Week 58: The sun is back!
- Oct 13, 2022
- 7 min read
Updated: Feb 23, 2023
Our stops this week:
-1 night Area Camper Palmanova Italy (Near Palmanova!)
-4 nights Bergamini campsite Italy (Near Volponi on Lake Garda)
-1 night Camper Parking Area Fontanellato Italy (To the left of Parma)
-1 night Camping Moraflores Italy (Near Rapallo)
We left the Graz area on Monday morning, having planned to have a long ‘ish’ driving day. Graz was always going to be the furthest point we planned to drive to, on this trip. Although, we have a month left…we are now actually, in theory, heading back to the UK. Having stopped at several places in Austria on the way to Graz, we were going to now have a driving day, to drive back across Austria into Italy. We had not planned to spend time in Italy particularly, but the weather forecast was looking warm, so we decided to plan some stops on-route to France. 20 to 25 degrees and sunny was enticing…eek but with sun comes mozzies, we are out of practice, and they took us by surprise. Even with Steve repeatedly saying ‘it’s too late in the year for Mozzies’, they didn’t listen and used us to keep them full over Winter! We’re currently back to constantly stinking of the lemon anti-mozzie spray.
The drive was one of the better we’ve had in Italy. It wasn’t too busy. There were some roads with no road works or contra flows in place and there was even some cars with all four wheels, on one side of the middle white line! Steve found Palmanova by the shape of the town. It is a fort in the shape of a star, it makes for interesting driving when driving around the edge of the town. We stayed at an Italian Aire and it was great. It was free to stay, had a drain for emptying grey water, had fresh water, chemical toilet emptying section and electricity. There were only two pitches and each had a section for parking and outside area-we were very impressed. The town was fascinating with sections of the old fort wall in place, which dates back to 1593. There were loads of walking areas around the town which were great for Bear, I take it in the past, these areas had been filled with water and acted as a moat around the town? Once back at the Aire, we were glad we had arrived when we did. One van had already ‘wedged’ itself down the side in a space that didn’t exist and then at least 8 other vans arrived trying to work out if they could fit in a 2 space aire, which already had 3 vans in. Steve was filling the van up with water on the service area and left me (and out ferocious dog) to guard our space. We are not 100% sure, due to the language barriers but we think one lady suggested we left our pitch and parked in the space used to get in and out of the pitches and that they had our pitch, as they had a longer van. Steve politely declined the offer.
The following day we drove on to Lake Garda. We have been to this area a few times before and have always like it. Also, with sunny days of 25 degrees being by the water was perfect. Unfortunately, Steve started to feel really rough and spent the next few days full of cold, with a temperature and cough. (He did a Covid test just to check and luckily it was negative). We spent the next few days being very lazy. I used the time to work on an assessed piece of MA work and Steve laid on the sofa. This is the only time we have felt Gordon didn’t quite work for us. If we had a separate fixed bed, Steve would have stayed in bed and I could have worked in the ‘living room’ area (Just like the beautiful Mo-Ho we saw a few weeks ago!!!). However, when the ‘drop down’ bed is down in Gordon it doesn’t work unless you’re both in bed. However, by Friday Steve was feeling better and we cycled to Simone (an area we have stayed before) and had a massive ice cream. I can report Steve has survived ‘man flu’ and I survived the…intense period!
Bear and Steve playing 'hide and seek'
After great swims, come the great wash! Wearing his drying robe our neighbour bought Bear for travelling...I think that face is very smug!
Pictures of Peschiera de Garda
Pictures of Peschiera de Garda, Simonie, the campsite pool and ice cream
Camping area Fontanellato, was mainly chosen due to it being only a few hours drive in the right direction and not far from the toll road. It’s an Aire with about 80 places and about 5 minute’s walk into the town. Dual purposed there are solar panels over some areas of the aire. This one was 15 Euroes for 24 hours, with a clearly fenced area and barrier for entry and exit. There were only about 15 vans there, so we had lots of space. The town was particularly pretty with castle in the middle of it. On the way, we stopped at a shopping discount village. A real treat as we’ve not seen many places like this and/or they are difficult to access with the van…plus we tend to only spend money on essentials. However, parking was easy, dogs were allowed in and it was an outside shopping centre, so Steve was more tolerant of being there. We spent an hour looking around and apart from getting very excited and trying to drag Steve into the Prada shop, Bear also did well.
We then moved on to near Rapallo. When we were in our early 20s, we travelled around Europe for 3 months with our small 2 man tent and rucksacks…definitely glad we are not doing that now! During that trip we travelled along the Cinque Terre (5 terraces) by train. As we were close by, we thought we would stop in the area as we had really enjoyed it previously and thought it was a beautiful area. Mmm we seem to have a very different view this time (maybe also reflective of Italy’s current economic difficulties?). We are aware that people prefer different things, and we know we are lucky to have this year…but Rapallo definitely was not for us and having had many great holidays in Italy and loving lots of things about Italy on previous visits, we were really quite miffed about how it felt. We had planned to stay a few nights but within an hour changed our plans and decided to move on the next day. We then were then joking how to write about Rapallo in the blog and decided to try and muster some positives, here we go: Some balconies looked like they wouldn’t collapse, in places there were parts of a pavement, on occasion- a motorbike didn’t drive at us when we were on the crossing, there were parts of the pavement without dog excrement, by the beach the air was less smoggy, some rubbish was in the bin, if there were any parks or green space I’m sure they would be great, if there was a gentle breeze I’m sure it would smell better, it felt less enclosed by the beach….
We try to keep the travel time down and avoid travelling on consecutive days, as Bear is not that keen on long travel days and it is always a bit longer than planned in the van. However, looking at campsites and areas we decided to complete a 2.5 hour journey the following day. This was the third travel day in a row, but we really wanted to leave Rapallo.
We got back on the toll road (the journey not using toll roads would be 6 hours according to Google maps), a place of relative safety, with straighter roads and less chaos and headed to Ventimiglia. But, at this point I can no longer find positives! We got off the toll and headed into craziness. The town looked like it had been impacted by recent war with half standing buildings, the roads were chaotic with potholes and really poor road surfaces everywhere, the road signs were few and far between and the roads had been re-routed with cones and bits of plastic due to road works. We got to the campsite and were both trying to be positive but were both wondering whether the reviews were for this actual site. We needed to empty the toilet and fill up with water first. I emptied the toilet box and I’m not faint hearted but was gagging whilst using the facilities. They stank, were very very basic and with a swarm of flies. The receptionist had spoken to me and said we could have pitch 21. Pitch is a strong word, more a parking space we could stop in. We were at the bottom of a hill and it felt like we were trapped in a hole with parts of buildings surrounding us, concrete stuff crumbling down and wooden bungalows squished in corners. We were still trying to be positive but thought we would stay just one night…however the giant rat sat on our ‘pitch’ was the last straw. We turned around and left. The only issue is we had already driven 2.5 hours, we didn’t know where to head to next and stopping on these roads to make a plan was impossible. We decided to get back on the toll road and keep driving until we could find a service station, we would then stop and plan. To add to our state of bewilderment, on the way to the toll road we stopped at the ‘give way line’ until it was safe to pull out, whilst 3 drivers behind us obviously thought this was crazy and drove around us out in front of the other cars. We then had to go around the crazy re-routing system and had to get our ticket for getting on the toll road. We literally then drove around a corner, got to another toll booth and had to pay 4.70 Euroes….great road re routing to help the economy! We had had enough but with no plan, no next destination and hunger setting in, all we knew is we were driving East.
(Sorry the blog is late this week but lots of driving, MA deadlines and some on-line volunteer mentoring work (Steve) kept us busy.)
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