It has been a while.....

Buonjourno from Siena, Vico Equense (near Naples on the Amalfi Coast), Devia Marina (near Cinque Terre), Verona and Venice.. Have been trying to put this together for a while! I'll cover the trip to Siena now and the rest in the next exciting installment...

I started composing this sitting in the tent typing this up at about 7.40 in the morning. I awoke to the dulcet tones of insects buzzing by the tent, thought they were inside but it appears the mighty Spinifex tent has come up trumps again and none appear to have made it in! So far it has stood up to extreme heat and some pretty cold and wet weather too. When we were in the French alps it snowed one night ..... Not at our campsite but further up the mountain.. It was a bit chilly.
Here's the play by play of the last few weeks.

Nice, France 3rd July - arrived at the airport, bike boxes and English tourists everywhere. It's like Europe's version of the Gold Coast, ie. holiday parks and good weather!

The next day was spent in Monaco! Stage one of Le Tour. Breathtaking scenery and it was awesome to see the tour in full swing. The course was a 15 km time trial. Looked around the team buses and set up area, then went for some lunch in the hills of the principality before pushing up to the top of the course where we thought there would be fewer people and a chance to see the riders close up. We were definitely rewarded for the effort!

The rest of the time in Nice was pretty chilled, spent some time on the loungers at the beach and of course I watched the Tour come through on stage two from Monaco... 

After Nice we headed up to Chamonix (French Alps) by car, my first time driving on the right hand side of the road and in a left hand side drive vehicle... Quite a day really. We drove the 'Route de Napolean' from Antibes on the Cote d'Azure and it took us about 6 hours incl stops... I reckon I aged approximately two months over that period... Your mind never rests when you're on the wrong side of the road!! 

We spent the next few days in Les
Bossons near Chamonix for my first (very first) camping experience. It wasn't as hot as Nice but was pleasent - we went to the top of Mt Blanc via cable car and enjoyed our alpine surrounds picking up the kit we needed for survival whilst camping... Chairs. Pillows, lamps.. Wine glasses... You know, the essentials. The campsite was pretty basic as far as facilities go but was in a scenic spot at the foot of two glaciers and in retrospect was a pretty good introduction to camping. That said, given the choice, I wouldn't be sharing a bathroom!

Next stop was Lauterbrunnen, Switzerland  (Swiss Alps). Well actually we had one stop on the way. The GPS was taking us on a rather random route through the 'hilly'swiss countryside on some quite windy small roads, imagine my surprise when around one corner a bus appears, taking up more of the road than it should and not giving me enough room to pass... From here I'll refer to my 'incident' report submitted to my lease company.....
"Description: Incident occured while travelling to Interlarken Switzerland on the road via Gestaadt.  I approached an uphill right hand corner and noticed a bus coming the opposite direction and the bus was taking the corner tightly. I pulled as far right as possible and stopped to let the bus pass. The bus continued on and cut the corner so tightly that it struck the wing mirror and part of the side of my vehicle. 

Damage: the wing mirror has scrapes on the cover but still operates as normal. There are scrapes on the door handles of both the driver's side doors but no panel damage. The plastic trim on the doors has also a minor scrape. Overall the car is still in good condition and does not need immediate repair." 

In short, it was his (Gottfried the bus driver, imnot kiddig, that was his name...) fault. We were pretty lucky that no more damage was done. The nice Swiss lady that assisted with interpreting (who just happened to have lived in NZ twice with her husband) was fantastic and we left the scene approx an hour after the incident and made it to our destination without further incident... Although I think I aged another couple of months....

Home for the next few days was Lauterbrunnen, more precisely a camping ground near Stechelberg in the alps region. The location was in a valley with steep cliff walls and waterfalls on either side and towering snow covered peaks to the south and Interlaken city and lake to the north, with green fields, cows with bells round their necks and waterfalls and streams a plenty... Your A-typical Swiss secne. 

We did a 'substantial' walk up a trail on the side of the valley to a place called Grimmelwald on the clifF above. We gained over a thousnd metres in altitude and had some very special views along the way... It was great to get to the top (especially when we walked past the top of the cable car, near exhaustion, and saw frick'n tourists walking around without a bead of sweat on them...). The ice cream we had to replenish the energy stores was the best tasting ever...

After Switzerland we headed up to
Germany, in particular Nuremberg, to see my mate Scott compete in the iconic iron distance event Challenge Roth. It was a wicked day, I got to see some of the premier long distance atheletes in the world compete, saw the 'Solar Berg' climb ( tri version of a tour de France climb, thousands of people cheering on the side of the road as athletes flog themselves trying to get up the hill!), and saw Scotty and his mates finish in good time.

A word on driving in Germany:

Awesome. The autobahns were fast (you can average 150kph easy) and other drivers, including the truckies (who are speed limited to 90kph and have to stay in the slow lane
Lane) are predictable with their actions, clear indication of lane changes, adherance to speed changes when roadworks are around. After being initally nervy, the speed becomes
normal and you get into the groove of things.

A word on German radio stations:

Sh*thouse. More bad 80's rock than you can poke a stick at. I haven't heard so much Whitesnake, Ace of Base, Poison and Roxette since the Taita Intermediate blue light disco of 88.

After Nuremberg we transitted thru Innsbruck, Austria on our way to Tuscany in Italy.  Not much to say about Austria as we only rolled through the joint, other than it was simialrly mountainous to Switzerland and the place we stayed had a fantastic dessert!!  Have to go back and see more me thinks.

It was then on to Siena (Tuscany, Italy) to a campground called Le Soline.. And it delivered on sun... It was never lower than about 25 overnight and mid 30's during the day. The place was great, it had free wifi, good shop, nice restaurant, a pool and friendly (forgiving of poor Italian) staff...

A word on driving in Italy:

Don't. They are mad. I am exaggerating slightly but if you do decide to risk your life, have your wits about you.  The Autostrade on the surface of it is like the autobahn of Germany, the key difference is the muppets that drive on it. You are the odd one out if you use your indicator (in fact I'm unsure why they put them on cars sold in Italy as no one uses them). Most three lane roads have five driving positions - the traditional three (in the lanes) and two further ones where a car will straddle the lane marker, apparently undecided as to which lane they should be in. The decision making process behind the required choice must be a difficult one as it often involves a debate, often with someone on the other end of a cell phone or with another person in the car (or, I'm sure, with one of the large number of voices in their head). Often it takes some encouragement for them to finally decide where to end up, like a large SUV moving at 160kph flashing their lights and tooting their horn.. Usually does the trick. However, I digress...

Our time here was spent mostly poolside (also the bar...which sells decent local wine for 1 Euro)  working on my Mediterranean tan and in the nearby town, Casciano. We also went to San Gimignano, a famous Tuscan hill top town. We were greeted by sweeping views of the countryside and a visually impressive walled city. Well worth the trip if you're in the area.  

Going to leave it at that for now, will fill you in on the rest soon!!

Ciao! 

 

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