Anthony Bourdain fandom thinks nothing of making a 4km walking detour to eat at one of his destinations. This time it was ‘Ciaco e Pepe’, an eatery named after its most popular dish. Translating to ‘cheese and pepper’ this simple yet delicious dish comprises solely of spaghetti, or its fatter cousin, tonnarelli, combined with grated pecorino romano and black pepper. The place sold vats of the stuff, rapidly serving up generous €10 portions on a jolly and busy pavement terrace. ‘Fast food’, Roman-style, with a wine on the side of course.

From here (here being a random residential district) we headed back towards the snake pit of the tourist destinations. We headed along, and then over, the River Tiber, then along to Piazza del Popolo, The People’s Square. One of the ancient, main gateways of the city, formerly Flamina, laterly Porta del Popolo stands here. Pilgrims and traders arriving to Rome on the Via Flamina, a road built in 220 BC to link Rome with the Adriatic Sea, entered the city here. Seriously Old Sh*t. The crowds increased as the modern day Via Flamina led us to The Spanish Steps and then we really braced ourselves for a visit to the Trevi Fountain. This suprised me. It was much bigger and more impressive than I had imagined, the scale of it being a bit distorted by the fact that it is in quite a small square. It also was not the Trevi Fountain, it was the Trevi Sculpture, having being emptied for cleaning and maintenance over the Autumn. We tossed no coins and made no wishes. Next summer you will need to book a ticket and time slot to see it.

Finally we headed back towards our tram stop, past the Piazza Venezia, more ruins (or were they the same ruins from yesterday – I wasn’t sure at this point) and went home. We were pooped. We had ‘done’ Rome. Our feet had done about 36km over three days. Our brains were full of facts and mental images. We had taken all the requisite photos. We had eaten some excellent Italian food (they just call it food here). We had sampled the public transport. We had observed the city driving (small cars, lots of them, mostly Smart cars and Fiat Pandas, mostly dented, can park anywhere). We were ready to move on.

There was just one more small thing to do before we left Rome. After all, it was a Saturday morning, so we all know what that means! We saddled up early, and despite the heavy rain, my lovely husband pretended that he was driving a Fiat Panda and bashed through the narrow streets of some suprisingly-busy-considering-it-was-8am-on-a-Saturday-morning residential areas to take me to one of Rome’s two Parkruns. We found the the last available and suitable parking space within a 1km radius of the start, pulled out the coats and umbrellas, and headed to the park. It was a bit of a mud-fest, but the field of 60-odd gave it a good buzz and I puddle-jumped my way round whilst chatting to a German girl, also called Sara. The rain stopped soon after the start so Nick didn’t get too miserable whilst he waited for me and after a quick car park below-knee hose-off we were on our way again.

We headed north into Tuscany and to a curious place that warranted a small detour. Near a village called Saturnia, in the middle of the hills, fields and forests, lies a strange place called Saturnia Hot Springs. As the name might suggest, this is a thermal area, but is unusually fed by a hot cascade rather than a hot spring that bubbles up from below. Consequently it has formed a series of very scenic, terraced hot pools that are hard to describe. It was also hard to take a decent photo, so I have borrowed one from the interweb to show you.

Miraculously it is free, refreshingly undeveloped and although can get busy, there was plenty of space for everyone in a pool somewhere. The pools closer to the waterfall were hotter but busier, so we found an empty pool half way up the terraces and compromised a little on the perfect temperature. There are some lockers and changing rooms but most folk just dumped their bags on the rough banks and then squelched back to the carpark in their towels and wet cozzies. Our camp was about 1.5km away, and plenty of people were walking down to the pools in their robes from where we were. Perfectly normal in this neck of the woods. The nearby village of Saturnia, perched on its hilltop, also got a visit from us. It had the usual offerings of old church, some Roman relics, a quaint square, an old fort and some shops, but lurking amongst the handful of bistros and cafes was a small, unassuming steak restaurant that had found its way onto the list of ‘The best 100 steak restaurants in the world’. Fancy that!

We had a couple of nights here, enough to gather our thoughts after our frenetic city exploits and to give us a little taste of Tuscany, which was the next focus of our trip.

4th Oct – 13th Oct 2024

With the rain finally having eased and blue sky visible again we headed back to the motorway and onwards to Rimini. This was a sleepy sand dune bit of coast until the mid 19th century when it was developed as a beach resort and by the end of the 20th century had morphed into a throbbing mega-resort well known for its boistrous night-club scene. Just what we were looking for, she lied.

The old town, situated slightly back from the beach, has an impressive Roman history, and the film director, Federico Fellini is the city’s most famous son. We stopped for just one night here achieving the following (in chronological order):

Laundry.

A 20 minute walk to the old town. Destination ‘Nud e Crud’, a cafe in the old fishermans’ district of Borgo San Giuliano that does gourmet piadine (toasted flatbread sandwiches) as recommended by Lonely Planet. Delicious.

A walk around the French themed market that was set up in the square. We caved and bought chocolatey marshmallow treats that ended up being less tasty than they looked.

A cycle out to the beach to view the mega-resort. It was very quiet and all the beach clubs were closed and packed up for the season. Unfortunately the mini-golf was closed too. Tragedy.

Sleep. Despite the din of more heavy rain overnight.

Rimini Parkrun. This was back near the lunch spot of yesterday and had the impressive backdrop of a 1st century Roman bridge. The rain had stopped but it was cold and quite squelchy underfoot. The small field of 24 was half British and I didn’t come last! Nick was a bit of a popsicle by the time I finished.

Rimini market. A weekly,sprawling affair offering mainly clothes that we navigated through on the way back from the Parkrun. I found a stall selling pre-loved knitwear and am now the proud own of an over sized, hand knitted Bolivian wool jumper that spent two days in the freezer before being allowed in the cupboard. It will need to be subzero before I can consider wearing it without risking hyperthermia.

From Rimini we headed south down the east coast, putting in a relatively long day on the road for us. It was motorway all the way and we passed through the region of Marche and into Abruzzo. The further south we went, the more olive groves there were. We stopped for two nights in a random coastal town called Cologna Spiaggia in which we found a small cheap beachfront camp in amongst the large expensive beachfront camps. This was overseen by an old chap called Fransisco who spoke no English and who took some money from us, but, in retrospect, I don’t think enough. The place had a comfortable unkemptness, bordering on the shabbby, but all this was forgotten when looking at the sea and listening to the waves. The sun was shining and the cold dankness of the past few days melted away. We spent our time sitting, reading, walking and chatting to neighbours. It was tempting to consider not moving for a week but we managed to drag ourselves away and continue south.

Another longish day on the road brought us through the region of Molise and into Puglia. Here we stopped at the coastal town of Trani, another reasonably randomly selected spot that entirely fullfilled the remit. It was a coastal town not far off the motorway with a pretty harbour, a few impressive old buildings and a cheap, secure camper park a short walk away from it all.

We strolled to the waterfront in the mid afternoon, the day still hot and sunny, appretiating the seafront fortress, the enormous church and the slightly faded, ornamental park along the way. Only about half of the harbourfront eateries and bars were open and as the sun disappeared in the west the rest were cast into a rapidly cooling shade.

There was one bar on the harbour wall that clung to a slither of fading sunlight and we beetled there for a sundowner apperitif before heading home. It seems that only a short time has passed since we were seeking shade when sitting outside. In October we are like lazy cats, basking in any pool of sunshine that we can find. As dusk settled in we walked back along the harbour’s edge and discovered the low-key fresh fish market. The fishing fleet had returned and was directly selling its catch from the dockside. It looked amazing, but we had to resist any purchases. Small space and messy/smelly fish cooking not ideally suited. Better in the BBQ era of this trip.

From Trani we continued south for a while then cut inland into the Itria Valley. The landscape was rocky with softly rolling hillsides, covered almost exclusively in olive groves. This whole swathe of Italy is groaning with olive trees, as far as the eye can see. Unfortunately, there was another unexpected and disappointing thing that Puglia is groaning under the weight of, and that is litter. This beautiful countryside is cursed by fly tipping and every layby, roadside, and ditch is full of rubbish. Often this is bagged up, or spilling out of a bag, making it obvious that it has been deliberately dumped rather than carelessly discarded out of a car window. It was depressing and infuriating. There seems to be an apathy here about changing the situation. The authorities not investing any manpower into doing clean ups and the people not making any effort to tidy up their own imediate environments. I think they are all blinded to the situation now. It is a shame.

Our first port of call was Alberobello, a small town with a big drawcard. Trulli houses. The whole area is dotted with them but Alberbello has the biggest concentration in one place. Apparently about 1500. A trulli house is a small round limestone building built in dry stone construction with a conical shaped roof. They are often in adjoining clusters, each one forming a room of a dwelling or a farm building. They look like charming hobbit houses and it is impossible not to take photos of them.

We managed to stay close to the centre of the town in a place that was part car park, part olive grove run by a chap that looked like a southern Italian version of a young Alexei Sayle. It was only a short walk from here to the trulli house/tourist trap area so no time was wasted before we were able to imerse ourselves in the crowds. Most of the trulli are now converted into tourist tat shops/retaurants/bars but some entrepenurial owners were just opening their propertiesfor tours, either by payment or ‘donation’. They are all interconnected by narrow walkways and passages and (commerce aside) the whole place was quite magical. The place was crawling with ‘Insta-ready’ young things, fully made up with flowing tresses, flouncing around in neutral tone garb, pouting and photographing the sh!t out of themselves. (Next stop a lavender field in Provence, darling!) We were bemused, as usual, as to the world of social media and its driving forces, reduced to quietly mocking them all for our own personal entertainment. Perhaps that is its point!

We spent a day a’bike, cruising through the country lanes of the area, visiting another couple of noteable and scenic towns along our way, Martina Franca and Locorotondo. Both were situated on hills and both had handsome old towns with mazes of narrow lanes and impressive, ancient old churches and predominantly white or pale buildings. We had lunch of a meat platter and burrata salad washed down with a couple of glasses of chilled Pinot Gris in Martina Franca and chocolate ice creams with a view in Locorotondo. Like a progressive dinner. But for lunch. On bicycles. Our little, suspension-free, electric bikes are not the perfect machines for long distance cruising on uneven roads but they do the job and it was (mostly) a very enjoyable 40km in the saddle.

On our onward journey from Alberobello we stopped at another very scenic, hilltop, white, ancient village, Ostuni.

A brief hour and a half’s wander was sufficient to appretiate its charms, including sampling its local, sweet, custard-filled delicacy, Pasticotti. It was very warm (27 dec C) and rather than staying here for the night, we decided to escape the hoards and the heat and headed to the nearby coast.

Here we found a beach side, free parking spot in a small faded seaside resort called Specchiolla and had what was probably our final sunbathe on the beach/dip-in-the-sea experience of the season.

This was slightly marred by an unpleasant interaction with a mother and young daughter who not-so-subtley sidled up to our bag on the beach whilst we were in the water. Their complete incompetance as thieves gave me opportunity to dash out of the water like a charging hippo and confront them before they could make off with Nick’s phone and my underwear. Their feeble ‘what us?’ expressions and whatever the f**k bullshit Italian excuses they mumbled not convincing me as to their innocent intentions. We moved a significant distance down the beach and kept our beady eyes on them. This has been our only disagreeable experience with people in 6 months, so not bad going.

The next day we made our final push south towards the town of Lecce, into the heel of the Italy’s boot. We didn’t make it all the way there, feeling that we probably had seen plenty of old and beautiful towns for the time being, instead heading for a place in the middle of nowhere. Parco Naturale Regionale Bosco e Paludi di Rauccio. This was not a random destination. This was Friday and the place was the site of a Parkrun tomorrow morning. The road here took us through many more olive groves that looked different from the others. The fat-trunked, elderly, ‘grandfather’ olive trees had all been cut back, removing all the branches containing foliage. Some had had time to resprout, others were still naked. Scattered amongst these groves were newly planted ones. I found out later that this pollarding was to try and salvage trees affected by disease. Sometimes it works, sometimes the trees succumb and need replacing.

The last 2km of the road was gravel with deep pot-holes, giving everything in the cupboards, and us, a good old rattle. There may have been some expletives from the ‘non-Parkrunning’ member of our contingent as we bounced down the track. It was worth it though, when we arrived at the deserted parking area which was in the middle of a peaceful swathe of olive trees and scrub land. Nearby was a lesser used picnic area with a few overgrown facilities and initially it felt a bit like the setting for the opening scene of an episode of CSI where exploring teenagers make a grizzly discovery. The reality was that this was a supremely peaceful spot that we only shared with one other (distantly parked) camper that night. There was a beautiful sunset, lots of wildlife noises, and aside from a few pesky mosquitos, was one of our favourite camping spots of the trip.

It was also the location for mainland Europe’s most southerly and most remote (ie furthest from another Parkrun) Parkrun. The start line was a very convienient 10 metres from where were were camping and although it was 11 km from the main civilisation of Lecce, it attracted a field of about 12 people, half of which were British/Irish tourists. This was a gem of an event run by the very friendly Saverio, with his mum as the only other volunteer and official cake baker. The after-run breakfast of cakes and pastries was fully attended by the participants as barcode scanning did not happen until after we had all assembled and had a plate of sweet treats in our hands. One British couple have a second home in Italy 110km away and come every week they are here to do this run, supplying baked goods too. An Irish, Parkrun-committed, holidaying couple paid a taxi driver to bring them here from their accomodation 50km away, to wait for them and take them back again. Got to admire the passion!

At about 11am, with blood sugar levels running high and much post-run chat under our belts we said our goodbyes and headed off. Our day’s journey took us past the port-city of Taranto and into the region of Basilicata where it was immediately obvious that the attitudes to litter and the investment into keeping the place tidy were very different than in Puglia. It was a relief. Our next destination was the ‘jewel’ of Matera.

Noteable not just for the fact that it was a set location for an epic car chase in the most recent Bond movie, No Time To Die, this is Italy’s oldest, and possibly the world’s third oldest, continuously occupied settlement, there being evidence of habitation here since about 7000 years ago. The original people made their homes in natural limestone caves in the sides of the gorge of the Gravina river and countless subsequent generations dug more caves, embellished and elaborated original caves and created a village clinging to the gorge sides, complete with cave churches, homes and businesses.

The caves, or sassi, were mostly single room dwellings and the living conditions of the people occupying them into the middle of the 20th century were dire compared to the improving standards of modern life. They were deemed to be the ‘Shame of Italy’ and the sassi dwellers were removed from their homes.

Recent decades have seen the gentrification of the sassi areas and such was the turn around in its fortunes it is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site and a magnet for those hunting an achingly beautiful and intensely interesting place to visit and stay.

It is a very special spot that is difficult to do justice to with our snaps. Search out better ones on line, or even better, come here yourself. Avoid the summer months and definitely stay for sunset. It was even more beautiful as the light fell and the lights came on. Around every corner there was another view, a busker playing beautiful music and a narrow lane leading to another set of steps and another view. It was gorgeous.

There was the expected crowds of daytrippers and but we found a very stylish little hotel bar away from the mêlée for a sit down and a drink. Initially this was on their terrace and then we moved inside as it cooled down. The small foyer/breakfast room/lounge area was a renovated, white-washed cave dwelling no longer displaying any of the poverty that was of such concern in the 1950s. We were quite taken with the space and decided that it would be a perfect spot for a private party.

As we travel around Italy we are building our fantasy future itinerary. Where would we return to if we were to fly in and travel around in a convertible hire car? So far Venice was the only place firmly on the list. Matera has just been added.

And to finish off, a few other random snaps to share…

24th Sept – 4th Oct 2024

It was time to head to Lake Garda in preparation for a main event. As part of the celebrations for his 50th birthday this summer Nick’s cousin, Kris, wanted to come and find us on our travels. Many iterations of what this might look like, where this might happen and who it might involve were brainstormed and the final result was: Kris and Rick (Nick’s middle brother) would come out to Lake Garda for a weekend and we would rent an apartment for two nights. There would be a soupçon of sightseeing, some larking about in the lake, a plethora of perambulations, an excess of eating and a deluge of drinking. Nick and his two brothers grew up with Kris, their adult relationship cemented by a closely shared childhood. Their Whatsapp group is called’ The Four Hamigos’ and their common genetics undeniable. Despite their arrival into middle age, whenever two or more of them congregate, especially after a period of separation, there is a transmutation of their beings into a single entity. This morphing of man-flesh is always well fuelled and well lubricated and, especially if the quantity of accompanying Mrs Hampsons is low, there is the possibility of mayhem.

Accomodation was secured, their flights were booked and we opted to arrive a few days early to do some pre-planning and make sure we had a good place to leave Davide. Our stay was to be in the slightly unusually named area of Sportsman-Ceola, a small settlement with a big hotel and some appartments that is located on the easterly shore of the lake, equidistant between the towns of Garda and Bardolino, an easy 30 minute drive from Verona airport. The other thing that this area offered us was a big, reasonably priced, lakeside car park that allowed overnight camper vans and had the requisite services of water and drainage. It was only 200m from the appartment so provided a nearly perfect solution to the problem of what to do with Davide whilst we having our ‘nights on dry land’. Our only mild stress as we headed there was not knowing if there would be space for us. Our fears were unfounded as we pulled in and secured one of the best spaces, a mere stone’s throw from the lake.

There were about ten or so other campers, strategically occupying alternate parking bays at this more desireable end of the car park. This meant that we all had a bit of elbow room and although small cars might park between us between us if got busy, there was no space for campers to fill in….or so we thought! Later in the afternoon we strolled the very short distance to the lake shore and its small, grassy public beach to admire the view and check out the water access. Our ten minute absence coincided with the arrival of another camper (Italian, need it be said) that had heroically, and ludicrously, parked in the space next to us. It was even orientated so that its door opened exactly level with our door, and so close that there was not space to open either door without hitting the other. This was maddness as there were loads of other spaces. We gave them a knock and politely, but firmly suggested in our best sign language and simple English that they move. They acquiesced without a fuss and moved about 10m into a free area. We offered our best ‘Grazie mille!’ and we all got on with our days. It was unfathomable that they would have arrived, surveyed the car park as a whole, looked at the tiny gap next to us and thought “Yup, that’ll be good for us”, even if they weren’t considering how it might affect their prospective neighbour. I think that this episode sums up the Italians quite well (as far as I can make sweeping judgements on a whole nation of people having only been here a few weeks). They sail through life and space with a strong emphasis on their own sphere of existance rather than worrying too much on the opinion or needs of others outside this sphere. Their personal spheres are small spaces and they are used to butting up against each other, not really getting upset by it, or being called out for it. This also quite acurately describes their attitude to driving.

We had a few days before the boys arrived and it was a great opportunity to get orientated and explore the locale. As mentioned, the car park was right on the lake front, with only a hedge, the lakeside promenade and a small grassy area between us and the water. The weather was still amazing so we took the opportunity to get the paddle boards out again a couple of times, leaving them inflated and tucked under the van ready for the weekend. We also explored Garda and Bardolino, both about 2km away in opposite directions along the promenade, and hunted out a spot for dinner on Saturday evening. We settled on Bardelino and asked at a few choice restaurants if we could book a table. They all advised that they did not take reservations at this time of year as it was getting quieter and it was easy to get a table. (We shall return to this.)

I also managed to get a haircut in these few days. That was an interesting experience. By virtue of our lack of shared language, my hairdresser and I barely communicated. There was a small amount of sign language to acertain roughly what I wanted, then I white-knuckled it in silence as she wielded scissors, thinners and clippers. All was fine in the end and I left happy. Ah, the lesser known adventures of travel.

Soon it was time to check into our accomodation and we had a couple of hours before the scheduled arrival of the Rick and Kris who were driving from the airport. The appartment was perfect. It had three bedrooms, a good communal space and a great terrace with lake views. It was only a five minute walk from Davide and we made the journey looking like homeless people, laden down with reuseable shopping bags full of clothes and provisions. I also took all our laundry, never one to look a gift washing machine in the mouth. We had bought some 50th birthday decorations for Kris, so bunting needed to be put up and balloons needed inflating and we also put together a platter of nibbles and made preparations for welcome cocktails. Add to that the fact that we had been substituting lake swims for actual washing over the past few days, we also needed to shower. It was a busy few hours.

Soon they were with us and the party began. The terrace was the perfect spot for sundowner drinks and snacks and later we headed to the very closely situated, lakeside pizzeria for dinner and beers. This was a magical spot, a place that you would travel to, and it was right on our doorstep. The rest of the evening played out fairly predictably with much liquid enhanced merriment and I retired to bed and left them to it.

There was a predictably slow start to the next day and it was midday before we left the building and strolled along the lake front to Garda.

It was a beautiful day to soak up some Italian autumn sunshine, sit in a waterfront cafe, rehydrate and watch the world go by, with most of the world here coming in Germanic form. They seem to make up 95% of the visitors to this area.

The rest of the afternoon was spent enjoying the lake itself. The appartment complex we were staying in had its own little private, grassy beach and a jetty so we grabbed the paddle boards and played in and on the water for a few hours.

The evening saw us washed, dressed and strolling in the other direction to Bardolino for dinner. On the way we stopped at another lakeside bar for a sunset drink and then headed to town.

May I just say here….’quieter at this time of year’, my ar$e. The place was heaving. We struggled to find a suitable restaurant, but we did prevail, settled ourselves into our outdoor seats under the large umbrellas in a courtyard and had just about ordered our drinks when the mother of all storms hit the town. There was thunder and lightning, torrential rain and hail and it was only because that we were in a sheltered courtyard that the wind did not blow everything away. 90% of the other diners decamped inside, but we were brave and managed to (mostly) stay dry under our umbrella.

The place was in chaos, the wait staff abandoning any hope of clearing up whilst until the storm passed over, concentrating instead on keeping tabs on who had moved to where. It was quite exciting. Our food was good, the wine excellent and the company sublime, obviously! We had the obligatory grappa digestif that was dispensed from a comically oversized glass bottle that was entrusted to me to hold for a moment. It was a nervous few seconds!

The wild weather was all done and dusted by the time we walked home and there was no repeat of the late night drinking as the boys realised that they are all middle aged men now and they cannot do it two nights in a row. That and the fact that they had drunk the entire weekend’s supply of booze on the first night.

Sunday morning saw clearer heads and an earlier start. We drove up the lakeshore in Kris and Rick’s rental car to the town of Malcesine. Here there is a cable car that goes to the summit of Monte Baldo giving a great view of the lake, the mountains and, if one is so inclined, a place to jump off and parapont. It was, of course, busy, but the lines moved with acceptable speed and within the hour we found ourselves at the top.

Here we appreciated the beautiful view, took snaps, watched paraponters and found a moderately challanging 5km loop to walk. It was a gorgeous day, last night’s rain having cleared away the haze. We were on a bit of a schedule as Rick and Kris had a flight to catch in the evening so we beetled back down the hill and drove back towards home. Our final destination was the superbly located Ristorante San Vigillio. This sits on a small promentory, co-located with a beautiful hotel that Kris and family had stayed at in the not too distant past. He thought it would be an excellent place for a late lunch and he was so very right.

The shady tables were crammed onto a stone built dock and overlooked the lake and the comings and goings of the small harbour here. The swankier customers can arrive by boat and be collected by a small tender. It was very chi chi and Kris treated us.

Finally it was time to get back to the appartment and for the UK contingent to head back to the airport. One major plus point of this appartment was that it offered a third night free, so Nick and I had a night to ourselves before we reversed the trip back to Davide, laden down with shopping bags filled with our possessions, including four loads of clean laundry. It had been a very fine weekend.

From Lake Garda we headed to Maranello. It would not be possible to bring my car obsessed husband to this vague area of Italy without a visit to the Ferrari museum, even if he is not particularly a Ferrari nut. We found a place to camp that was a short cycle out of town and spent a day in and around the birth place of the Prancing Horse. The day started with a non-Ferrari themed activity, a visit to a mobile phone provider. Here we procured an Italian data-only sim card to power our on-board wifi, our UK provider having changed their roaming T&Cs and effectively cut us off. Thanks for the memories, but we need Netflix….We will work out what to do in France when we get there.

Next we cycled to the museum. The area around here has loads of businesses offering Ferrari hourly rentals and ‘joy rides’ and every stretch of moderately straight bit of road circling the town has an excited Ferrari fan in a merch baseball hat behind the wheel of one of his dream cars, giving it ‘the beans’ and making ‘the noise’. The cars are a variety of models but all red, of course. Not many petrol heads arrive at the hallowed ground of Italian motoring by bicycle, consequently there was no bike rack to be seen so we just left ours in pride of place outside the front door.

The museum was, as expected, full of lovely, shiny, mostly red, examples of exquisite automotive engineering. They had a good selection of past Formula 1 cars too. And lots of trophies. It was impressive.

After here we did a ‘cycle by’ of the original factory site, complete with iconic signage and then tried to get a look at the test track. This was unsuccessful, but we did spy something in camouflage livery as it was leaving.

Next we headed in a vague south easterly direction through the region of Emelia-Romagna, location of recent rain deluges and internationally reported flooding. We have felt quite lucky that the timings of our travels have kept us safe from the weather chaos both here and further north in Austria. Our next destination was a small, non-descript town up a valley out of Imola. The reason for this? Another Bourdain pilgrimage site. The town, Borgo Tossignano, is home to a small, meat-focused family run eatery called Fita Trattoria.

Our route through Imola brought us right past the back entrance of the Formula 1 circuit: ‘Autodromo Enzo e Dino Ferrari’. We stopped, de-bussed, and pressed our faces to the chain link fence, catching the end of a race of Ferrari 360 GTs. Just a normal thing to do in this neck of the woods…

In Borgo Tossignano we found a free car park by a park and a river that had very obviously been quite affected by the recent floods. It was a short walk from the restaurant and we headed there that evening for dinner. Having faithfully practiced the Italian for ‘Good evening, I have a reservation at 7.30pm in the name of Nick’, we were the first to arrive in the restaurant and before even the word ‘Buon’ was out of our mouths, the owner said “Ah, you must be Nick!”. Is it so obvious that we are not Italian? Yes. It absolutely is. The whole experience of the evening was splendid. In the middle of the small space there was a glass fronted meat fridge stuffed full of great slabs of cow-sides, a butchers block and an open fire.

We were taken to the fridge and chose our steak based on a ‘meat tasting’ of slivers of raw meat. A huge T-bone was then hewn from the slab, weighed to calculate its price, then cooked to perfection on the open fire. Our host refused to serve us a potato side dish (too much food he said, quite correctly), did serve us some very tasty and very cheap red wine and was very entertaining. We shared our table with a couple of friendly Italian chaps who included us in their football watching on the ipad propped up on the table between us, ending the evening with swapped telephone numbers and an invitation to Jerry’s ski pad in Cortina. Oh, Jerry, Jerry, Jerry. What have you done? See you in February!!

We heroically ate a phenomenal amount of our beautiful steak and still had some to take home.

Heavy rain started overnight and we vacated the flood zone before there was any sniff of the river rising again. Our next stop was a village up another valley, this time one that was slightly elevated and with no river to worry about. Brisighella is another one of I Borghi più belli d’Italia, a fine example of a medieval village on the slopes of the Apennines. Here there are vineyards and olive groves, with fine olive oil being one of its best known products. The town is scenically overlooked by three structures built atop three rocky hilltops: a fort, a clock tower and a church.

We had another solo car park camping site and there was relentless monsoonal rain. There was no prospect of it easing so we bit the bullet, dug out the coats, hats and boots and set out to explore.

I am sure this beautiful place can often be busy with people in their quests for the perfect photograph, but today we had it to ourselves. There was a misty quietness over the hills and a slippery deadliness on the uneven cobbles and steps.

We managed not to come a cropper as we climbed two of the three hills and meandered through the back streets, all whilst the rain poured down. One short moment of relief from the deluge was walking down a 700 year old covered walkway, evolved from one of the town’s defensive walls which became a commercial thoroughfare serviced by cart-pulling donkeys. Hence its name: Via degli Asini (Donkey Street).

From here, with a shower cubicle full of wet clothes, coats, hats and boots and a fleeting yearning for a normal life in a house with a utility room and a tumble dryer we headed to the coastal town of Rimini.

29th Aug – 14th Sept 2024

The transition from Southern Germany into Austria is a subtle one. That statement would probably horrify both Bavarians and Austrians, but to the untrained eye and ear there are far more similarities than differences. The terrain was the same, the homes looked the same, the language on the signposts was the same. It was only really the greater proportion of Austrian licence plates on the vehicles that gave it away. Our next stop was Salzburg and our travel distance across the border between camps was about 25km which took only about 25 minutes. A brief moment in time. We arrived fairly early in our campsite, which was essentially a glorified field with an exceptional view of some hills, and a restaurant, about 5km outside the city centre. The recent rains had bogged down several areas of the site, which the owner had cordoned off, but due to our early arrival, and a bit of luck we managed to land a pitch on the edge of the cordon thereby giving us a ton of space. It was still busy on the days that we were here and everyone else was crammed into the central area. We felt like Lord and Lady Muck. Again.

Salzburg is a very impressive little city. It is dominated by its castle which stands high upon a rocky bluff casting shade on the cluster of impressive slabs of architecture nestled at its base, sandwiched between it and the river Salzach. It is a very small, dense offering of Old Sh*t. With its wealth built on the back of its salt mines, it is still a very rich place, reflected in the calibre of its resident’s cars and the shops on the main retail street. One thing that Bavaria and Austria share is their non-ironic love of their traditional dress. Lederhosen for the men and an outfit of a full skirt with apron worn with a décolletage-honouring blouse and bodice combo. There are multiple outfitters selling the garb, which is locally handmade and priced accordingly. A pair of lederhosen, the decorated leather knee-length shorts, will set you back €1500-2000. The outfits are often worn ‘for best’ at formal events like weddings and funerals and are seen as a completely normal part of one’s wardrobe.

Aside from our usual sightseeing routine of ‘walking around’ we did actually pay to go into the castle. The views from it over the city were just too good to forgoe. That and the climb up to it was too steep to squander. Salzburg is a city of cyclists and there was an amazing bike path along the river to deliver us into the heart of the city from our campsite.

The other thing that we did here was to catch up with a person that I have known since 1991, when she was the 12 year old little sister of my best friend in Uni. 33 years later Izzy is an Austrian resident of ten years having married local boy, Patrick, and moved to Salzburg for love. The past decade and some has made her fluent in Austrian German and a mum of two. She has never looked back. Our paths have crossed very infrequently since Katie and I graduated, but we did reconnect two and a half years ago at Katie’s wedding. We met at the local brewery, Steigl, for lunch, which also has a great view over the city by virtue of its location at the base of the castle. A very enjoyable three hours was spent chatting over our meal, getting to know Patrick and their kids better and filling in the yawning chasms in our knowledge of each others lives that the intervening 30 years had created. The kids were delightful and very well behaved. A credit to them both. They shared a particularly exciting event of the previous 24 hours…securing tickets to the reunion tour of Oasis next year. Patrick, a forever fan, was pleased as punch!

The other things that Salzburg is known for: it was the birthplace of Mozart in 1756. There are numerous places of Mozart interest throughout the city. We limited our visitations to a statue. Also it was the setting, and filming location of the 1965 movie, The Sound Of Music, which in its day became the highest grossing movie of all time. If you adjust for inflation, it still holds the number 6 spot today. Interestingly, if using the inflation adjusted metric, Gone with the Wind still reigns supreme, with Avatar in second. Also of interest is that neither Nick or I have ever watched The Sound of Music and saw no need to visit any set locations or museums relating to it. I think we cycled past the villa used as the set location for the Von Trapp family home by accident as it was near our camp site, but that was only on the far more interesting mission to find the vending machine that sold cheese and wine. It is a civilised country that dispenses these items in such a fashion. Forgot to take a photo.

During our stay here I managed to do another Parkrun. The Hellbrun event was in a beautiful park an easy 4km cycle from camp. It was another hot morning and I clocked another snail’s pace time, although the slightly bigger field meant that I wasn’t tail-end-charlie again. My ‘photo with the sign’ was taken at the finish, hence the sweaty strawberry vibe.

There was also this tractor and trailer transporting a brass band around the neighbourhood. They were busking for charity. They got €5 from me, although I have no idea what the charity was!

Our onward trip through Austria took us east to the the utterly delightful Salzkammergut region and Attersee, one of the region’s lakes. The combination of a new paddle board to play with (and to justify the purchase of), a good weather forecast and a sneaking suspicion that this might be a lovely place to spend some time prompted us to head here. Again, we just pitched up without booking anything, beacause nowhere would take reservations for less than a four night stay. The campsite that we chose was right on the lake and, it transpired, very popular. Most of the non-permanent sites were quite small and crammed together, leaving more than half of the camp assigned to permanent pitches. We were lucky in several regards: 1) they had ‘one last space’ for our requested 3 night stay and 2) it was located in a funny triangular ‘overflow’ area that was wedged between three permanent caravans. It would have been very close quarters with no privacy, except that it was mid-week and they were all empty, so we were again, like Lord and Lady Muck, with tons of space, whilst our fellow campers were wedged in like sardines. Also 3) The lake was stunningly beautiful and warm and 4) the weather was magnificent. Somehow this didn’t feel like being in Austria. The water was warm, a stunning turquoise colour and apparently so clean that you drink it directly.

The lake was ringed by hills and mountains covered with forests, dotted with farms and villages and and with suprisingly little development. Attersee is one of Austria’s biggest lakes, and the largest to be contained entirely within its borders, rather than shared with other countries.

The Austrian composer, Gustav Mahler loved it here and spent many a summer on Attersee. It was such an inspiration for his work that he even had a small ‘composing hut’ constructed on the lake shore. Here he would spend the mornings locked away with his piano and he wrote his second symphony here. The hut is still standing and where as it was originally in a random field, it is now a micro museum contained in this campsite.

Our stay here was all about being on the lake. We are conscious as August gives way to September that the ‘bikini days’of summer are coming to an end. All opportunities to labour over a paddle board pump and inflate the boards, slap on some factor 30 and set off onto the blue yonder should be taken where offered. My nice new board has been a great purchase, Nick’s board continues to slowly disintergrate and bulge in odd places but is still hanging in there. His paddle handle broke though, thus rendering it useless. Luckily we had a spare. It was a wrench to drag ourselves away from the lake, but the show must roll on.

We continued north-east, to the northern city of Linz, and found ourselves back on the mighty Danube River. Now we were only 72km from the Czech town of Ceske Krumlov, where we had been 6 weeks ago. Linz is Austria’s third largest city and a centre for the arts and for conferences and congresses and such. It may not suprise you to hear that it is old, having originated as a Roman fort in the first century, been first documented as a place called ‘Linz’ in 799, and granted city rights in 1324. And bla, bla, blah. Now we are here. Why? Because it was on the way to where we were going. Where’s that? Never really sure….

So we arrived and due to the derth of near-city campsites (which normally means that not many campers stop in a place, which usually means that there isn’t a major ‘tourist attraction’) we camped about 12km out of the city in a small neighbouring town called Ottensheim. This was also on the Danube, or Donau as it is known here, and linked to the city by bus/train/river and cycle path. The cyle path is part of the epic Danube Cycle Trail, a cycle route that follows 1200km of the Danube from Donaueschingen in Germany to the Hungarian capital of Budapest.

We had a day in Linz having cycled along the river path to get there, a very leisurely 50 minute journey. The city was in the middle of a week’s long arts festival with the main exhibitions in the modern art museum, but with other pop up installations in squares and churches. We happened upon a few of these, including the one in the main square. This consisted of a tall, free-standing scaffolding tower up which one climbed to find a mirror lined box at the top into which one stepped to be confronted with multiple images of oneself, rather than the quite impressive elevated view. Deep. The nonsensical, self indulgent blatherings that accompany artworks could be scrapped. I’ll do it.

Due to his feeling ‘a bit iffy’ about heights, Nick opted not to make the climb, thus missing out on how the artist created a thunderclap of commentary on modern existance in aluminium and mirrors: We are all very self absorbed. See, I am good at this.

Linz felt like a pretty normal place. There was a handsome old town, but it was functional and not a pastiche. There were trams and bicycles, a boring castle, back streets, shops, a university and freed from the perils of mass tourism, the happy locals seemed to be just getting on with life. Yes, there were some cycle tourers, and yes, the odd river cruise boat stopped here but mostly it felt calm and serene and rather nice.

For lunch we succumbed to another meatloaf sandwich in an eaterie called Leberkas-Pepi that sold little else but meatloaf sandwiches, served simply as a slab of meatloaf in a bun and no condiments. It was doing brisk business with a queue snaking out of the door. Always a good sign. We were not disappointed.

We also purchased a small Linzer torte on our wanderings. This traditional pastry, a form of shortbread topped with fruit preserves and sliced nuts with a lattice design on top, is apparently the oldest cake named after a place, the oldest receipe having been dated back as far as 1653. We were good and took it home to have after dinner, rather than just chowing it down on a street corner. It was a little disappointing. A bit dry.

Our journey home was one of the highlights of our trip so far. Rather than cycle back we booked ourselves onto the small excursion boat that does the 30 minute trip up and down the river between Linz and Ottensheim. This was the closest we were going to get to a Danube cruise for the foreseable future. It transpired that we were only the passengers on our trip, so having lashed the bikes to the railing we settled in to enjoy our journey. The sun was shining, the river was majestic and we had a private cruise. It couldn’t get any better….but wait….it DID get better, because there was a self-service mini bar on board and we could enjoy our voyage with a cold beer in hand. Now that’s a civilised way to get home!

Our camp in Ottensheim was slightly unusual, being in the grounds of restaurant that was co-located with a small tennis club. We sacrificed a scenic outlook for the sake of some shade and parked up close to the outdoor courts in the shadow of the large building housing the indoor court. This meant that we were essentially courtside and our late afternoon entertainment involved sitting on our camp chairs outside Davide watching players of all levels of talent and expertise playing their games. There were some shots that deserved a round of applause, and that’s exactly what they got from us. Not sure how much they appretiated the unexpected ‘crowd’!

Our exit from Linz involved an early start as I managed to sneak in another Parkrun on the way out. This was a very laid back affair with the small field and two officials only really assembling at about 5 minutes before the start. I was pretty sure was in the right place, but it was a bit disconcerting. This event is called Donauradweg – Danube Cycle Path – and that exactly describes the course: Starting under a large bridge it went 2.5km down the riverside bike path, turned around and come back again. It was straight, fully tarmac and very flat. A perfect place to get a PB if one is in that game. The small field seemed to be comprised mainly of lean, lanky, fast looking chaps, so I was entirely expecting to be last again. Which, apart from the lone walker, I was. I am a happy plodder, and that is the beauty of Parkrun, it doesn’t matter.

Further east along the Danube, and convienently along the A1 motorway, was our next stop, the tiny city of Melk. Its population of only a little over five and a half thousand people is small, but its Benedictine monastery is enormous. It was originally founded in 1089 and built high up on a rocky outcrop above the Danube. A small service settlement, now with city status, grew up outside its walls and is a now cute and well preserved old town that services the needs of visitors to the Abbey and the passing cycle tourers.

The monastery was extended over the centuries, acquiring a monastic school in the 12th century and an abbey church in the 1700s. It still hosts the monastery and the school is still a private catholic school of 900 pupils to this day. Its library is world renowned as is its scientifially significant collection of minerals. There is a segment of the magnificent building open to the public and we did actually pay to go in. The library was amazing, but unfortunately photos were not permitted. The tour ended with a walk through the back of the rather magnificent church, which we reached just as a brass band struck up playing, the music being the walk-out accompaniment for a bride and groom who had just got married in this amazing space. We sat quietly at the back, well out of the way, to enjoy the music and the spectacle of the very attractive and well-dressed wedding party leaving the church. Despite the public areas of the building being quite busy and there being a large tour coming along just behind us, we were the only ‘spectators’ for this short moment and it was quite magical. One wonders who one has to know, or whose palm one has to grease, to get married here. We had just one night here, staying in a riverside car park almost directly below the Abbey. This gave us quite the view from our roof window.

I was going to end this post here, and split our Austrian travels into two offerings, but owing to the ever present and ever increasing backlog of my writing, I’m going to push on! So you may take a quick break to to go make a cup of tea/ visit the loo/ walk the dog/ see a patient/ unload the dishwasher, and I’ll see you back soon….

Our next destination was another biggie, the city of Vienna, or Wien to give it its Austrian name. We opted to stay about 10km out of the city in a northern suburb called Klosteneuburg. Here we had found one of those perfectly situated campsites that was both on the riverside cycle route into the centre and right next to a station giving direct train links too. This gave us a couple of good options for getting into the city, whilst being a safe and comfortable place to stay. We arrived in the middle of another hot day and although we hadn’t planned to head into Vienna that day, the forecast for the next day involved an awful lot of rain so we had a quick bite to eat and jumped on to the train into the city centre.

Vienna is another grand dame of a city with handsome imposing mansion blocks lining the streets and countless magnificent buildings from throughout its ages from its Imperial era, through its Art Nouveau years, and into the modern architecture of this milleneum.

We cruised the central old town area, slowly as it was very hot and muggy. We admired the cathedral from the outside, and then followed signposts to The Spanish Riding School. As a horse-mad girl I knew all about this place. One of the world’s four great riding acadamies, dedicated to the art of classical dressage and the breeding and training of the famous Lipizzaner horses. I didn’t need to go in or to watch a performance, we have done one of the other three recently in Jerez (actually in Spain) last year. It was just enough to see the building in the flesh and get a whiff of horse manure. That was all my memory banks needed. What this did do was lead us to a big square called Heldenplatz, home to a range of impressive buildings such as the Hofburg Imperial Palace. Here we were met with an unexpected sight, a row of large John Deere tractors. On venturing further into the space it was obvious from the large array of tents and stalls, the music stage, the hay bales, the autumnal garlands and the large number of folk in traditional outfits, that we had stumbled upon a harvest festival type event. It was the equivalent of a county fair in Trafalgar Square. Surreal. We found the beer tent and watched the world whilst rehydrating. After this we were ready for home and so slowly retraced our steps and public transport route back to the station.

Our back street meanders brought the sound of choral music to our ears and further investigation brought us to a nondescript square where we discovered a small, free open air recital in progress. The acoustics were amazing. It was a reminder of Vienna’s ongoing love affair with classical music following its establishment as a cultural capital of arts and music during the heyday of the Austrian Empire. Hayden, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Bruckner, the Stauss family and Mahler were all either from Vienna, or chose to live here for a significant portion of their lives. The legacy of this era lives on in the blood of the city with numerous and frequent performances of classical music throughout the city, both formal and informal. The buskers here are of very high quality.

That night was hot and sticky and in retrospect, the last uncomfortable heat of the summer. We have had an epic run of amazing weather since we started this trip back at the beginning of May with even the north of Poland delivering lovely sunny days in those first few weeks. In the height of summer there were several weeks of almost unbearable heat making it difficult to do anything but immerse onself in water during the day, and wish Davide was fitted with aircon at night. On these days, and nights we were kept sane by our two 12v mini fans. They create just enough breeze to stave of hyperthermia and we have one each to stop arguments. This night was their last night of deployment. The weather forecast was entirely correct and the next day the building heat and humidity gave way to thunder storms and torrential rain. Definitely a day to sit in, not to tourist. It always amazes me, having had the extended luxury of having all the time in the world, how we have got very good at spending hours and hours of it in a contented, companionable, low energy state, with me trying to write/do some duolingo lessons whilst Nick whitters on at me. Given that the campsite had a laundry room that included a tumble dryer, it was also a day to get some laundry done. Our inital plan had been to perhaps head back into Vienna in the evening for a meal once the rain had cleared, which it did. I had thought that cabin fever and the lure of seeing the bright lights of a big city at night might overcome the apathy of a rain day, but I was wrong. We dined chez Davide and hit Netflix instead.

The next day delivered significant improvement in the weather with all of the sunshine and none of the heat. It was a day to break out the bikes and head back to the city via the Danube cycle trail. The city itself has a fantastic network of cycle lanes with junctions and crossings having dedicated cyclist traffic lights, with just enough trams and tram tracks to add some exciting jeopardy.

In 1850 Emperor Franz Joseph hatched a plan to unite the city and the suburbs and ordered the demolition of the medieval city walls. This set in motion one of the radical urban design projects of its time which involved the building of a great ring road, the ‘Ringstaße’. Nobles and rich citizens hurried to build pompous palaces along this magnificent 5.3 km long boulevard and this created a distinct ‘Ringstrasse’ architectural style (a type of Historicism) in which numerous architectural forms of previous epochs were imitated. (Basically, a lot of money was spent building huge ego-fanning, copycat edifices in order to impress each other. Some aspects of human behaviour are reassuringly consistent.) The Ringsraße is still an important route through the city and this was our first ‘cyclo-touristic’ destination. Being on two wheels is a great way to cover a lot of ground when sight seeing. We whizzed past many impressive piles on our way along the boulevard including the impressive city hall, or Rathaus, the ground in front of which was partly inaccessible due to the travelling circus that was being set up. Can’t imagine the same happening in London somehow. The Ringstraße is also home to the Austrian Parliament Building, complete with armed police, as expected and several museums and the National Opera House. All marvellous and magnificent.

Next stop was the over-sold Naschmarkt, a 120-stall food market which seemed to have been flooded with identical stalls selling obviously commercially prepared turkish pastries or industrial quantities of spices. The fresh and local produce was seriously lacking and the tat shops were creeping in. It had no local flavour at all. We were glad to have had the bikes so that our journey out to it hadn’t wasted too much shoe leather or precious touristing energy. By now it was lunch time and our thoughts were turning to food. Not that they much turn very far away at all, ever. Our quest is always to find a small, authentic, off the beaten track, not too fancy place that locals might frequent. Sometimes we have pre-selected a spot and head right there, sometimes we wait until we are good and hungry and have the fighting fever that only famishment can trigger, bitching and squabbling with each other as we try and select ‘the perfect place’ through a haze of hypoglyacaemia. Luckily today Nick had an idea where we were going and I was happy to follow. Apple maps were deployed and we had a seat-of-the-pants journey across the heart of this major capital city, arriving in our requisite two whole pieces at a little place called Gasthaus Pöschel. It was tiny and quite busy but our arrival coincided with a table coming free and we were in! Our lunch consisted of two local delicacies: Weiner Schnitazel, which needs no real explanation, and Tafelspitz, thick slices of tender slow-poached beef served in a broth with potato rosti on the side. Both delicious.

Our route home took us back through the old town, through more old streets lined with lovely buildings and churches and soon we were back on the path home. On the way back we took a short detour off the cycle path and up a hill in one of the urban villages to find a heurige, Meyer am Pfarrplatz,est 1683. Vienna is the only metropolis that grows enough wine within its city limits to make it worth mentioning. Heurige is the Viennese for ‘wine tavern’ and there are about 100 of them throughout the city, in various shapes and sizes, mostly quite rustic in nature. This one is intimately associated with Beethoven, who spent time living here in his summers, probably due to the neighbouring sanitorium offering him therapy for his hearing loss. His 9th symphony was composed here. Whether his creativity was enhanced by the sanitorium treatments, or by the wine, we may never know. (We do know, it was the wine.) Anyway, in homage to our great hero, LVB, and to our well known and well documented love of classical music, we stopped in here to have a glass of wine in the sunny courtyard. It was only fitting. Then we went home.

From Vienna we began our southward trajectory and headed to Austria’s second largest city, Graz. This university town with a population of about 300,000 (60,000 of which are students) has one of the best preserved old towns in Central Europe, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, was the European City of Culture in 2004, the European City of Culinary Delights in 2008 and boasts the world’s longest underground slide. (Yes, of course we did…more on that in a bit). We had decided to only stay one night here, so after arriving at our Stellplatz on the edge of town we quickly hopped on the bus into the centre for an afternoon of exploring.

Well, it was delightful. Even taking into account all the previous places of note and significance that we have visited on this, and our last trip around Spain and Portugal, it was one of the loveliest places we have been. The city centre was totally pedestrianised with no vehicles except the trams. It had impressive, wide boulevards and narrow, pretty backstreets, all paved with polished marble slabs, and an interesting selection of shops and eateries. There were some tourists like us, but not an exhausting mob to do battle with. It felt very civilised.

Of course there were the usual cathedral to gawp into, squares and town hall to admire and a fortress on a hill climb up to. There was the Grazer Landhaus, the first and very well preserved, Renaissance building built in Graz, completed in 1557, and the grand mausoleum of Emperor Ferdinand ll. Before we hit the hill we stopped for a drink in Glockenspiel Square and waited to catch the highly anticipated 3pm performance of the very kitch and quite underwhelming dance of the couple of figures who appeared from behind their doors to twirl monotonously to an automated carillion sound track. The crowds gathered to witness the second of its three daily shows. We could see it from our cafe seats. It was, like the market, over-sold. We headed off. It was time to climb the hill.

The guide books say that there are four ways to get up to the fortress, and five ways to get down. We eschewed bus, funnicular railway and lift and schlepped up the switch backs through the park to reach the top of the hill on foot, giving us amazing views of the city. The walk took us past the city’s beloved clock tower. This has been standing since 1300 and something and has three bells. One to strike the hours, one to alert for fire and one that rang to announce executions and the start of curfew. Another curiosity about it is that the clock’s minute hand is shorter than the hour hand. Originally it had only one long hand to indicate the hours and with the later addition of a minute hand it was decided to make this shorter, rather than replace the hour hand too. I know. Fascinating.

Having appretiated the view from all sides of the top of the fortress we began our descent….by the fifth method. Some genius had decided to blast a shaft through the rock hill upon which the fortress perched and now there is a 175m slide that descends 64m with multiple steep corkscrews and a couple of near vertical drops giving a 40 second ride enough to make a middle aged woman scream like a child. What a completely random and brilliant way to extract money from people! Graz also has a funky modern constructions,

like this photogenic footbridge-come-cafe-come-exhibition-come-performance space, and the Kunsthaus, nicknamed ‘The Friendly Alien’, an example of ‘blob architecture’.(No, never heard that term before either, but quite descriptive.) Built for the City of Culture celebrations in 2003, it is an exhibition space and art gallery and difficult to get a good photo of from up close, so I have copied one from the interweb for your perusal.

Our afternoon in Graz was coming to an end, but before we jumped back on the bus we popped into a local produce shop to purchase a bottle of one of the local delicacies, pumpkin seed oil. This is a new product to me but I am a complete convert. It looks brown, but is actually a very intense dark green and it can be drizzled over just about any other savoury food stuff to enhance it. Can recommend.

Overnight the weather turned to Custard. Capital C justified. Storm Boris was coming our way and we had a decision to make – where to sit it out. There was no point paying for a more expensive campsite if we were just holed up inside and we needed to get a bit further south-west along the road towards Italy without getting caught in the mountains. A seemingly suitable spot was picked and we headed to it, through the torrential rain. It was a small leisure lake on the outskirts of a town called Sankt Andrä in Wolfsburg, Carinthia, in the foothills of the Koralpe mountain range. This had a few designated spaces for campers with electric plug ins and hot showers, all for the princely sum of €10 per night. The weather remained awful for 24 hours, with the view out of our window being of the swimming lake complete with slides, floating platforms, sun loungers, grassy beach area and ice cream kiosk, all turned cold, dark and grey under the relentless rain. A cruel taunt. Up until two days ago this place would have been swarming with locals and day trippers, swimming and frolicking in the lake, soaking up the sun on its shores. As it was the temperature had dropped from the mid twenties down to single figures necessitating the deployment of jumpers, jeans and thick socks, putting the camper heating on and having a blanket over the duvet on the bed.

The next day the rain stopped earlier than expected and we emerged from our tiny box of existance, blinking in the sunlight, to engage with the world again. The legs needed a stretch so we walked a loop along the nearby river, which was looking decidedly beefed up by the deluge and the biggest suprise was the sight of more than a dusting of snow on the tops of the nearby hills. I think we can safely say that summer is over. We had another night here, in relative splendid isolation and the next day we continued south-west and to our next country, Italy. Austria had been another unexpected delight. Italy has got some tough acts to follow

(Phew. Now rest!)

21st Aug – 29th Aug 2024

We all know how I feel about ‘big ticket destinations’ that create tourist hotspots, the crowds they attract and the antisocial behaviour that can seep out of probably quite normal people when they are frustrated with queuing or unhealthily focused on taking photos and videos of themselves in these places. Some might say that we can be unhealthily focused on the behaviour of others, we might call it a hobby. Despite this, we found ourselves heading for a trilogy of ‘must see’ locations. We took a breath and joined the scrum…

Füssen, in the region of Swabia at the foothills of the Alps, is the town over which presides possibly/allegedly the most ‘fairy tale’ of castles, Neuschwanstein. This was built by King Ludwig ll of Bavaria between 1869 and 1886 as a retreat from his official residence and life in Munich and also in honour of the composer Richard Wagner, whom he greatly admired. Ludwig struggled to combine the responsibilities of monarchical life and the pressure to produce an heir with the fact that he was an eccentric, introverted homosexual who would much rather spend his days doing creative things and being No. 1 fanboy of his hero, Wagner. This pretty castle was his bolt hole from reality, but unfortunately he died in fairly suspicious circumstances along side his doctor, in a lake in 1886, before the castle was finished.

Neuschwanstein is quite the sight from a distance, perched on a rocky outcrop, surrounded by forest and with mountains as its backdrop. Disney apparently used it as inspiration for their Magic Kingdom. It has been open to the public since not long after Ludwig’s demise and has to date been visited by over 61 million people, about 6000 per day in the summer. This is the main reason people come to Füssen, a pretty town in its own right, complete with castle, monastery, church and old town. It also boasts the River Lech, a man-made lake and a rather impressive lakeside festival hall, belying its other identity as that of a music town. The town has a very noteable history as a centre for violin and lute making.

We arrived and slotted ourselves into our reserved spot in one of the three busy Stellplatzes in this area, 2km from the town centre. This was an occasion on which we had been sensible and pre-booked, and just as well. The town was heaving.

The next day was ‘castle day’. In retrospect we should have cycled, but decided instead that seeing as our ‘tourist tax’ levy gave us a free bus pass, we would make use of it. The castle is about 6km out of town, and we were 2km out of town in the other direction. Our public transport experience began in a mediocre fashion as the bus to town was 20 minutes late and when it arrived it was already loaded. The cramped, hot and sweaty ride to town was slow due to traffic and if we had walked in the first place we would have arrived sooner. In town the queue at the bus stop for the hourly bus up to the castle was about 150 people long, with a 30 minute wait until it was due. One look at the line told us that we would not make it onto the next bus. This is when it dawned on us that a) we really should have cycled, b) there was some woeful underprovision of public transport, c) there are lots of people who will patiently wait in a queue for a long time without thinking through their options and d) we were now committed to an unplanned walk.

It was, in fact, a lovely walk along a beautifully maintained cyle path (grrrr) up to the castle and we arrived relaxed and in good spirits an hour later. There are in fact two castles here. There is Ludwig’s lofty and impressive Neuschwanstein and then there is the more modest lower Hohenschwangu Castle. There has been a castle on this site since the 1300s and it went through many hands and itterations until the dilapidated building came into the ownership of Ludwig’s father, King Maximillian ll, whilst Ludwig ll was a child. He renovated it and used it for many years as his summer residence and thus Ludwig and his brother spent many formative years here as they grew up. It was the reason this hill became his happy place.

As expected, the staging area for the castles was a chaotic and busy melée of people, cars, tour buses, shuttle buses and horse carriages. We knew that there were no available tickets for entry into Neuschwanstein today and we had no desire to see around ‘the other one’. The only ways to get up the hill to the main castle are electric shuttle bus, horse and carriage (with electric motor assist and braking-very modern retro) or a 30 minute schlep by foot. We were on a roll, so carried on carrying on. There were a few people on the trail, but the crowds were obviously mostly playing at sardines on the buses.

Now I’m not saying that we were disappointed with the castle when we arrived at the top – it is after all quite a massive monument of well designed and crafted stone work – but up close it is, well, just a bit too new and perfect. That, and just as they say the worst view of Paris is from the Eiffel tower, its beauty is best to be admired from a distance. We arrived, we opined, we descended. On our way down, via the more trafficked route associated with the shuttle bus, a chap motioned to Nick as if he wanted him to take a photo of him at a lookout. Well, that was close. What he actually wanted was someone to take some video of him as he (apparently) nonchelantly wandered up the path whilst looking serenely off into the distance with the castle in the background. FFS.

Having ‘done’ the castles we headed back. Initially we had planned to get the bus but the sun and lack of fluids must have got to our heads because we decided that carrying on walking was a great idea. By the time we got back to camp we had done 14km in normal clothes, merely comfy shoes and 50oml of water between us. Lesser hikes have involved hiking shoes, poles and a backpack containing emergency clothing layers, snacks and 2L of water. Go figure.

Of note, our campsite in Füssen was very close to three supermarkets. Why is it that as natural rural dwellers we are very used to the food shops being miles away and can happily go a week between supply runs. Here we completely lost the ability to meal plan and made SEVEN trips to various of the establishments in ONE AFTERNOON. It’s the first step on the slippery slope to Doordashing ice cream at 9pm.

Next stop, the long-windedly named, alpine ski town of Garmisch-Partenkirchen. Formed by the almagamation of the two towns of, you guessed it, Garmisch and Partenkirchen, it was the host of the 1936 Winter Olympics, the first to include alpine skiing. Hard to imagine the winter games without it now. In winter the town is a magnet for skiers, hosting one of the Ski World Cup meets, and in the summer there are an almost infinite number of hikes in the area. It is close to Zugspitze, Germany’s highest peak at 2962m, and this is really the reason that we, and many other people, make the trip here. Our camp was a couple of kilometers from the centre of Garmisch on a Stellplatz at the base station of the gondala that went up The Wank, a smaller mountain of about 1700m. Obviously here the ‘W’ is pronounced ‘V’, but the purile part of our brains cannot do this. I defy any English speaker to deny that they are any less immature than us.

Anyway. It was a very handy spot and we arrived so early that we had time to pack a picnic and head up The Wank (stop it…) gondola before midday. It was a lovely day, sunny but not too hot, and the views were amazing. We chose a route to hike back down and set off, getting confused almost immediately. Teutonic efficiency had designed a fantastic map of the mountain with accompanying logical labels for each trail and how they intersected to create routes in various different directions. The paths themselves were clearly signposted and also identified with logical labels. Unfortunately the two systems bore no relation to each other whatsoever. This created a bit of faffing about at the top for a few minutes whilst making sense of the situation – which was apparently was mostly my fault – but we were soon on the right path going in the right direction and the descent began.

This time I had the Poleskis, which did definitely help with the tricky and the steep bits, but three hours down hill took its toll on the knees and toes again. No, lessons are rarely learnt.

The scenery was lovely, we had the trail almost to ourselves (which is amazing given the number of people that ride the gondola up) and the obligatory ham and cheese sandwich picnic was delightful as usual. The trail miraculously ended right next to where we were parked up and the rest of the day was spent sitting around, groaning whenever we had to get up out of our seats. Love hiking,me.

The next day, having shelled out a not inconsiderable sum of money for the pleasure, we headed to the ‘Top of Germany’ (their description, in English), Zugspitze Mountain. It was a magnificent bluebird day and the perfect weather for a mountain ascent. The journey consisted of taking a bus to Garmisch station where there is a dedicated Zugspitze train terminal. Here a 7.5km train journey took us along the valley floor to an interchange where we transferred to the historic cog wheel train. This 11.5km section then climbs nearly 2000m up to the Zugspitze plateau, including 4.5km through a tunnel carved through the mountain. Epic.

The plateau was like a moon scape, covered in rocks of all sizes and dotted with ski-lifts in summer hibernation. The sun was blazing and it was hot, hardly feeling like we were at 2500m, until we tried to walk up hill. We wandered around and walked up to the edge of the glacier. This has retreated so much that it is no longer technically a glacier, it is known as ‘dead ice’. This is when a glacier has lost so much volume that it stops moving. Now it is just in its death throes.

We bucked the trend of building stone cairns, building Inukshuks instead and visited the little chapel. Of course one can eat and drink up here to one’s heart’s content and of course we sucumbed to currywurst and chips for our lunch. This we had to eat inside in the buffet restaurant as it was far too hot to sit outside on the terrace in the sun.

Full of sausage, we embarked on the next phase of the trip, the gondola ride up the final 500m to the summit. Below us we could see the multitude of ‘serious climbers’ making their final ascent, crawling like ants in single file up the final scree trail and then along a ridge to get to the top, then queuing for ages to get ‘that photo’ at the peak. Mass tourism takes many forms.

For our part, thus far, the day had seen us part of a very manageable crowd within a well planned system that cannot be over subscribed by virtue of its ticketing system. Made it all very bearable. The views from the summit were unworldly. There were so many surrounding peaks and from here one can see to four countries: Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Italy. Eibsee, at the base of Zugspitze, one of the most beautiful lakes of the Baviarian Alps (and our next destination) looked quite discobombulated from up here.

There is an amazing viewing terrace up here (and the obligatory restaurant) and after a slow lap (most of which Nick spent with his knees knocking because he handles heights badly) it was time to head down. This next phase of the journey was in a gondola back down to Eibsee, which is where the train interchange also was. This is quite an epic feat of engineering, featuring the world’s longest unsupported gondola cable span of 3.2km and the highest ascent/decent of any single gondola, of 2km. In fact the whole cable system only had one single supporting pylon on its whole length. Each of the two gondola cars can take nearly 50 people. The cabin effortlessly decended, and it felt like we were returning to Earth.

It was even hotter down here. We walked the short distance to the lakeshore and found the crazy crowds again. The lake itself was gorgeous, a deep blue colour surrounded by thick forest and mountains. It is possible to drive up here and park in one of the large carparks in order to enjoy the lake and about a gazillion people had all had the same idea.

The lake itself was easily big enough to accomodate all the visitors, but the car park was not. It was a one-in-one-out situation, meaning that the queue of traffic coming up the hill was moving very, very slowly. We headed to the station and got the next train back to Garmisch. Along our way we could see that the almost stationary, nose-to-tail traffic extended the best part of the way back to town, at least 5km. All those people who had decided, on a busy summer Saturday, that a dip in the lake would be a great antidote to the heat of the day, were spending at least an hour and a half in a traffic jam, in the heat of the day. I felt sorry for all the people that had done the right thing and opted to take the buses which were also unfortunately caught in the same gridlock, but for the others, those who didn’t assess the situation as untenable and turn around, there was more than an itty-bitty feeling of Schadenfreude. (Did you know that the Germans have no word for Schadenfreude…?) Back in Garmisch we opted to walk the 2km home, hoping to swing through the old part of the town on our way. Somehow we managed to miss it, but by that time we were too hot and bothered to care. It’s not as if we really couldn’t live without seeing more old sh*t for a few days.

The walk home brought us out at the bar/restaurant at the Wank Gondola base station and the inevitable, refreshing and rehydrating beers were consumed. As we sat, sipping our cooling amber brews, surveying the car park and all its comings and goings, we witnessed a man with a food wagon pull up and set up his pitch. He was selling deli items of cured meat and cheese, his main product being speck (a type of cured,lightly smoked ham). Apparently the ‘best speck in the world’. Nick was lured to view his wares as if guided by an invisible and irrestistable force. There was almost no overlap of our German or Herr Speck’s English repertoire of words so with much sign language, mostly pointing if we are to be honest, we set about buying a hunk of speck. The bit we almost bought, the ‘best speck in the world’ stuff, was going to cost us….wait for it…..€200! For 300g! We hastily decided that the average stuff was still going to be quite marvellous enough and that we didn’t need quite as much so ended up spending a more ‘sensible’ €40 on 150g. Still quite a wedge. Pork products still continue to be the guiding light of our travels.

The weather forecast for the next two days was awful and a heap of rain was due. It seemed a waste to spend these days somewhere where bad weather would make mountain views invisible and stop us getting out and about. Also it seemed crazy to pay the higher prices of the more touristy area camp sites whilst twiddling our thumbs inside. We opted to sit out the storm in a very basic Stellplatz in a spa town called Bad Aibling. It was a perfect pit stop and we got some admin done – which is code for ‘I did a blog post’.

From here we headed about as far south-east as one can go in Germany without finding oneself in Austria, to the town of Berchtesgaden. This is a region of spectacular natural beauty and is home to The Berchtesgaden National Park. The town is nestled in a deep, narrow valley, alongside the glacial coloured waters of the Berchtesgaden stream and is surrounded by mountains: the Untersberg in the North, Obersalzberg in the east and further south by the Watzmann. The Obersalzberg gained notoriety in the years of the Third Reich when it became their second most important centre of power after the Reichstag in Berlin. Here in 1937/8 they built a retreat, close to the summit of the 1800m high Kehlstein, known as Kehlstainhaus, otherwise known as Eagles Nest. Here the senior Nazis, and less so Hitler himself, spent time in the summers plotting their strategies, socialising, relaxing, entertaining and impressing guests. There were many properties and buildings on the mountain that were built or compulsarily purchased to create an eclave for the Nazi entourage. Most were destroyed by the Allies after the war.

The trip up to Eagles Nest is another ‘must-do’ and many do. The ‘tourist machine’ has it first staging post about 1/3 up the mountain, from where a fleet of electric buses take people from the vast car parks, up the steep and winding road up to the base of the Kehlsteinhaus. This feat of engineering was completed in a mere 13 months. The road is also very narrow, so four or five buses will go up together, disgorge, reload and then come down in convoy too. Here the Nazis’ famous ‘gold elevator’ (actually with brass lining to the walls, so not golden really) transports people up the lift shaft through 124m of bedrock, directly to the building. It is just about the only ostentatious Nazi era part of the complex that remains, aside from the house itself. The buses are expensive, but entry to the lift and building are free. We obviously did things a bit differently. Firstly we made a ham and cheese sandwich picnic with the usual accompaniments, then we got a bus from our camp, about 5km out of town, to the bus station in town. From here we could catch the scheduled bus that went another 5km up to the staging post area. We apparently weren’t the only ones that had had the same idea and by the time the bus arrived there were about 150 people waiting. A polite scrum to board ensued and we were amongst the lucky sardines that got packed on for the trip. The next bus wasn’t for an hour, so lordy knows what the other unlucky 75 people decided to do. It seemed another rare failure of effective crowd management by the otherwise efficient town management. From the staging post we had decided not to get the bus to the top, but to walk up. The path was well surfaced but relentlessly steep. It took us two solid hours of upwards yomping to get to the top which was a change from relentless downhill trajectories of previous hikes. There were a few other mad people walking, and a few really mad people opting to cycle up (although admittedly all but one on electric bikes). At the top we waited in line for our elevator ride, because, well, it’s a thing to do, and were soon delivered to the Eagles nest.

Up here all echoes of the Nazi past of the building and the summit have been expunged. It is now merely a place from which to admire the view and a place of refreshment. The restaurant was doing a roaring trade, the cluster of blue umbrellas shading diners from the ongoing, unrelenting summer. It was further 200m hike up the hill to the summit and we dodged the masses to find a plinth from which to savour the view and our picnic. It was quite a spot, and it is easy to see why Hitler and his cronies chose it. For those that are interested, the Nazi history of the area is detailed in a museum down at the staging area in a building removed from the main fray, deliberately putting distance between the regime and this beautiful place. Three buses took us home. We are getting quite expert in the mysteries of public transport.

From here, one has little choice but to go to Austria, and that’s exactly where we were headed. Germany had suprised and delighted us. It is all the expected things: tidy, organised, sensible and logical. Most things – except for the trains apparently – are reliable and dependable. The food isn’t fancy, but it is hearty and tasty and consistant, if not a bit pork heavy and plant light. (“What’s the problem with that?!” exclaims Nick. ) The language is decipherable, pronounceable and our Germanglish has come along in leaps and bounds! The weather has been amazing, the scenery lovely, the old towns beautiful, the lakes warm, the cycle paths ubiquitous, and they certainly know how to serve up a delicious cold beer to a thirsty tourist in a scenic spot. The people have been happy, helpful, warm and welcoming and we have come to realise that many very nice Germans have natural ‘resting grumpy faces’ and are quite reserved when out and about. This was after several weeks of us trotting about, calling out cheerful’Guten Morgan!’ to all and sundry that we passed and getting vexed by the lack of any greeting/smiles/eye contact in response. Now we just do it for sport.

The things that suprised us most about Germany were:

1. There is a lot of smoking here. It was quite obvious compared to all the other countries that we have spent time in. A lot of chuffing by old and young alike. There are also tobacco vending machines on the streets, thereby offering no barriers to young people purchasing cigarrettes. Seems weird when most other countries are really making an effort to protect their youth from the habit.
2. There are still a suprising number of places that don’t accept card payments. Cash is still really important here. Compare and contrast the UK when it is all about the plastic fantanstic and unexpectedly offering cash can lead to a expression of panic across the face of a cashier.
3. Not everyone is thundering around at 160 kph on the autobahns. Except us of course. Davide is a Grand Tourer in disguise.
4. There is an infinite number of varieties of sausage.
5. It is fabulous country and one that we hope to return to, especially as we have made some good friends here. You know who you are!!

7th Aug – 21st Aug 2024

We were beginning to fall a bit in love with Southern Germany. This was a little unexpected as we hadn’t paid it much thought when (very loosely) planning this trip. Although more subtle than the big ticket offerings of major cityscapes, gorgeous coastlines and towering mountain ranges, the charms of Baden-Württemberg and Bayern (Bavaria) are multiple and varied. Beer and sausages are a constant, however.

Due to a rather significant ongoing and ever increasing procrastination of blog writing I am going to slightly curtail my ramblings here in order to attempt a partial catch up.

From Stuttgart and the Porsche museum we headed eastwards to the delightful and affluent spa town of Baden-Baden. Originally it was known only as Baden, but this didn’t distinguish it from all the other ‘Badens’ around and about and the double barrelled name was formalised in 1931. The town’s current strap line is “Baden-Baden, the good, good life!” It is a popular destination for many tourists, especially, rather oddly, Italian and Spanish motorhomers. This we discovered as we witnessed the jostle for space in the town’s limited Stellplatz spaces and 80% of our co-campers were from these two countries. We did our usual trick of arriving early and magically scoring (what we considered) the best site in a Stellplatz that was about 3km from the town centre. The place was full by 2pm and people were still arriving at 10pm, hoping for a space. One Spanish traveller gave it a negative review online as ” we arrived in the middle of the afternoon (7pm) and it was already full…” Can I stop you there, Manuel? I think that I can see where you are going wrong…

A pretty and shaded bike path took us from camp into town and we spent some time wandering around. There were lots of designer shops and restaurants, fountains, art installations, many expensive cars and a surfeit of well dressed folk with expensive shoes sitting outside fancy cafés. We also cycled up to the funnicular base station and rode the train up to the top of the nearby hill. Here we admired the view of the town and the neighbouring Black Forest before walking the 4km back down to our bikes. This was a far more pleasant experience than the knee-killing ‘steps-to-hell’ of Heidelberg, although our bike brakes were severly challenged on our rapid free-wheel back down to town. What we didn’t do here was ‘take the waters’, which is code for ‘pay over-inflated prices to stew in hot water with some questionable health benefits’. We also apparently didn’t take any relevant photos. This was the only one that I could find.

After two nights here we headed further into the Black Forest and to the university town of Freiburg-im-Breisgau. This city is dubbed the ‘greenest’ in Europe and allegedly has more solar power than the UK in its entirety. It also claims to be the sunniest, warmest city in Germany, a fact that we could not dispute on this very warm day. We chose a Stellplatz on the outskirts of the city which doubled up as the car park for the football stadium, home of Bundesliga team, SC Freiburg. This was an excellent spot as it had tons of space and also had a tram stop right outside. The major downside was that there was a home game the afternoon after we arrived, so all the (100 or so) motorhomes and campers would have to vacate by 10am. We revised our ‘2 night stop’ into a single night stay and headed into the city by tram in the early afternoon. Freiburg boasts an epic cathedral with an amazing carved spire and the usual array of squares and old buildings and the old narrow streets are criss-crossed with network of streams flowing in narrow, open irrigation channels. These were created by coralling and diverting the natural water courses that flowed through the old city, and were useful for watering humans and livestock in past centuries. Now they provide children with the opportunity of buying small wooden boats on strings made by local craftsmen to float in the streams, provide drinkers sitting at pavement bars a cool place to soak their feet and provide a modicum of jeopardy as trip hazzards for those grown ups not paying attention as they are shopping.

The heat of the day of course led us to discount a walk up hill to the castle and instead seek out a cool place for a rehydrating beer. We found the perfect spot in the form of Hausbrauei Feirling, which had marvellous beer served at tables on a perfect shady terrace, slightly off the beaten track. Again, Lonely Planet’s suggestions are rarely disappointing.

Our enforced decamp in the morning had a plus-side. It meant that I could do another Parkrun on our way out of town. The early start also meant we could be away before the mass exodus. My lagging fitness and the heat made it another 5km of ‘personal struggle’ but at least I wasn’t the tail-end-charlie runner this week. We had a cooked breakfast afterwards and I then had a shameless, bikini-clad wash in the car park with our cold water outdoor shower attachment. I’m all class!

It being a Saturday in peak summer season, we thought that it would be a great idea head to the lakes of the Black Forest to find space in a campsite without having made a reservation. This was both highly optimistic and majorly stupid. As Germany’s only coast is on the Baltic Sea, where the water is, well, baltic, the lakes of the country’s south provide the only domestic warm waters for holiday fun,and as you can imagine, it is very popular. We selected a lake called Titisee (See being the German for ‘lake’) and headed there. The first two campsites we called at were completely full and unpleasantly busy. We felt an impending sense of doom. We arrived at the reception of campsite number three about 30 seconds before it shut for lunch. Yes, they had a space! We didn’t have the usual cares of how good a space it was, we were just glad to be in. Go and get settled they said, and come back after lunch to do the paperwork and pay. We gingerly picked our way throught the busy campsite, everyone parked cheek-by-jowl, looking for our spot. It transpired that our flukey last minute allocation of a site had scored us the most magnificent one in all the campsite. It was massive, grassy, shady, slightly elevated, had a lake view, was off the main path and had only a few neighbours in a discrete cull-de-sac area. What a coup. We extended our planned 6 nights to 8 and could have happily spent the rest of the summer here.

What we learned over the course of this week was that this campsite operated on an entirely anologue, no-reservations occupancy system. Obviously many people knew this and arrived early, queuing down the road, waiting for spaces to be vacated by those moving on/going home. In quieter times of day there was some degree of choice and people could be seen walking around with a map, selecting their preferred site in a civilised manner. At other times it was like the hunger games, with the tense tussle for camping real estate bringing out the warrior in usually mild mannered campers. We watched it all from our plinth of superiority.

The lake here is charming, gorgeous and warm, surrounded by beautiful forest and amazingly underdeveloped. The lakeside village of Titisee, 2km from camp, accomodates the usual array of tourist needs and desires, such as beds to sleep in, restaurants and cafes to eat in, delis to sell local products, an array of ‘fluff-and-stuff’ emporia to flog the tatt, and the all important boat and paddleboard rental outfits so everyone can enjoy the lake. What it didn’t have was a supermarket, but an easy 8 km round-trip cycle from camp to the neighbouring town solved that problem.

How did we spend our long week here? Paddle boarding mostly. It was a leisurely 1 hour loop around the perimeter of the lake, dodging other paddlers,the electric rental boats and the three larger sightseeing vessels. Then we loafed, drifted, dunked and sunbathed, convincing ourselves it was exercise. There was a 6km lake loop path that cut through our campsite and offered a very scenic route for a morning walk. We did this a couple of times, each time stopping at one of the aforementioned delis on the way round to pick up buns and frickadellen for a BBQ breakfast sandwich on our return. (Frickadellen = seasoned pattie of veal, pork, onion,breadcrumbs,herbs = delicious. If you haven’t ever had one, Aldi sell them. Try some). My husband is motivated to exercise by carrots (a.k.a. pork products), not sticks. One day we also walked up the nearest, tallest hill. We had taken the obligatory picnic of ham and cheese buns but as the walk took less time than expected it wasn’t lunch time until we got home. Nothing like unnecessarily lugging a packed lunch and drinks around on a 10km hike, then eating a warm and slightly crushed sandwich back at the starting point, which has a perfectly good fridge. We did swap out the warm drinks for cold ones though. We’re not animals.

The significant event during our Titisee stay was a death of sorts. The unexpected loss of a old friend. My Red paddle board exploded. Well, burst in a dramatic and noisy fashion, anyway. A fatal wound was rent in its side seam. There was no doubt of its permenant demise.

Cause of death?

1a) Failed main side seam. 1b) Being left in a shady spot at 7pm that unfortunately became a very sunny spot by 10am the next morning thus heating up the board to bursting temperature. 2) Old age.

Unfortunately this board was ostensibly the better of the two. It was Nick’s that we have been patching up, trying to eke out its final weeks to get us through the summer. It was an odd experience to throw it away in the campsite dumpster. We headed to town to see what the options were to rent or buy another. Rental was out, it was too far away to be useful, and they had no second hand boards for sale either. There was one sporting goods shop that had one last paddle board, significantly reduced in an end of season sale, propped up outside the door. We made an offer 10% less than they were asking and 10 minutes later were deflating it, packing it in its bag, and heading home with it. Decisions are easy when there is no choice! The new board is nearly 2 foot longer than my old one and even has a viewing window. Just what we needed. We had been a ‘one paddleboard family’ for nearly two hours. Sharing one was just not going to fly.

What else happened whilst we were here? Oh, there was a very exciting, short thunderstorm with a deluge of rain and hail. We were happily safely installed under our (well secured) awning when it hit, luckily not floating around in the middle of the lake. The inclement weather leant a certain frission to the spectator sport of watching the constant stream of new arrivals trying to find a spot to camp. Tension, coupled with saturation led to a few frayed nerves and short tempers. We viewed it all from the plinth of smugness like the critics from the muppets. Yes, the hours do just fly by….

What did we not do whilst we were here? Eat any Black Forest gateau, or Schwatzwälder Kirchtorte, as they call it in this neck of the woods…

Unfortunately it was soon time for us to leave and we vacated the best site in the camp in another rain shower. Who would be the next happy tennants of the plinth I wonder?

Next stop was the town of Meersburg on the shore of Lake Constance. Well, that’s its name in English and the romance languages. Here it is known as ‘Bodensee’. The lake borders three countries: Germany to the north, Switzerland to the south, and Austria has a teeny piece of its eastern shore. It is the third largest lake by surface area in central and western Europe after Lake Geneva and Lake Balaton. So quite big. There is a 273km bike route that circumnavigates the lake, making this a very civilised spot for some easy bike touring, especially when you find out that this whole area produces some very respectable wine. The rain had continued on and off as we pulled into our next stop, a few kilometers up the hill outside Meersburg. This was a Stellplatz co-located with a popular local restaurant. It was very busy too and we were lucky to sneak a space. It was a Sunday. Our food stocks were low, and this being Germany, all the supermarkets were shut. There was only one thing for it. Dinner at the restaurant. Well it seemed rude not too. We had to go in to pay anyway and it was so welcoming on a miserable evening!

Meersburg delivered the usual fayre of castles, churches and old buildings in a well preserved old town with narrow cobbled streets, but with some noteable extras. High points scored for a great lake view and an ancient (est. 1120) town centre winery which offered tastings and wine sales to thirsty tourists. Also extra points scored for having a ferry terminal that had regular boat trips across the lake to many other qually pretty places. But it earned its full bonus points by having a lakeside mini golf, the first we have played on this trip. May it be known that I won by 2 strokes.

So nice (and cheap) was the Stellplatz that we decided to stay an extra day and use it to take a trip out onto the lake on the ferry. We headed over to Konstanz, a German city across the lake, right on the Swiss border. To be honest, all we did was swap a small pretty lakeside town for a pretty lakeside small city for a couple of hours of wandering around, but we did enjoy the boat ride.

What didn’t we do whilst we were here? We didn’t visit the Zeplin museum in the nearby town of Frierichshafen, the birthplace of the airship. They apparently have a full-scale partial replica of the Hindenburg to help convey its massiveness. The Hindenburg, 245m long with a max speed of 130km/h, completed 18 voyages to North and South America before its untimely end. One can take sightseeing flights on a Zepplin from here, the cheapest being €330 each for a 30min flight. Guess what else we didn’t do whilst we were here?! We saw it go over several times though.

That seems like a good spot to sign off. I’m not sure I ‘curtailed any ramblings’. Perhaps it isn’t possible.

29th July – 7th Aug 2024

Over the course of our travels we have formed many fleeting friendships with people we have met. We have had extended conversations in campsites. Maybe even shared a beer or two. Then it is time to move on. Goodbyes are said. Sometimes contact details are exchanged. Parting words may include ‘It would be great to catch up again in the future’. You know how it is. It never happens…Except in the short span of our first ten days back in Germany, it happened three times. Beware of itinerant Hampsons. We will find you!

Our first stop back in Germany was in the town of Bamberg in northern Bavaria. A visit here was recommended to us by a chap called Christoph who we had met on a campsite in Krakow. He had sold us on the idea of coming to his home town with tales of its beauty and its beer. Doesn’t take much to convince us to include somewhere on our itinerary. “We’ll ring you!” we said as we got his number, and so it was that 7 weeks later we arranged to meet him at a bar of his choosing. Bamberg is indeed a fine town. It sits on the divided Regnitz River and has a well preserved medieval old town, built across a landscape of seven hills, mirroring Rome. Each hill has a church on top and for many centuries the town was the seat of a long line of Prince-Bishops, a religious ruling class until the early 1800s. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site but although it is lovely and has its fair share of tourists it is also a lively universtity town with normal, everyday local people and shops in its town centre. It was charming.

The people of Bamberg have a quirk. For some reason, sometime in the past, it was decided that they could improve their local beer by adding a flavour of wood smoke. This local delicacy is still made in the original way by two of the ten local breweries. The best that we tasted was from the very old town centre brewery, Schlenkerla. Called ‘Aecht Schlenkerla Rauchbier’, real Schlenkerla smoked beer, it is a 5.1% dark beer with a wood-smoked bacon aftertaste. (They have another speciality which is called ‘Urbock’, original billy goat. This is stronger – 6.5% alcohol- and is only served in the season known as the ,very literally named, ‘Starkbierzeit’, strong beer time, which runs from Oktoberfest through to the end of Christmas, on 6th Jan. Way to go the Germans for an extended party season!) Anyway. Beer with a hint of smoked bacon? It may not suprise you to hear that a taste was acquired for this strange brew!

We had a throughly enjoyable evening with Christoph having met him at a riverside bar on the edge of town. Conversation flowed freely (aided by his excellent English) and it was as if we had known him for years, not mere minutes, prior to this meeting. The evening had started in the warm sunshine with paddle boarders floating past on the river, moved through dusk and sunset with the turning on of twinkly lights and was, before we knew it, quite firmly in the cold and almost dark zone. We had come by bike and without warm clothes, so we said our goodbyes and having made arrangements to meet again over the next few days, we beetled home whilst we could still see and still feel our faces.

Our stopping spot here was another ‘Stellplatz’, a dedicated motorhome parking area with access to water, power and waste disposal. These first-come-first-served places are generally cheap (about €12-15/night) and quite utilitarian, being basically glorified car parks. Bamberg had two areas, both very busy, and we had squeezed into the last space available when we had arrived. At first glance this looked like an awful location, but given the heat and fierce sunshine this spot gave us a private shaded spot under our awning up against the mammoth fence. Another huge plus given the hot weather was that the Stellplatz was also co-located with another amazing municipal swimming pool complex, where we spent a few hours most of the three days that we were here. It was close enough to be able to walk across in our swimmers without feeling like exhibitionsists!

We did indeed see Christoph again, this time for coffee and cake at his appartment and spent another few hours sorting out the world’s problems whilst eating pastries. He offers Air BnB in his place, where people rent one of his two spare bedrooms and share the bathroom and kitchen facilities with him. Very ‘old school’style! A new friendship formed, it was time to move on.

From Bamberg we headed south to a place called Ingolstadt. Car geeks amongst you may know this as the home of Audi. It was not only a convenient place to stop on our way to our next social engagement, but it also a) had a very cheap Stellplatz, b) had an Audi museum and c) had a Parkrun. Everyone’s a winner! Given its location as the manufacturing and management hub of one of the world’s leading car brands, it may not suprise you to to discover that Ingolstadt is quite a wealthy little city, and lots of people drive Audis. We arrived at just the right time to secure a good place before the spaces filled up and then headed into town for the afternoon. The old town was the usual offering of beautiful old sh*t, but we did happen across one unusual gem. This was in the externally unassuming Baroque Asam Church Maria de Victoria and took the form of the world’s largest flat ceiling fresco, an art work of an impressive 42 x 16 metres. It was neck-achingly impressive, and being able to lie down on a pew to appreciate it would have been a lot more comfortable. Not seemly though.

Next we jumped on a bus that took us out to the Audi Forum, the business centre of Audi in the town. Here there is a very stylish Audi museum. This was cool, calm and quiet and a delight to waft around. It had the most epic of car displays in the form of a rotating car lift, loaded with a priceless array of mainly historic Audi race cars. We could have watched it for hours.

The next morning was Parkrun. In the neaby Luitpold, this was an easy 1km walk from camp along the river and the weather was perfect. Sunny and not too warm. My last Parkrun was 25th May in Gdansk, Poland, over 9 weeks ago. Due to the heat of summer and various other factors such as laziness, that was my last run of any kind. So, needless to say, it was a toughie on this day. No PB was set and I was officially the last runner to finish. Only the walkers were behind me. I still had ‘fun’ (a loose term to encompass the technical definition of something that one enjoys doing but causes one to swear quietly to oneself during the activity), although the legs were a bit sore for the next few days.

Our next destination was the small Bavarian town of Vilsbiburg. Here our campsite was the suburban street outside the home of Benedikt and Suzi, a couple that we had met on the very social campsite in Hungary. We had got to know them over the communal goulash and during the hours spent around the swimming pool and dropping in to see them on our further travels seemed like a jolly good idea. They, luckily, agreed! We arrived bearing gifts. A case and a half of Bamberg smoked beer, as requested by Benedikt, something alcohol-free for Suzi, who is still feeding their 1o month old daughter, Hannah, and bubbles and water-pistols for 3 year old, Mateo. Any reservations that we may have had about pitching up at the house of such new acquaintances to spend a whole weekend were instantly dispelled when we a) saw our welcome sign on the door, b) were instantly enveloped into their family and home and c) were fed so much amazing food that we thought that we might burst! Again, there was no sense that this was a fledgling friendship and we got on like a house on fire. Again we were humbled by their excellent English and even more so with Suzi, who is Romanian by birth and whose first language is Hungarian (apparently there are some Hungarian speaking parts of Romania), learnt German when her family moved to Germany at 12 years of age and is practically fluent in English too.

We had a lovely relaxing weekend of eating, chatting and drinking smoked beer on their terrace, interdispersed with a couple of outings. Having Davide parked on the driveway was the perfect way to be a house guest, for all involved! No spare bed to make up or linen to launder. No bags to pack or unpack. No one to disturb or be disturbed by. I can recommend it. It was was sad to say our goodbyes, although they did generously invite us to their wedding next year. Now that would be a memorable third meeting! Thank you Benedikt and Suzi for being amazing hosts.

From here our journey took a slightly illogical but very worthwhile deviation of many hundreds of kilometers and many hours of travelling. Avid readers with good memories may remember our meeting of a pair of sisters, Anke and Meike, on a campsite in Lyon during our stay there for the Rugby World Cup last year. A week later we met up with them again at another rugby game in Lyon, and this trip started in Düsselforf in May in order to see Anke again. Now we had an opportunity to catch up with them both, but it was a bit of a mission!

Meike travels a lot with her work and uses her motor home rather than staying in hotels. She had a job planned near a place called Heidelberg and we arranged to meet her for a couple of nights in a Stellplatz near there. Anke took a day off work and jumped on a train from Düsseldorf to the nearest main station at Manheim to join us for a whole 20 hours. Our planned 4 hour journey took us 7.5 hours due to two motorway closures and the resulting gridlocked sideroads. We arrived at exactly the same time as Meike and set up our enclave of two wagons in an empty corner of the Stellplatz. This was in a sweet riverside town called Ladenburg, about 10km down stream from Heidelberg. Anke was due mid-evening but the German railway system is apparently notorious for bucking the trend for teutonic efficiency and her train was late causing her to miss her connection to Ladenberg. Meike was a very kind big sister and broke camp to fetch her from Manheim. We were all finally assembled on our camp chairs, drinking wine and eating crisps by 10.30pm and stayed up into the wee small hours (ie 12.01am) chatting and laughing, probably being those people that piss us off when we are trying to sleep. The girls had brought gifts from Düsseldorf for us: A bottle of Alt Beer each, a shot of the herbal firewater, Killepitsch each and some special local mustard. We are truly spoilt, especially as our friendship began with them gifting us a washing up bowl, which is named after them. We vowed to buy them lunch.

The next day we headed out on a day of adventure. This began with a cycle into Heidelberg. This was allegedly a ’20 minute’ ride, but a combination of a detour and some relative mis-information expanded this to nearly an hour. This was not a problem as it was a lovely scenic route, but we were quite hot and sweaty by the time we arrived in the busy centre of town. Heidelberg is a city of about 160,000 people, almost a quarter of which are students. It university, founded in 1386, is Germany’s oldest and the city is a scientific research hub. It is another popular tourist destination, the crowds being drawn by the beautiful old town, its setting alongside the handsome Neckar river and its valley, and its fine castle that presides over the town from its perch on the side of Königstuhl, a 567m hill behind the Old Town. The castle and the summit of Königstuhl can be reached by a funicular railway, which carries 2 million visitors per year. This was next on our itinerary and it seemed that most of the 2 million people had opted to ride the funicular on the same day as us. Boy was it busy, and hot, and the long queue meant that it took nearly an hour to get to the top of the hill. The views were awesome, but our minds were distracted by the long line of people at the top waiting to to ride down again.

With all the waiting to get up the hill our schedule had tightened a bit and we were mindful that Anke had a train to catch later so we opted to walk down. The route down was not a meandering path full of swtich backs. No. It was a straight down, uneven, stone staircase consisting of about 1200 steps. 300m of vertical drop over 0.8km. If you are climbing this from the bottom it is called the ‘Himmelsleiter’, the stairway to heaven. Its descent is called the ‘stairway to hell‘, and it was hell on the legs and my 52 year old knees.

We finally reached the castle, wandered around the gardens a bit and then went to find lunch. Meike had selected a fine local establishment called Vetter Brewery which served us very welcome cold beers and some fine local fayre. Our homeward journey took us along the bike path on the opposite side of the river to avoid the long detour and ended with a short chain-ferry crossing back to Ladenberg.

Unfortunately it was soon time for Anke to catch her train and we all cycled up to the local station to deliver her, Meike locking up the forth bike to collect in the morning. After bidding her farewell the three of us (having come prepared with swimwear) stopped at a river beach for a cooling dip. All the dashing about in the heat had cooked us. Back at the ranch we chilled out for the rest of the evening with Meike and we all had a much earlier night. It was time to leave in the morning and we said our goodbyes. Our mega detour had been entirely worth it to catch up with these two, who are great company, and we shall definitely see them again in the not too distant future.

Our onward journey was back in a southerly direction and after an hour and a half we arrived at the second German car manufacturer based tourist activity of our trip, the Porsche museum just north of Stuttgart. This is a striking building slap bang in the centre of an urban area, much of which is occupied by Porsche owned builings and offices, and it comes complete with a trio Porsches on tall sticks to show you that you have arrived.

There is plenty of multi-storey parking for cars, but the motorhome parking was striking by its absence. We drove around in circles for a bit, did several U turns and ended up parking a kilometer away in an unrelated carpark. Unlike the serene atmosphere of the Audi museum, the Porsche museum was a clamorous frenzy of car nuts. They had many beautiful and noteworthy models worthy of drool and we saw them all, but the crowds made spending time here less pleasant than it had been in Ingolstadt.

We headed out and during our walk back to the carpark we dropped into a cafe for lunch. Here we had our first experience of sandwiches, Bavarian-style. No nonsence, dry bun, slab of meat loaf or slab of chicken schnitzel. Delicious. Fed and watered we headed onwards to our next stop.

19th July – 29th July 2024

The Czech Republic, Czechia for short (apparently pronounced ‘Check-keeya’, not ‘Check-chia’, which I learnt late in the game), was historically called Bohemia, an infinitely cooler name all together. This was to be our trip’s last Slavic country with the last unintelligable language and the last to not use the euro. Here one euro is worth about 30 Czech Koruna,meaning more managable numbers than the Hungarian forints. It has been a strange experience to travel through these countries where the languages are all so alien. Road signs, information leaflets, menus, grocery labels all mean nothing in passing and it must be what being illiterate feels like. We have relied heavily on the camera function of Google Translate performing its magic.

We vacated our Bratislavan campsite before the onslaught of the AC/DC fans and headed north, entering the Czech Republic from the south. Unusually for us we had no real idea where we were headed. We had a few days in hand before our next arranged rendezvous and fancied ourselves staying somewhere quiet in the countryside, ideally with somewhere to swim/dunk/paddleboard. We stopped for a lunch break at a motorway service station, made a sandwich and studied our ‘font-of-all-knowledge’ camping app, Park4Night, to see what we could find. We are now in peak summer holiday time, so this fly-by-the-seat-of-our pants technique of campsite organising will likely be less successful for the next month and a half. BUT, this time we were lucky and a phone call secured us a spot in a camp ground that, on paper, seemed to meet all our criteria. Now we had a destination- Vitlek Camping- a rural idyll on the outskirts of the lesser known small village of Opatov, somewhere in southern Czechia. Not to be found in many tourist publications. The campsite was owned and run by a Dutch couple (who spoke perfect English like all their countrymen) who had bought it 20 years ago and been beating it into shape since then. The grass was lush, there were lots of mature shade trees, the site allocation relaxed and free-form, the facilities excellent and it was on the shore of a beautiful little lake that was perfect for all of the aforementioned activities of swimming/dunking/paddleboarding.

Our pitch was in a perfect spot, only meters from the lake and although there were plenty of other campers in a chaotic melée of tents, caravans and campers, the whole place had an air of tranquil contentment. We would be good here. For the next three days we did very little that didn’t involve a paddleboard. We didn’t even make it down to the village to have a look around. The weather continued to be great, in that sweet spot of 26-28 deg C and we filled our time with board inflation, ongoing board repairs, board paddling and board loafing. The lake was rustic but perfectly clean and warm enough to swim in and we did plenty of that. Lazy days, but we could have been anywhere. It was soon time to drag ourselves away and get to seeing some of Czechia.

Next stop, Ceske Budojovice. This is a city of about 97,000 folk, located some 120km south of Prague and the largest city in this region, South Bohemia. It’s main claim to fame is that it is the home of The Budweiser Budvar brewery, makers of the original Budwiser. This is not to be confused with Anheuser-Busch’s far inferior product that is peddled in the rest of the world, where, due to an ongoing trademark dispute, the Czech version has to be marketed as Budvar or Czechvar. Despite its history and high profile, Budwiser Budvar is only the fourth largest producer of beer in the Czech Republic. This country likes its brews. Apart from it having a picturesque, well preserved old town centre, the main reason for our stop here was not the place, but a person. Slightly randomly, our friend and NZ investment chap, Bruce, who lives in our old home town of Kerikeri in NZ was spending some time here that coincided with us passing through the near vicinity. This is less random if you factor in that his other half is from here and they were visiting his mother-in-law. We arrived a couple of nights before we had arranged to meet him and found an interesting but strangely unfrequented camping spot not far from the town centre. This was a grassy area on a small sports facility which had a small bar/restaurant which was close to the river and the cycle path. The power supply was on an extension reel, protected from the elements by an upturned crate and the showering facilities were ‘sports team communal style’. This made showers happen fast whilst one had the room to onself. There were only a couple of other campers here during our three night stay which was suprising given its location and the fact it was only the equivalent of £10 per night. Our neighbour for the first two nights was an Austrian chap who seemed to be by himself. We got chatting to him and discovered that he was travelling with his wife but she was currently in the nearby hospital having been crushed by a falling tree a few days prior whilst they were out hiking. A helicopter rescue, trauma surgery and a medevac back to Austria had ended their trip, but they counted themselves lucky that she hadn’t been killed. Another reminder that a nice life cannot, and should not, be taken for granted.

About 20km from Ceske Budejovice is the very beautiful, and consequently very popular town of Ceske Krumlov. Another UNESCO World Heritage site by virtue of it’s well preserved Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque architecture, it is apparently one of the most visited places in Czechia, a claim that it was impossible to refute given the crowds present on our visit, and pretty suprising given as this is the same country that also has Prague as a tourist destination. Every time we find ourselves joining the throngs of mass tourism we regret it a little, the press of humanity somehow shaving some of the loveliness off the lovely place it has come to see. Despite this, it was indeed still a lovely place. We decided to take the train. Our nearest station was an easy 15 minute walk from camp and despite being only one stop south from the start of the line at Ceske Budejovice main station, all the carriages were already heaving. The sun was beating in through the windows and there was no functioning aircon. We miraculously found two seats and settled in for the sweaty 50 min trip. The train wound its way through a very beautiful valley, stopping at every little town, village and settlement on the way. What an amazing service for the area, locals and visitors alike. We finally arrived at Ceske Krumlov and there was another 15 minute stroll downhill to the town. It is a rabbit warren of narrow cobbled streets, old buildings, churches and the most magnificent castle presiding over it all, sitting high up on a rocky escarpment above the river. We wandered through the rambling castle, seeing as much as we could without shelling out any money and came across a slightly odd exhibit. This was two rather tatty and depressed looking brown bears whose home was the deep old moat. They were attracting a lot of attention and photographs but didn’t appear to be thriving. I don’t think that Ceske Krumlov needed them to attract any more visitors.

We soon had worked up a thirst and felt the need to find a quiet little place to escape the melée and get a drink. A riverside bar entirely fulfilled the remit, served us very respectable decaf coffees (often a tricky thing) and gave us a prime perch from which to observe the other popular activity in Ceske Krumlov, river rafting/kayaking. I don’t know where they were setting off from or how far they were going, but there was a constant stream of them floating by. To be fair, it looked quite a pleasant way to spend some time. Suitably refreshed we hit the streets again. There were no more specific sights that we felt the need to make a beeline for, more it was the general feel of the place and its setting and so we did our usual thing of just wandering the streets whilst avoiding the multitude of tatt shops. How can so many shops, all selling exactly the same sort of rubbish, all stay in business. It is a mystery. Thoughts of our next meal were starting to pervade our mind and given the also ridiculous number of restaurants, making a decision became a bit overwhelming. After a few laps we decided on a lower end establishment, called The Travellers Restaurant, which served us good beer and medicocre, (but entirely appropriate for the price) traditional, hearty meals that involved meat, dumplings and goulash. The goulash was acompanied by a bizzare bread ‘loaf’ which was a compressed amalgamation of chopped up bits of (quite stale) bread, served in slices. An acquired taste that we did not acquire. With stomachs full of food we decided that our sightseeing batteries were depleted so we opted to catch the earlier train home.

The next day we saddled up and cruised down the cycle path alongside the river into the old town of Ceske Budejovice. This boasts a very fine central square, one of the largest in the country, with a large central fountain that apparently used to supply the town with its drinking water. Loads of lovely old buildings border the square with some nice shady arcades, a welome relief from the on going heat of summer.

We killed a bit of time with some mooching then it was time to meet Bruce. A rendezvous by the fountain had been arranged- code name Red Fox. Very ‘Cold War’. It was great to see him – we agreed that we all had acquired some more grey hair in the past 5 years – and bizzare to meet in such a random location. We had a long, and in the end quite boozy, lunch at a local brewery, catching up on the intervening years and doing just enough ‘business chat’ to justify him putting in a claim for expenses having kindly paid the bill. Whether or not his company honour the claim, being in Czech Koruna and during his holidays, is yet to be seen. We may owe you a future return lunch, Bruce, somewhere equally left field!

Our next stop was Prague. Another great European city, some would say one of THE great European cities. Another splendid, gorgeous and ancient arrangement of impressive buildings, squares, cathedrals and churches, bridges, cobbled streets and parks. Here again all is overseen by a stupendous castle complex on a hill, looking down on the old city and the Vltava River that carves through its centre. This was not a city centre to try and camp anywhere near the centre of so we found a very well appointed and secure camp located on the site of an old farm in one of the western suburbs that was serviced by the very efficient and extensive tram system. I know that I bang on about the provision for cycling in much of Europe, but I am also highly impressed by the public transport,especially the trams, in and around the bigger cities. It’s cheap, easy to navigate, reliable, and clean and tidy. A delight to use.

We gave ourselves a couple of days to sample what Prague had to offer, which was our usual foot tour of the exteriors of the main sights, a walk through any church or cathedral that wasn’t charging an entry fee (not many), and many a back street (to escape crowds, to escape the sun and to escape logical navigation). If we had thought that Ceske Krumlov had been busy and crowded, that was a mere gentle warm up for a Prague experience in late July. We just had to grin and bear it…like it or lump it…put up or shut up…swim with the tide…bite the bullet…. so we joined the throng and then winged mercilessly about the scourge of over tourism. According to my all-knowing Apple watch we walked an impressive 23km over the course of our two day jaunt. All in 30-32 deg C heat. Not quite the insufferable ‘pushing 40 deg C’ heatwave temps that make everything impossible, but hot enough to make the whole endeavour difficult whilst being cool enough to convince us that it is entirely reasonable behaviour.

On the first day we joined the river of humanity and tackled the steps up to the castle. From here we appretiated the elevated view of the city, wandered around the outside of the very impressive St Vitus cathedral (Czechia’s largest and most important church which is within the castle complex) then descended back to the old town again. To dilute all the Old Sh*t that it impossible to escape on our wanderings, we like to add in visits to more esoteric attractions, often sourced from Atlas Obscura, a great source for alternative sightseeing. In Prague this included the ‘Lennon Wall’, a wall opposite the French embassy that was adorned with a portrait of John Lennon and some of his song lyrics following his murder in 1980. Many other Beatles and Lennon inspired artworks and writings joined the wall following this which was added to with anti-communist, resistance and general anti-establishment grafitti. It has been painted over and re-decorated so many times that almost no John Lennon inspired artwork remains. Now it just looks like a mess. The latest additions pertain to the conflict in Gaza.

We saw a sculpture of Franz Kafka’s head which is outside a town centre shopping mall. Erected in honour of the surrealist novelist, one of Prague’s famous sons, this does a funky rotation of its slices every hour on the hour. I am sure that it would have appealed to him. We missed the show by 50 minutes.

We schlepped up to the new city to the impressive National Museum then cruised through the long rectangular Wenceslas Square, complete with statue of emponymous saint on a horse. This is a popular venue for mass gatherings and celebrations and it can apparently accomodate up to 400,000 people. We continued down the long boulevard that seems to be being entirely dug up and renovated, past lots and lots of shops and eateries, back to the old town. Here we ran out of steam and got the tram home.

The next day we did a version of the same thing. Once in town we happened upon a craft type market in a large courtyard. Every second stall was selling lovely linen clothes of various designs and styles and there was a frenzy of middle aged women sorting through racks and trying on items. I resisted the urge to join them as a) I have sufficient clothing for my current needs and space available, b) quality linen items and commercial laundrettes don’t mix well and c) I am a tight wad. Onwards we shuffled.

It was time to brave the main square. This is the epicentre of the crowds, especially at lunchtime. There were a bazillion restaurants, all full, and thousands of people all heading in different directions whilst not looking where they were going. Here is another popular tourist attraction: the astrological clock, found on the side of the Old Town Hall. This was made in 1410, making it the third oldest astrological clock in the world, and the oldest still in operation. It also apparently does something fancy on the hour. We arrived at half past. So we photographed and then we escaped.

I decided it was time for another Atlas Obscura offering, a clever ‘infinity’ book sculpture in the municipal library. I confidently navigated us across the sun-baked, crowded square, dodging the selfie takers, the blitherers and the stop-in-the-middle-of-the-way-ers until we were at safety. Then a quick check of the map revealed that we had come entirely in the wrong direction and we had to retrace our steps. My over-heated, starting to get hungry, slightly foot weary travelling companion and (contemplating-his-life-choices 24 years ago) life partner showed the first glint of irritation and followed behind, grumbling more than audibly. We found the (correct) library, eventually. It was shut. Contrary to interweb information. The grumbling notched up. It was time to feed and water the man. Luckily our prior selected late lunch venue was a mere hoppity, skippedy, hoppity, skippedy, hoppity skip away and we (soon) arrived.

U Medvidku is billed as the oldest restaurant in Prague, founded on its site in 1466. Also a brewery, it serves traditional Czech fayre in traditional, slightly gloomy surroundings, and it was a perfect spot from which to hide from both the heat and the hoards. No umbrella festooned, fancy outside terraced seating area here. Just solid wooden furniture, wood panelled walls and aggressive cast iron light fittings. We ate sausages, chips and fried little fish. A light lunch. (Well it would have been if it hadn’t been for their very quaffable ‘NZ-style’ beer. ) Our prompt for coming here was our other travel director, the late, great Antony Bourdain. His travel shows have guided us on many an ‘homage visit’ to eateries on our journeys, and this was another of those. Our ethos of ‘if it’s good enough for Bourdain, it’s good enough for us’ has not let us down yet. Lunch restored humour and energy levels back to normal, and so risked requesting one final tourist activity before we headed home.

At the centre of Prague, gracefully but purposefully spanning the river, is the Charles Bridge. Construction of this medieval stone arch bridge took from 1357 until 1402 making it quite an epic civil engineering project. It was originally known as merely Stone Bridge, or Prague Bridge until 1870 when it received its new moniker, named for Charles lV who had laid the first stone. It is decorated with 30 statues and until 1841 was the only means of crossing the river in the city. Now it is pedestrianised and walking across it is a ‘must do’ activity during a visit to the city. We had avoided it until now. It had to be done. We braced ourselves and headed over. There were a lot of people on the bridge, but also many sellers of souvenir rubbish and slightly oddly, a multitude of portrait sketchers. I can’t imagine strolling across the bridge, admiring the view, taking photos of city, dodging my fellow sightseers and then saying to myself “You know what I need? I need to sit for half an hour in the heat on a small stool under an umbrella on this historic bridge and pay someone to draw a slightly mediocre likeness of me in charcoal. I can give that to Mum for Christmas.” To be fair what the bridge crossing did give was a vantage point for great view of the castle and an opportunity to watch the many pedaloes buzzing about on the river. Then we went home, via these babies. No, no idea either.

Two days was more than enough to sample the delights of Prague and the next day we headed to (depending on your point of view and love of beer) another jewel in the crown of Czechia, the city of Plzen. Seemingly lacking a vowel, kindly inserted by us English and the Germans in our name for it – Pilsen – this is the birth place, and on going home of, that fine golden brew, Pilsner lager. There was a dearth of formal campsites close to town so we opted for a rare night ‘freewheeling/freeloading’ in a car park. Our selected spot had good reviews on our app for quietness, lack of undesireable visitors, proximity to a nice park and access to the city. We like there to be a couple of other campers for ‘safety in numbers’ but it to not be too busy so as to attract attention from locals and police who might decide they don’t want us there. As it happens we had this delightful spot all to ourselves without any problems.

The reason we were here was to do the tour of the Pilsner Urquell brewery, and having arrived at lunch time we booked places on an English speaking tour at 4.30pm. This left us with a few hours to kill, so we decided to walk the 3km to the city centre to check it out. It may not suprise you to discover that it had a nice square, an impressive old church, lots of nice old buildings and some lovely green spaces. We severely over estimated the time that we needed to survey the Old Sh*t, so had to kill time within our killing time activity. We ate ice cream, we had a coffee and we spent almost enough time sitting on a bench in the square to risk being moved on for vagrancy. In fact one of the local vagrants did clock us and approached us for some loose change to buy some food. We declined, but then felt guilty afterwards and took him a couple of slices of pizza from a nearby kiosk. Good deads done, it was Pilsner time.

The Pilsner Urquell Brewery has been brewing here since 1842 when a novel technique of beer production first created its characteristic pale lager beer. This proved so popular, and so much copied, that now this style of beer acounts for about 2/3 of global beer consumption. All the world’s Pilsner Urquell is produced here in Plzen and it is Czechia’s largest brewery, now owned by Asaahi Breweries. Our tour took us through both the original old and the new modern brewery areas, both sporting gorgeous copper tuns. It was beautiful.

Then we visited a small section of the vast network of tunnels under the plant. These were dug by hand and are used for barrel storage and maturation of the unfiltered/unpaturised version of their beer. We had a very generous sample of this, poured directly from its barrel, drunk in a troglodyte tasting room. Fresh from the cow, so to speak.

Back on the surface we ‘exited through the gift shop’ and the tour finished with another free can of beer. This was apparently as compensation for the tour being slightly curtailed because one area was closed. We took our beers, bought nothing and sat on a bench in the sun outside the shop to drink them. Were we metomorphising into alcoholic vagrants like our friend that had accosted us earlier?? We were alone with our thoughts for a few minutes before we were aggressively befriended by a group of five very drunk Czech chaps. There was a fairly large language/sobriety gap but we think we ascertained that they were two middle aged brothers-in-law with their three grown up sons. They had just completed their tour and were absolutely plastered. This may have been due to the 12 x 500ml beers EACH that they consumed in the pub in the two hours prior. They were very amusing. One of the younger blokes even trotted back into the shop and bought us a gift of another bottle of beer for us to share, and another (not entirely necessary) one for himself. His Dad then politely and quietly vomitted behind a nearby wall. We finally extracted ourselves, bid them farewell, and headed to the brewery’s on-site pub for dinner. Who knows what they were up to next. It was only 6.30pm.

The pub here is apparently the biggest in Czechia, but it did not look it from the outside. That is because it is like an iceberg, mostly under the surface. We left the sun drenched upper courtyard, filled with drinkers at picnic tables and decended into the vast depths of the establishment. It became increasingly obvious from the garb of many of the other patrons that this was a pre-match staging post for football fans. A quick interweb search confirmed that the top division local team, FC Viktoria Plzen was due to take on visitors Hradec Kralove, kick off in an hour, at the next door stadium. The brewery had embraced its geographic advantage of being ‘closest beer to the match’ and even put in a back gate and built a bridge over the river that separated the two venues. Genius. Our minds drifted back to our five drunk friends and we are pretty sure that one of them had said that they lived in a town called Hradec Kralove….Wonder if they made it it to the match?

Anyway. Back to dinner. Nick ordered a significant section of a pig. And ate it all. And was happy as a pig in sh*t because it was tender and moist and delicious. No stomach space was wasted on vegetables. I had some chicken with bacon drizzled spätzle, an egg noodle pasta dish,common in these parts. Also delicious. There was also some more Pils drunk, because…duh!…and we then slowly wandered back to Davide, slightly wishing that we had cycled instead.

Our car park was delightfully empty and we slept well in our splendid solitude. The next day signalled our exit from the Czech Republic and on the way out we spent up our remaining Koruna on fuel and groceries, leaving our final remaining coins in a charity box. We were on our way back to Germany, nothing but euros needed all the way from here.