Italy - Imperia

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Saturday 12th August

Left Draguignan late. Knocked off disc antennae from roof of van only realising when stopping at supermarket. Spotted incredible clouds of smoke in distance which turned out to be forest fire in the direction we were travelling. Huge plumes of smoke. Stopped to take photos. Dramatic scenes as 4 planes swooped in to drop water in ‘bombing runs’. We could see raging flames and fire was spreading quickly. Eventually original site of flames died down but then new one was starting further down as we left. Ended up in Nice trying to find the start of the Corniche loads of diversions due to installation of what appeared to be train tracks. Eventually found the corniche which is an incredible route high along the mountains which border the Cote d’ Azur between Nice and Monte Carlo en route. The campsite in Menton was up an incredibly steep and zigzagging road and having tortuously navigated our way up found that it was full, so we motored on into Italy. The Italian coastline motorway is a succession of tunnels and viaducts, some of the tunnel over a km long. We ended up in Imperia.

Sunday 13th August

The campsite is set in the beautiful gardens of an old villa and appears to be family run. The son zooms off on his scooter to show people to their pitches. The pitches are very small but the setting lovely. We had a conversation with the friendly German family camped opposite us. The site is only 100m form the beach. Imperia has an old town and a port with expensive yachts and a lovely promenade by the sea.

Monday 14th August

Spent some time on the beach. Most of the beach is taken up with restaurants/hotel areas with sunloungers. The few free public areas are in the more scruffy and pebbly bits. In the evening we treated ourselves to a rare meal out. Ron indulged with mixed frito of fish which was an incredible selection ofvarious seafoods from prawns through small flatfish to eels and baby pulpo.

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