Advertisement
Buonasera fellow travelblogger - We have escaped Ancona and are heading north on the Autostrada Adriatica. What a lovely name for a motorway . It makes the M1 sound mundane and ordinary. We follow our English friend as we head out of a busy heavily policed town. He must do this run with regular monotony as he knows how to exit the port. He is younger than us and will probably drive all night and be back in the UK tomorrow. We pass places we know. Rimini with its miles and miles of sunbeds, the motoGP track at Misano. We have been a couple of times to watch races there, Corriano , the birthplace and burial place of Simoncelli the bike rider and Gradara with its lit up castle . It looks pretty at night .
Suzy eats up mile after mile . We need a fill up of diesel and stop at a petrol station on the autostrada. The middle aged lady is cleaning the forecourt . She is on her own in the middle of nowhere. She is probably glad to see us. What she would do if she were attacked we cannot comprehend. We fill up. We
later find that her pumps must have had an air blockage of some description as we only put 71 euros of fuel in. That equated to three quarters of a tank.
We need a place to stop for the night. We drive on north and stop some miles short of Parma. We find a service station with a large car park . It is said you should not stop on a motorway service station as you probably will be gassed and robbed . The urban myth has grown up around these stops. Thieves roll up. break a window quietly and place a hose into the van. They use anaesthetic gas to put the occupants to sleep and then rob everything from the van. Someone always knows a friend who has an auntie whose husband worked with a colleague who had a sister ................and so it goes on. The thieves would have to have an intimate knowledge of how much anaesthetic to use without killing you and it takes a doctor seven years to learn that. We parked up with the cars. Herding I guess, we wanted a bit of company but not too much. Glenn wanted a couple of hours sleep before doing the next stage of the journey home . A trip around Turin. We did not bother putting the beds up. Instead we sleep on the comfy seats until 5 am when we were woken by excited Italian voices . Five guys were standing behind Suzy talking loudly. They had the whole empty car park but they came right under our noses. I asked myself why as I yawned.
The drive to Turin was fairly uneventful. It is Sunday 5.30 . There are no heavy goods vehicles on the roads which helps us make up good time. The mountains in the distance are covered with what we call esgyrn yr eira - the snow bones. Little streaks of snow still clinging on to the tops of the peaks. It is decision time. We have no Swiss money . We need to fill up with diesel before we leave Italy. Do we try to traverse the whole of Switzerland today? Of course we do.
We keep awake talking about the holiday and how we are looking forward to making up the photograph book. We fill up with our last Italian diesel and head for the dirtiest tunnel in history. To the other side the border post which we sail through. The guards are more interested in drivers with strange number plates than us boring old Brits. We pass high above Lake Lugano which always looks inviting. We are in pristine Switzerland. The trains chugg by , on time and lacking any grafitti. The fields look as like the green baise of a snooker table. The mountains are covered in snow not yet melted by the spring sunshine. In fact, it looks as if a little man has been issued with a bucket of whitewash and a paintbrush and told to climb the peaks and paint them each night. They are quite literally as white as driven snow. The houses are pristine The wood piles neat. Even in the valleys the tiny airfields are tidy as are the factories and anything industrial. Suzy eats the miles up as we arrive in the tunnels of Lucerne. The lake picture perfect blue with houses hugging the shoreline. A tiny boat slips through the water . The cable cars glide up the hillsides. Switzerland is and feels like a place where litter is not tolerated nor is bad behaviour.
We stop for a break at 11 at a rasthouse. If Carlsberg built service areas they probably would look like rasthouses in Switzerland . We have no swiss francs so sit in Suzy with a bit of brunch I manage to concoct from bits in the fridge. We head off again . Our destination the border between Switzerland and France. We sail through and into Alsace. Our plan a short stop to pick up food at the Le Clerc supermarket situated on the Haut Konigsberg aire . As I shop Sion and Glenn watch the storks. So tame they walk from vehicle to vehicle looking for food and treats. We are unsure what to do next. We could stop at the same campsite just up the road or carry on. We have all afternoon. If Glenn feels like it we can get to the area around Reims. He feels like it . We head off again mile after mile of autoroute clogged up with weekend traffic and roadworks. We both love the roadworks as they keep the carriageways in perfect condition and equally hate them as they are holding us up.
By tea time we are on the aire at Les Islettes - 737 km travelled in 15 hours. Not bad Glenn says for a 70 year old with a chest infection driving a 3.5 ton motorhome. We settle in , plug in to the electrics, talk to our Dutch and German neighbours, go for a shower and pay our 7 euro camping fee . It really is a lovely site and one that the local community should be proud of. We like to keep it our little secret though.
Monday morning arrives . Glenn is tired today understandably. There is only so much driving you can do. Yesterday having done the equivalent of driving from one end of our country to the other he feels tired . We only drive as far as Guines. We could have booked an earlier ferry but the thought of the drive up the M1 is not that appealing today. We will leave that for tomorrow. Le Farme Gourmade - the on site a la carte restaurant is closed . It is Monday. We have to make do with chips. Before falling asleep we are treated to one of the best sunsets we have ever seen. The sky a blood red.
Tuesday - the short drive to the tunnel. We are a bit late getting on the train. Someone is having trouble getting their vehicle on. The same thing happens as we disembark. Slowly we get away. We fill up at the services before dropping the Via card and toll box off . We hit the M2 - it is not long before we meet roadworks . The M25 has a 45 minute delay on it . We re-route up the M11 . That is congested . Welcome to England .
One thing though , it doesnt matter what we have come back to , the roadworks, the awful weather we can honestly say that Greece was a revelation. It was a holiday of great wonder with history, mythology and legend all wrapped into one. I wonder if we can ever find anywhere in Suzy that will beat this holiday .
Advertisement
Tot: 0.07s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 18; qc: 35; dbt: 0.0394s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Home and Away
Bob Carlsen
Welcome home!!!
I'm glad that Greece exceeded expectations.