Monthly Archives: April 2010

Against our better judgment we decided to do a 20km hike around San Gimignano in Tuscany. We’d been leading quite the sedentary lifestyle so were relying on our youthful vigour to pull us through. I happily anticipated a gentle pastoral stroll through a relatively flat landscape. In the end it was more the marked lack of alternative transport back to … Continue reading

Hooray – this blog is about to get another perspective, and probably a much more interesting one than I usually come up with! My partner Katherine is going to start writing entries here, and this is the first of many to come. Read on: We’ve been travelling through Europe for seven months now and have developed a sort of astronomically … Continue reading

We left our friends Bruno and Elena in Preggio and headed onwards across the green hills. On the way, we were excited to spot clusters of poppies growing on the side of the road. As we passed alongside one hill-top town, we were waved down a different road by a police officer — the later appearance of some guys in … Continue reading

We’ve spent a day and a night at a sunny farmhouse just outside a delightful little country town! We were treated to thousand-course meals and fascinating conversation with a wonderfully friendly and interesting Italian couple who’ve travelled the world, set up a tourist lodge in Kenya, who paint and dance and moved from Italy’s urban north to set up a … Continue reading

We started our day with a brief walk alongside the lake we found to sleep by, with some nice views over the snowy Apennines. We found a perfect wildcamp just a hundred metres or so up the road, much prettier than where we’d parked — this always happens to us! We got back on the road for another very fine … Continue reading

Parked in Chieti the morning after the procession, we spent a long time trying to find a place to spend a few days, cheap with electricity and in an area with 3G. This turned out to be a bit tricky and frustrating (especially as our electrical power dwindled away — looks like our 118 amp hour leisure battery is dying … Continue reading

Having arrived in the town of Chieti, we found the free parking reserved for campers; the signs at the car park read something like “Agli accampanare Nomadi”, presumably something about being reserved for nomads/Travellers, which would’ve made us a little nervous if it weren’t for the swanky-looking motorhomes parked around. We were there to see the Good Friday procession, apparently … Continue reading

We never seem to get used to Italian opening hours, and find ourselves repeatedly being thwarted by the lunchtime closing — I think our main issue is our fairly relaxed morning routine, which usually leads to us not venturing out until late-morning. Today was no exception — after driving to the clutch of camper accessories shops (with a minor detour … Continue reading

Wow, we’ve really got slow travelling down now — we’ve stayed at the last two places for more than two weeks! It’s a very, very relaxed pace which occasionally invokes tiny stabs of guilt for me (we should be racing around seeing everything we possibly can!), but it permits us to make a proper life of it, and that’s one … Continue reading