Author Archives: Michael

I’m doing some post-processing of our recent photos, and thought I’d share some of the excitement that we still have from our new discovery. A late-afternoon landscape photo before HDR – There’s a choice of, say: With nice sky and sunny mountains in the background, with a black gaping void in the foreground, or, say: With visible foreground but overblown … Continue reading

When we started thinking and talking about travelling, one of the things that really interested us was meeting people from other countries and cultures and forming friendships as we went. It was something that really appealed, but it wasn’t really something I was expecting that we would successfully do: We admittedly aren’t extremely social, and we couldn’t really imagine doing … Continue reading

We struck gold at our next place to stay in Poggibonsi, a town that sounds like it should consist entirely of jumping castles. It was a free, green area sosta with 1€/12 hours electricity and 3G coverage. Very pleased with ourselves, we settled in, door open to let in the beautiful spring day (this is as ‘outside’ as we tend … 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

Katherine spent almost all yesterday picking out things to do today in Rome — she found an art supplies place, several Lush shops, and an original language cinema so we could go and see Alice in Wonderland! But, most importantly, my very talented and wonderful mother found us a forum in which people had discussed where to find Vegemite in … Continue reading