San Remo – Venice

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Since the last ramblings of our travels we have had mixed fortunes with weather but have finally landed on our feet at a site just outside Venice on the Adriatic. The weather is perfect and we have achieved one ambition of the trip – to swim together in the sea with Horace. It is a perfect coast for swimming, shallow beaches that get deeper very gradually, as it is shallow it warms quickly in the sun and so clear that you can see your feet until you’re out of your depth (don’t want to tread on any nasties!)



We travelled from our last stop in the Riviera dei Fiori just north of San Remo to a small town called Iseo on a lake of the same name. Placed between it’s more famous neighbours of lake Garda and lake Como it has a charm of it’s own. With an occupied island (Church on top), a ferry that chugs around the lake linking it’s hamlets together for tourism and trade it was a nice place to stay for two nights as we travelled east to Slovenia. There’s always a “but” though isn’t there? To the north of the lake the Alps sit silently and menacingly, in the Alps live the rain demons! They sit and wait for tourists who are arriving after a long drive, tired and wanting a cup of tea. Then they pounce, they slide down the mountains and dump copious quantities of water on them as they try to locate their camp site. They turn roads into rivers, windscreens into things you can’t see through and nerves into frazzled jangled bits. In the pouring rain we were turned away from two campsites (don’t need to book at this time of year everyone told us at our last stop!!) and ended up driving through what looked like a pedestrian precinct and pulling up outside a tourist information office where we found the antidote too the rain demons, the campsite angel who calmly directed to a site by the lake who accept dogs and had vacancies. The rain was relentless but an hour later we had the kettle boiled and wet clothes hanging in the shower drying.



The reason for the campsites becoming full was then made known to us. The 1^st May is the national holiday as in the UK but instead of making it a Monday bank holiday it is taken on the actual 1^st May, in this case a Tuesday. Hey ho.

We then had two days of mixed rain and sun, the rain demons did surpass themselves on the 1^st of May though and we had to cosy up in the van for most of the day. Playing our now favourite game of “it could be worse” – in this case the winner was “it could be worse we could be camping in a tent” so we consoled ourselves listening to our ipods, reading our Kindles and watching the microwave go round heating our tea.



At our current site we've had the nicest weather we’ve had so far so we have chilled out here for a few days and relaxed. Nice people all around on the site, lots of Dutch and German number plates but only one British plate so far.

Both feeling good and really enjoying the whole experience. Next blog will be about some of the characters we've met so far!

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