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 day of country driving, stopping briefly for lunch just down a little dirt road in the mountains. A little further on Katherine spotted a lake (a body of water — always promising) and we did a U-turn and found a great spot to stay the night beside the wetlands. We took a walk around and were struck by how English the countryside looked — lush and green and pastoral. We watched the swallows flitting around above the reeds until the cool of evening set in and we hiked back to Nettle for a cup of tea.
We awoke, fussed with the boiler that refused to light in the miniscule breeze and washed in buckets of water instead, then set off to visit Assisi.
The motorhome parking I’d researched earlier turned out to be specifically forbidden to motorhomes, which appears to be the rule in Assisi: They’re not fans of campers, here. We drove around for a little while, trying to find a place to stop, and were taken on a bit of a wild goose chase following camper parking signs that just kept pointing to the next intersection ad infinitum. Seeing another camper parked on a gravel patch by the side of the road, we decided to stuff the system and park behind them. Take that, the man!
We ambled up the pleasant little road by fields of grass and olive trees, saw our first poppy up close (now, to find fields of them!), and found ourselves in Assisi proper, along with lots of tour buses. We avoided the touristy spots and just took a leisurely walk through the town’s steep streets lined with walls of pink and white bricks.
We found a path that ran though the trees above the town, and followed it until it came out on the road to the fortress that sat on top of the hill. There was a fence beside the intersection that had every inch covered with wads of chewing gum — now there’s an achievement!
Bellies rumbling, we continued wandering though Assisi, and eventually found the only place we could get pizza, in slices reheated as we waited, which were actually surprisingly good. We walked back to Nettle, passing a wall along our way dotted with holes, each one with a pigeon inside (pigeon holes, you see).
We drove onwards down the freeway, and stopped for the night nestled in amongst a bunch of other campers at a sosta in Perugia.
