With only a quick hop from Chipping Sodbury to Bath we navigated our way through the windy back roads and parked up in our next CL (Penn Hill CL £13 per night) which is a small holding roughly 2 miles outside Bath city center, perfectly located for us and incredibly tranquil.

We had previously bought sacks of potatoes from here when we used to live in Bath as in addition to having the small campsite, they also sell seasonal fruit, vegetables and eggs….what more (apart from possibly some nice bacon and a few sausages) could we ask for?

With a busy week ahead we set off to get the important ‘chores’ out the way….. shopping and washing …..before setting off across Bath and up the other side to start off a week of catching up with friends for dinner, lunch, coffee …. oh and a few glasses of wine and pints of beer 🙂

Against our natural way, but out of necessity, we even went into Bath to get some much required clothes shopping in on Saturday …….. can’t beat a British outdoors shop for waterproofs and fleeces – although we did bow our heads out of respect whilst walking past Itchy Feet …… Bath is not quite the same without it!

But here we are six days, a lot of walking, a huge amount of tasty food (including a couple of fish and chips and three curries – not complaining at all), several pints of bitter and a number of glasses of wine later and we are due to move on again tomorrow….. where did the time go?

We managed to pop in and see our old house briefly tonight and are pleased that we decided not to sell …. it is as lovely as ever and the gooseberries, apples and rhubarb are still growing …. I can see my future – albeit a little way off still – in fruit crumbles and pie 🙂

So just under five weeks after arriving back in the UK we are back on the road again. After a bit of too-ing and fro-ing, my dad started Radiotherapy last Wednesday, finishing yesterday, now we will just have to sit and wait for 6-8 weeks until we get another scan to see if the radiotherapy has worked its wonders, or if a second blast is required. He is however in good form and as fit and healthy as he could be to tackle this head on…. and mum is sprinting up (and down) the stairs and able to drive again now, so my duties as Chauffeur are no longer required!

Leaving Lane End in Buckinghamshire, we headed North to a little village in Leicestershire just outside Lutterworth where we where we parked up on James, Gail, Amy and Jack’s driveway…. I think their sub-conscience (and love for motorhomes) must have been working overtime when they had the renovation work carried out on the house as the motorhome fitted perfectly…. and it was fairly flat 🙂

What a lovely area for walking and cycling … not to mention the beautifully extended house, we definitely have a bit of garden envy – chickens, beautifully cultivated ‘wild’ flowers and a great veggie patch 🙂

It only feels like yesterday when we last saw them, just a shame that we had to move on so quickly due to our busy schedule!!!! So, dragging our feet (we were waiting for the chickens to lay some eggs really), we got back on the M1 and headed to Hull where we just made it to our first Caravan Club Certified Location (CL) site (Tony Cook Garden Center/ Willow Lodge, £12 per night) before it closed.

A couple of months ago we took the decision to join the Caravan Club so we could get access to the smaller sites (maximum 5 motorhomes or caravans) around the UK while we are back over the summer … and if the first site is anything to go by, we will save a fortune and be parked in some very tranquil locations rather than large campsites heaving at the seams with people on their summer holidays.

Why Hull? I hear you ask…. good question, I can’t help but feel that I have spent more than my fair share of time here with the various jobs I have had over the years, but I do still have an odd ‘attraction’ to it, although we were actually up here to celebrate Keith’s mum’s 70th Birthday 🙂

Co-ordinated and booked a long time ago with the Anderson family as a surprise, somehow Paul and Carly (Keith’s brother and Fiancee) managed to lure her up here from Windsor to help pack up the final pieces before they move back down south. It all went smoothly and she was suitably surprised, plied with cocktails and rather a lot of cake……

The CL was fairly new, nicely maintained, next to a pub and had the added bonus of being situated on the Trans-pennine cycle path providing excellent running terrain and also enabling us to walk into Hull to Keith’s brothers on Sunday – a great way to get back into walking with a 27km round trip 🙂

As phone and internet coverage has been so bad (who would have thought it being back in civilisation ….. this is worse than Italy 🙂 ) the blog has taken slightly longer than planned to publish, so after leaving Hull we headed to the Peak District stopping 5 miles from Buxton on another Caravan Club CL (Newhaven Lodge Farm, Hartington £13 per night). This site is slightly different to the site in Hull as this one could really only be described as a field, but it also has access to a cycle path and beautiful views over the rolling hills (although you can definitely hear the A515 in the background).

Despite being a bit grey and wet, we managed to take advantage of the dry patches and walk one direction on the High Peak Trail on Monday, and cycled over to Ashbourne on the Tissington Trail on Tuesday … passing close to Parwich Village for those who have fond memories of weekends away there courtesy of the Carter family 🙂

So, with a slight change of plan I flew back to the UK last Saturday leaving Keith to enjoy Lake Garda (although he didn’t actually get a chance to see it) for a night before driving the motorhome home through Italy, France, Luxemburg and Belgium before briefly popping back into France to reach Dunkirk.

As some of you will know my father was treated for Lung Cancer last year and despite an amazing recovery and the ‘all clear’ from the consultant two weeks ago, he was admitted back into hospital last Friday night. Several scans later we have been told that he has four lesions on the brain that are cancerous, thankfully it sounds like the lesions are small and they believe that they can treat them with radiotherapy but we are waiting for confirmation of the next steps.

So, I am afraid that the blog is going to have a little down time over the next few weeks whilst Keith and I play chauffeur (My mum has just had a hip operation and can’t drive either), dog walker and general ‘daughter’ and ‘Son-in-law’….

We arrived at the Aire in Perugia just as the market alongside it was finishing so it looked a little like a war had just taken place but thankfully, it soon quietened down and got cleared up! The Aire ‘Il Bove’ (18 euros/24 hours inc elec.) was clean and tidy with all the facilities (including a shower and toilets) but it was next to a fairly busy main road – quite a change from the last few nights of tranquility. As Richard (Gonzo) wasn’t arriving until Sunday we took the chance to catch up with the laundry and shopping ahead of heading in to meeting him on Sunday lunch time and spent the next few days exploring the city both from a historic and gastronomic perspective 🙂

Perugia is known for its chocolate, but as it was far too warm to eat chocolate in its standard form we opted for the ‘gelato’ …. mixing a bit of Chocolate (white, milk and even dark on occasions) with pistachio and on the last day Keith even found a Liquorice flavour….. they were all delicious. We have managed to turn someone who doesn’t have a sweet tooth into a fully fledged Ice-cream eater, on the last day Keith and Richard managed to polish off 24 spatula’s worth between them…. must be some kind of record – oh and I should probably add that the majority of those were after they ate 1.5kg of florentine steak between them 🙂

Moving on from Perugia – well we didn’t want to eat them out of house and home – we made a quick pit stop at a motorhome place as the taps in the bathroom stopped working before working our way through the mountains to San Marino.

‘E7 Caravans’ was roughly 10km south of Perugia and despite it being close to lunch, they pulled the necessary pieces apart, realised that it wasn’t what we originally thought (which was lucky as the parts they had didn’t fit anyway), did a bit of soldering and we were on the road again within the hour…… amazingly helpful, dropping everything to fit us in.

Fully fixed we hit the road and the journey across the mountains to San Marino was stunning, at some points looking down onto lakes, others at stunning rock formations or forest rolling away down into the valley, although a long windy road, well worth the trip.

We arrived at P13 – yes that was its name – where we parked up a couple of hundred meters below San Marino town itself and settled in for the evening looking out over the valley and mountains beyond.

We woke to bird song and beautiful (although a little hazy) views, and after breakfast headed up to have a look round the town of San Marino. San Marino is an interesting place, not part of the EU, but allowed to use the Euro as its currency, it is the oldest surviving sovereign state and constitution republic in the world, has a population of approximately 32,000 and although you wouldn’t think it whilst there, is one of the wealthiest countries in the world in terms of GDP. The capital (also called San Marino) sits at 760m and the historic center, which is beautiful contains a castle and three three separate towers

in addition to perfume shops, jewellery and arms shops ….. yep, machine guns, pistols, knives, swords, tasers – you name it, they have them – obviously this is where you come should you want to buy any kind of weapon you want as the licensing laws are non existent, and as there are no borders to get back into the rest of the EU …. what more can I say???  It was a lovely place anyway and well worth the visit.

After another very peaceful night we travelled all of 16km back down to the coast to Rimini (Area Settebello 10 euros / 24hrs) where we walked along the coast and around the old town in the hot and humid 30 degrees it had to offer us.  Rimini has miles and miles of beach, where every 30m or so a different cafe/bar/restaurant/lido promotes its private beach,  the only difference appearing to be the colour of the sun loungers and parasols – not our cup of tea, but the town itself was attractive ….. ok and yes, it had a good gelato shop 🙂

Despite being very large and slightly over populated, the campsite was really well run, had great facilities and was incredibly peaceful considering the quantity of kids running around, so we ended up staying four nights. The airshow wasn’t such a great event unfortunately, in fact we ended up seeing more on the Saturday afternoon in the ‘warm-up’ than on the Sunday as shortly after the display started, two planes collided killing one of the pilots. Thankfully they collided over the sea so there weren’t any more casualties, but from what I found on the internet Italian airshows are definitely to be avoided as they don’t appear to have a great record for safety.

As we had decided not to move whilst Italy was enjoying its ‘bank-holiday’, we took advantage of the downtime to get some nice coastal walking and cycling in, and as the beaches and the sea were so welcoming, we even went for a dip J – This is definitely the nicest coastal location we have visited in Italy if you want beaches and tranquility, everything was clean, neat and tidy and all the accommodation looked smarter than we have seen to date … obviously a place for the slightly wealthier Italians to come on holiday.

On Tuesday morning we set off into the mountains again, a slightly longer route than originally planned, but our SatNav definitely has a mind of its own sometimes ….. dirt tracks really????

We stopped for lunch in a town called ‘Ascoli Piceno’ which has a very pretty old town with many of the buildings constructed in the same stone and valleys acting as its defence on either side, before heading on to a small town called ‘Sarnano’ where we parked up in the large car park/Aire at the bottom of the lift to the old town.

Sarnano has a small but beautiful walled old town all built in a red brick and unsurprisingly when you look at the views it doubles as a Ski Resort in the winter

Awaking to a market not too far from our doorstep, we thankfully managed to get a quick Tabata routine in before our section of the car park also filled up with cars, obviously taking advantage of buying some additional fruit and veg from the market before heading off.

With a little bit more wiggling through the beautiful rolling hills of Marche we got to Pievebovigliana, another free Aire just outside the village in the middle of walking and mountain biking country, where the welcome signs states that it is the ‘home of honey’…… we have searched high and low, and although we have found hives we can’t find any honey ….. we have one disappointed bear on board 😦

It has to be said that some of the best Aires in Italy have been free, although we can still count them on one hand. We are the only people here, but it has everything, including electricity (you do need to pay for it though) you need and apart from the birds (and the odd outburst from a donkey), its pretty quiet!

We are only able to stay a couple of nights unfortunately as we need to get to Perugia tomorrow, but got two good walks in yesterday and today and I had a lovely tranquil run this morning…. Definitely a place to come back to.

After spending a couple of tranquil nights in Viestre, an interesting town which appears to have almost as many Germans as Italians in it, we moved along the coast to a little place called Peschici stopping at ‘Parco Degli Ulivi’ which is another ACSI site (12 euros a night Inc. Elec.) The place looked more like an olive plantation than a campsite as there were enormous Olive trees stretched out in all directions around us. The site was enormous, although thankfully as there were only 6 of us staying at the peak and the pitches weren’t marked out it wasn’t an issue ….. although I still don’t understand why one motorhome decided to try parking less than 2 meters away from our door – he obviously heard me cursing him as he soon moved though 🙂

Peschici sits up on a cliff above the bay and has a small but very quaint walled old town and castle, unfortunately that is more than could be said for the rest of the town which apart from the main square needed a little bit of tender loving care. The main draw to being in Peschici however was to be closer to the Umbrian forest, so on Thursday we set off on the bikes into the forest to try and explore. We knew we would be pushing our luck to do the trip we had planned as it would have been a very hilly 80km round trip, unfortunately I was struggling as my back was aching after 25km of (all except 3km) uphill, so we threw in the towel and glided back down to the campsite again. It is a shame that there don’t appear to be any campsites closer in, I guess one of the benefits of having a car and being able to start your ride when you are already in the forest.

After a good nights sleep and a morning run to ensure that my back had recovered we decided to leave the Gargano behind us and get some miles in working our way back up to Perugia where we are meeting Richard (Gonzo) next Sunday. After ruling out an Aire in Lanciano as it was going to be market day and apparently the Aire would be inaccessible, Keith found a Fattore Amico small holding ‘Agriturismo Caniloro di Guiseppina di Nardo’ which was close to Lanciano and looked like an interesting stop. We wound our way away from the coast and into the beautiful rolling hills, and despite the entrance being on a bend with a fairly steep and narrow driveway, we made our way in, parked up and said hello to the goats, horses, sheep, chickens and dogs before having a nice chilled out afternoon.

We had hoped to buy some wine and possibly charcuterie, but despite trying, we ended up leaving it to the morning when we thankfully managed to find the owner who showed us around the farm and explained a bit more about what they do. With roughly 13 Hectares of land they primarily have olive trees and then grow feed for the animals, grow grapes for three different wines (enough to support the family and the restaurant for the year), maintain a good sized allotment and then they keep animals to produce meats and cheese…. Quality, not quantity!

As we only found this out just before we were due to leave we ended up having second breakfast (obviously to taste the produce) which consisted of two different cured meats, ricotta cheese, home made bread and a carafe of red wine …anyone would have thought we were hobbits, although the carafe of wine was a bit much for 10am, I only wanted a taster and Keith was driving 🙂

It was all delicious though and we both wondered what it would have been like if we had decided to eat dinner here…. Perhaps next time though we settled for 3 bottles of wine and 750g of a a local cured sausage…. A bit much but he ho…. On our way back down the drive we were presented with the most beautiful views to send us on our way…

Back on the coast road we drove on to Giulianova where we have stopped at ‘Don Antonio Camping Village’ (16 euros with ACSI inc Elec) which is pretty much full to the brim. The 2^nd June is another National holiday and it feels a little like most of Italy has decided to join us here ….. including one of the families we stayed next to in Marina di Latina a month ago who we bumped into this morning.

Although the campsite is huge and almost full, the setting is one of the best for a ‘beach’ location we have come across so far in Italy with 42km of cycle path along the seafront and apparently there is large air display here this afternoon.

We said our goodbyes to Michelle and Ulf who are in the process of having their new home built on the back of an ex-Austrian army vehicle and headed further south into an incredible electrical storm, almost to the tip of the heal to spend the night and dine at another Fattore Amico place ‘Agriculture MATINE di Anna Coppola’ near Alessano. Anna didn’t speak any english, but we managed to get by and found that her family had owned the small ‘chambre de hote’ on the land for 50+ years. It had definitely had a few updates during that period as it was authentically rustic, but also quite nice with a lovely pool out the back!

Dinner was typical Salerno food with a pretty impressive Anti-Pasti which just kept on coming followed by pasta with kale, meatballs with salad???? – a new one for me, but it was definitely lighter than the potatoes which were the alternative option – and thankfully only Strawberries and Ice Cream for dessert as I was struggling to cram them in. All washed down with some local wine and a digestif to follow…..tasty and worth the stop.

The following morning, we moved up the coast a bit further to Torre Del Orso (Camping Sentinella – 16 euros inc elec. with ACSI) where the beaches were white sand, the sea turquoise and there were lots of rock formations and caves along the coast. It is still very much pre-season although we were pleasantly surprised to see that the swimming pool was open and a good 25m long…. More than could be said for the town itself as it was also roughly 25m long (I exaggerate slightly) and pretty much everything (except 3 delis and a couple of bars) was still shut – the butchers actually had a note up outside to say that it would be opening on Saturday. So, no Bar B Q for us, but we did manage to buy some nice cheeses and meats from one of the deli’s.

We cycled into Otranto on Thursday which despite the road signs wavering between 16km and 11km at the beginning (it ended up being 17.5km each way), and not being able to judge how far 2kms actually is (definitely more like 5km)…. has a beautifully maintained historic walled town and is the most Easterly point of Italy – I think we heard more English and French voices in Otranto than we have heard since Florence …

We had hoped to cycle to Lecce on Friday, but as we were forecasted rain and the signposts said it was 22km …. Which if the trip to Otranto was anything to go by meant more like 30km, we decided to drive closer and stay the night to have a look around.

Unfortunately, when we arrived at the Aire in Lecce there was no sign of it being any more than a house and the gate was shut so faced without anywhere to stay, we decided to drive in a bit closer and have a walk around Lecce, but continue the journey to Alberobello later in the afternoon.

Lecce is the capital of the province and also a University town and what we saw of it on our whistlestop tour was really nice although they are currently renovating everything (the wall, the castle, the theatre, the cathedral….) in the hope that they win the 2019 European City of Culture – so photos were a bit limited. It is the kind of place that we would have liked to explore a bit further as it looked like it had a lot to offer, just a shame that we couldn’t find anywhere to stay closeby.

We finally parked up for the night in Alberobello (‘Parcheggio nel verde’ 18 euros inc. elec.) and settled in to a quiet evening. Alberobello and the surrounding area is known for its ‘Tulli’ houses, which are slightly odd looking with cone shaped roofs made without any mortar.

Despite planning to stay a couple of nights, after a couple of hours walking round in the morning we decided that we would move on. As appears to be the way the last couple of days we lucked out – both places we had highlighted as potentials looked a bit grim, so after a quick review of options we decided that we would head to the next place we had planned to stay (albeit in a few days time) which was another Fattore Amico farm ‘Monte Sacro di Libera Bitondi’ near Mattinata. It was a long days driving for us, made even longer by a road being closed which meant we probably drove an extra 30km up the side of a mountain to get to the farm…. But it was worth it!!

Located 700m up and just over 10km outside Mattinata, Monte Sacro is in a national park and there were points when we were driving up the single track road when we thought someone was having a laugh as there were only hills, trees and cows to be seen. However we persevered and finally got to the farm and parked Mika in a field with three rather beautiful donkeys…. One of them being a baby.

We felt a little extravagant eating out twice in a week …. but are very glad we did – everything (except the wine) was home grown/reared and the men of the house were in charge of the kitchen providing good portions of a fantastic selection of food.

The Anti-pasti included marinated aubergines, aubergine stuffed with sun dried tomato, bruschetta, deep fried artichoke stuffed with mozerella, ricotta, mozerella and surprisingly (when you hear what is in it) the most flavoursome dish was a dish layered with sardines, cheese, baked corgette and breadcrumbs…. It really shouldn’t have worked, but definitely did!

The Anti-Pasti was a meal in itself, but it was followed by the most delicious spaghetti in a tomato and Parmesan sauce, a mixed (succulent lamb and beef with sausages) grill cooked on a bar b q with potatoes and then finally when I was going to pop they turned up with a small jam jar. I almost gave it to Keith without opening it I was so full, but thankfully after a little breather (and seeing Keith’s eye’s light up when he took the first mouthful of his) I dipped my spoon into the most incredible Tiramasu I have ever tasted. We both agreed that we haven’t ever tasted anything like it, perhaps it was because it was made with home made ricotta, perhaps it was the balance of coffee, liquor and cheese – who knows, but we would happily get fat on that 🙂

As the place was so tranquil we asked if we could stay a second night (normally you only stay one night with Fattore Amico as they have another business that they are running) and they were happy for us to do so. So, in the morning we decided to walk down through the national park into Mattinata to take in the views, we were grateful that we managed to miss the majority of the electric storms that passed through the area during the day especially on the rather steep 700m trek back up.

This morning we said good bye to the donkeys (and the owners, naturally), although I did try and convince Keith that we could get the little one in the garage :), and headed back down the mountain taking the slightly quicker route this time and wiggled our way along the coastal road to Viestra (‘Camping Bahia Degli Aranci’ 16 euros inc Elec. with ACSI) where we have now stopped for a couple of nights. The area is mostly national park and very rugged and beautiful, complimented with lots of caves along the coastline so we hope to get some good walking and cycling in over the next few days.

We moved to the coast just on the other side of Taranto as our Italian map showed the coastline as being scenic and we thought that if the weather held, it would be nice to cycle along the coast for a bit.

We pulled up at Sun Bay Campsite (12 euros per night, but everything was extra… inc. emptying/refilling water) where everything was looking rather closed and pre-season, but they opened the gates and happily took our money directing me into the woods where the trees overhung perilously in every direction. I finally managed to convince them that Mika wasn’t going to fit into any of the spaces they suggested and asked if we could park in a slightly more open area …. which pretty much meant the beach. Keeping our fingers crossed that it didn’t rain (it was sand underfoot), we found a reasonably flat spot and opened everything up to breathe.

After a night interrupted by a game of ‘kill the mosquitos’, we managed to push through our morning exercise routine and devour some lovely pancakes before finally setting out along the coast on the bikes. Perhaps we are spoilt with the landscape we have seen, but it was pretty uninspiring unfortunately so after just over 25km of cycling into the wind, we stopped for lunch on some rocks looking out to a rather bland coastline and following lunch, promptly turned round and headed back.

Having had the campsite pretty much to ourselves on Friday night we found that we had now been joined by 5 other Italian motorhomes – who oddly had chosen to park near us on the sand rather than in the dense wood – and 30+ scouts in tents…. Despite our initial thoughts, they didn’t actually end up being too bad, I guess it is all relative though when you have an open air nightclub that appeared to be the center of all entertainment for the area rocking the campsite (literally) until 3am….. its ok though as we would have still been killing mosquitos (I have become a little bit neurotic about them)  if we weren’t listening to the music 😦

Slightly weary after two nights with little sleep, we continued our travels round Puglia to Gallipoli. We arrived at the campsite ‘Baia di Gallipoli’ (16 euros inc elec with ACSI) just after lunch and parked up next to a French cousin to try and help build on international relations ….

The first motorhome we have seen towing a Goldwing motorbike … apparently comfort is important 🙂

After a good nights sleep (there were still mosquitos, but somehow we managed to keep more of them out of the motorhome) we headed into Gallipoli on the bikes. The town is split in two, the newer part on the mainland and the older part on an Island connected by a bridge. A nice town which thrived on the wine and oil industry and still has many of the original underground oil presses in the old town. Although there is still a lot of wine and oil in the area, I get the impression that it is the turquoise waters and sandy beaches that generate the areas’ wealth nowadays.

Having heard so much about the beauty of the Amalfi coast we wanted to at least drive round it however, I had a funny feeling that I had read something about not being able to drive motorhomes along the coastal road and luckily I checked as there is a 350 euro fine for driving between Positani and Vietri Sul Mare, which the campsite owners assured us that they are pretty hot on, even more so now the sun has come out and there is a huge amount of traffic on the roads. So, begrudgingly we left the Amalfi coast behind and headed inland to Cava de Tirreni for an over night stop, starting the journey across Italy (along the sole if you were wondering) towards the heal (Puglia).

The journey was horrendous, apart from it being a Sunday, it was also Mothers day and in true Italian style the traffic stacked up in every town and village where someone was selling roses by the side of the road or the fishmongers/butchers/bakery was open, the Italians don’t bother pulling over they just stop, dumping their car and leaving the traffic to try and find a way to get past….oddly when there is barely enough space for a car to pass, you can imagine the difficulty in getting a motorhome through,  the Italians were very helpful though encouraging us on by the horns of the cars behind us  …. or at least I think it was supposed to be encouragement 🙂  However, no matter how narrow the road, or the space to get passed a parked car, apparently it is always possible to squeeze a motorbike through. I think they must make motorbikes with a protective force-field around them as they seem to survive far longer than one would expect when you see how they drive.  As the weather has been getting warmer we have seen an increasing number of motorcyclists without helmets including an amusing conversation between a motorcyclist and a policeman – eventually the policeman won and the motorcyclist begrudgingly put his helmet on … at least until he was out of view of the policeman 🙂

Anyway, we finally made it to Cava de Tirreni and after being directed down several streets that were far to narrow for Mika, we found a way we could actually drive to the Aire (Free), parked up and stretched our legs. In the morning, after a quick visit to the local fruit and veg shop and butchers we squeezed our way back through the towns narrow streets and travelled to Fattore Punzi which is just outside Picerno near Potenza. We haven’t been particularly lucky with our Fattore Amico choices in the last couple of weeks unfortunately, this farm was supposed to be a restaurant and also sell local cheese, wine and honey, however the restaurant was shut for refurbishment when we arrived and there was no sign of any other produce being sold. The setting was stunning however, right on top of a hill at just over 1000 meters looking down into the valleys around it – it was a tad windy, but a nice tranquil night and no-one came to check on us.

With the wind behind us we rolled back down the hill and across to Matera where we stopped in an Aire in Parco della Murgia (10 euros a night)…. What a lovely place. Matera and the national park is a UNESCO world heritage site housing a Neolithic Village dating back 7000 years along with numerous rock churches. The national park sits on one side of the ravine and Matera on the other, providing excellent views of the Neolithic Village from a far, but walking around Matera itself is also quite an interesting experience as they have managed to maintain a good balance between Neolithic, old and new enabling tourism to mix with the day to day life of a real town.

As the weather has been warm we decided to take advantage of the tranquil location and do some walking, one day across the ravine and up to Matera, another just to look at the views across the valley, and today trying to follow another path to see some of the rock churches but after the first couple we lost the signage and ended up doing a round trip across into Matera and back again … all rather pleasant though.

The journey to Pompei was going to be roughly 250km and knowing what the Italian roads are like we decided that rather than rush it, we would stop two thirds of the way, just before Naples at another Fattore Amico farm. There weren’t many to choose from, but we found what looked like a nice farm in the book which sold wine and honey whilst also having a restaurant and offering horse riding. The weather has been rising steadily and when we arrived mid-afternoon on Monday it was in the high twenties. Keith went to speak to the owners and ask if it was ok for us to stay but was told to come back in half an hour or so as the owners weren’t around and no-one spoke English/Spanish/French. After a cup of tea, a bit of muesli making and whilst the rolls were rising we headed back, but still no sign of the owners. Just after 5pm a man drove up next to us, honked his horn and shouted to see if anyone was around (he obviously didn’t want to get out of his van.. who knows what disease the English carry….) and told us we couldn’t stay here as it was his land. Now, with the language barrier between us, I initially assumed he must have been the owner of the farm, bringing out the Fattore Amico book to explain, but he wasn’t having any of it and just wanted to know if we were paying to stay and when I told him we weren’t, we just planned to buy some wine and honey he shrugged his shoulders and appeared to begrudgingly say we could stay the night although it was obvious he wasn’t happy. So, after finishing the muesli and the rolls we were surprised when another car pulled up with a mother and daughter (who evidently were the owners of the farm) explaining that we couldn’t stay as the farm was closed for maintenance and that we should have called ahead. I apologised and said that we would move on which appeared to spark a random change of heart as she then said we could stay but they were going to put a locked chain across the drive which wouldn’t be opened until about 8:30 am the next morning. We are still none the wiser as to who the old man was who told us that it was his land and we didn’t see anyone else from the farm but we had a peaceful night in the middle of the field without any further problems!

We set off to Pompei leaving our field behind us on what should have been an hour/hour and a halves journey, but ended up being one of the Italian driving experiences….. It appears that someone has decided that to cut costs they should turn off all traffic lights as both yesterday and today none were working which made the Italian drivers even more impatient than normal. This wasn’t helped by the fact that as we were working our way round Vesuvius trying to avoid Naples our SatNav sent us through a couple of town centers where we really shouldn’t have been driving as the roads were barely wide enough for two small cars to pass, then as we got closer to Pompei we found that Tuesday was market day, closing the road we wanted to go down sending us down a narrow detour, made even narrower by the randomly abandoned cars owned by Italians who didn’t want to walk more than 10m to get bread, meat, fruit etc.  When we finally made it to the campsite we were pleasantly surprised by the tranquility within in comparison to what we had driven through.

Zeus camping (16 euros inc. with ACSI) is 100m from the entrance to the Pompei ruins and above the hustle of the city which was a relief. All the pitches on the campsite are nestled between trees, great for shade, awful for satellite dishes and really bad if you aren’t a good driver as it sounds like there have been many a motorhome/caravan do quite serious damage. We however managed to find a lovely pitch which seemed to be twice the width of the others and despite not being able to get any satellite signal we were pretty happy with ample space for the table and chairs, bar b q and awning …. Luxury 🙂

After eating lunch we decided to head into Pompeii to have a look at the hidden city, which is incredible – I have copied down some of the words used to describe the events that left Pompei a hidden city from one of the signs within the city itself as there is no way I would be able to describe it better in my own words…

On the morning of 24^th August 79 AD, a sudden tremor abruptly interrupted the daily routine of the inhabitants of Pompei. This was followed shortly afterwards by a tremendous blast signaling the beginning of a violent eruption with a column of lapilli rising over 20,000 meters into the sky. Carried by the wind, this cloud of lapilli hailed down upon Pompei, submerging the city in just a few hours in some three meters of material. The roofs of many houses caved in under the weight, often crushing and killing those who had taken refuge within. But the worst was yet to come. At dawn the following day, the first pyroclastic flow, composing of hot gas and fine ash hit Pompei and sealed the fate of every person and animal it encountered. The burning ash clogged the lungs and caused death by suffocation. Shortly thereafter, when already there was no living thing in the city, a second flow, much more powerful than the first fell with fury upon the walls of the town toppling or sweeping away their upper portions. It is calculated that the pyroclastic flow was probably travelling at speeds between 65 and 80 kms/h as it engulfed and carried off objects, roofing tiles and bodies. Other surges hit Pompei in waves after the city had already been destroyed and in the end Pompei was left buried under 5-6 meters of ash and lapilli.

What the above text didn’t explain is that only 17 years before Vesuvius erupted, Pompei suffered an earthquake destroying a large part of the city and it had taken 17 years to re-construct the city to the point where it was almost finished when the city was buried.

It is truly incredible to think that the 66 Hectares of Pompei lay undiscovered until 1748 when exploration first started. Today 45 hectares have been excavated and the preservation of mosaics, sculptures, houses, paintings is incredible – especially considering it is on such a large scale.

Although we had planned to move on in the morning my run took me through Pompei new town and out to Scarfeli which looked interesting so we decided to stay on another night and explore a bit further.

Thursday however took us all of 16km (well, it should have been 16km, but I missed the turning and couldn’t turn around for another 5km, so ended up being slightly further…) along the peninsula towards Sorrento. Once I had finally managed to turn around (which on the Italian coastal roads is pretty difficult), we found our little road that took us down to Marina di Aequa which is a tiny fishing village looked down upon by Vico Equense.  As we turned off of the main road expectations were low as I was half expecting to have to reverse all the 2kms back out, but amazingly it all worked out ok and the campsite (San Antonio -18 euros (+1 euro tax ppn) a night Inc. Elec. with ACSI) is right in the middle of the village with really helpful, friendly owners. Although it isn’t the cheapest campsite (and you have to pay extra for hot water), the location is perfect as it is 50m from the village which has a couple of restaurants, two public beaches (almost unheard of in Italy), about 1km from Vico Equense which is big enough to have everything you need and a bit more and 1.5km from the train station which goes into Sorrento (and Naples if you are interested)… nice and tranquil.

We caught the train into Sorrento on Friday and were glad that the journey was only 10 minutes as they certainly weren’t using their best trains for this route…..it was definitely a little rough round the edges and there was no doubt that it was pick pocket haven at peak times – the journey was fine though and we even had a three piece band playing on the outward journey 🙂

There is no doubt about it, Sorrento is pretty, although as my parents warned us it is very touristy now and expensive with it. The lanes are interesting but unfortunately are full of touristy ‘tat’ with the addition of all things ‘Lemon-y’ (including a huge amount of lemoncello) which kind of spoils the character of the town a little.

On Saturday morning we climbed up to Vico Equense which sits above the marina and although it is far smaller than Sorrento it has more charm, lots of interesting cafes and deli’s and less ‘tat’ – probably what Sorrento used to be like going back twenty years or so and the views aren’t too bad either ….

The area is famous for its meter long pizza, so we felt obliged to search out somewhere to try it heading up into Vico Equense in the evening. After checking out the options, including one enormous pizzeria which obviously catered to the tourists we ended up in a Deli type place with a wood burning oven in the corner half full of locals sharing tables. We found a corner to sit in and as the meter long pizza is really for 5+ people I opted for a calzone, Keith decided to go for a 50cm chef’s special and we ordered a bottle of ‘local’ red to help wash it down. As we waited for our food to arrive we watched the place get busier and busier with a mixture of young and old all sharing pizzas – there was a real buzz to the place. Our pizzas arrived and we weren’t disappointed…..

Keith’s ‘Chef special’ turned out to have one half with Broccoli and Anchovies, the other Tomato and mushroom – interesting that there wasn’t any meat considering everything contains meat here, but we certainly couldn’t complain about the quantity of cheese as both the pizza and my calzone were oozing the stuff from every angle.

With a walk down hill on the way home we felt that it would only be fair to stop at the deli/ice-cream shop that we bought some local cheese in earlier in the day and bought some ice-cream to round off the meal, rolling home on very contented stomachs!