Almost home

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Well we're almost home - just one weekend to go. We're drinking coffee in Haarlem (Netherlands not New York).

We didn't make it to any internet cafeswhen we were in Italy, but we were busy. The day we arrived at Roger's flat in Barga had been a lomg drive - mostly mad Italian motorways including the Milan ring road - think M25, but crazier, with more unindicated lane changing.The last hour or so, only about 40 miles was on a twisty turny up and downy road, a bit like New Zealand, but with traffic and little villages everywhere. When we got to Barga, we just unpackedand chilled, sitting on the balcony looking at the wonderful view:range upon range of high mountains.

Next day we worked out where the bus stop to Lucca was and caught a bus. The drivers are amazing on these tight hairpins. At one point the bus met a milk tanker on a blind bend and ended up reversing up the hill a bit, till the tanker could squeeze past. Lucca's a pretty little town with a trafficfree centre, apart from bikes and mopeds. Found the Tourist Info and got times for trains to Florence - also bought a couple of maps, which we left in the flat. One's a walking map and the other shows all the wee roads, so we could maybe get to the Nature Reserve higher up the valley (in the event we didn't have enough time, so maybe next time).

Florence by train was very slow - bus to Lucca and train to Florence -took 3 aand a half hourseach way. Itwas busy and touristy, but we saw the Duomo, which was great and were very disapponited by the Boboli Gardens.

Nest day a 5 hour walk to a small vilage at the top of a hill and back - it was good. Saw wild cyclamen and got great views over the whole area. It was still veryhot.

We left sooner than we'd intended, cos we were concerned about thecar overheating in the Alps - so we detoured round them. We went along the Italian Riviera - had a swim in the Med, which was absolutely brilliant. In beyond my depth after about 5 yrads and lovely and warm. Then round the coast on hilly twisty roads to Cannes and from there north over the foothills of the Alps. We went through dozens of tunnels and over loads of high viaducts/bridges over gorges. It's so mountainous.

We had a couple of days at Castellane nearthe Gorges de Verdon, which I'd been to in my early teens and remember as stunning. It was a nice town. We decided just to drive a little way along the gorge and go for a walk... but owing to the inadequacy of our map, we ended up driving a hairy 50 km drive with truly stupendous vertiginous drops only inches away from thr car. and we met a coach and that was a scarey moment. The driver was shaking for almost the entire journey, but turning round was not an option and there was no where to turn off. The secnery really was awesome, but we should never have attempted it.
The car was also overheating, so we were driving along with the windows open and the heater blasting out hot air. When we reached civilisation, I went out and bought a decent map, while Willy smoked two fags before he could move. Then we went back to Castellane by a slightly more sensible route, not stopping to walk besdie the stunningly blue lake,or even for a coffee.

Would attach some photos, but we didn't stop to take any and this pc doesn't let you in to th USB cable, so no connection.

That was the driver's day off. Next day we headed north past Bourgen Bresse and Grenoble and Besancon - we were planning to stop there, but were making good time, so went on to Vesul, where there was no room at the inn. So we went on to Epinal which has shedloads of hotels, but there were having a big conference and everywhere was full, so on we went to a small town called Charmes on the Moselle and found a really nice cheap hotel room, with friendly helpful staff. By this time we'd been on the road since 9am and it was after 8 - I think we'd had a 30 minute lunch stop and a toilet stop and nothing else.
I lie - we also had a burger for tea at 7pm, despndent at the thought of pitching the tent at a motorway service station ..... I thnk we travelled over 400 miles that day, mostly through the French Alps and the Jura - both mountainos regions.They're really spectacular,especailly coming into Grenoble from the south. We'd like to go back there for longer sometime.

Yesterday - Thursday was an easy day, with a long stop at a French hypermarket to fill up with wine. Willy got into conversation with a guy whose Grandmother owned vineyard and his big passion was good wine at a reasonable price. He was wittering on about where the vineyards were situated next to really famous zillion dollar a bottle vineyards, so we enlistedhihelp to fill our trolley with wine. We ende up with about 50 bottles of wine, two 6 packs of Belgian beer, 2 packets of coffee, a piece of cheese and a bar of chocolate in our trolley: we must have looked like complte alkies at the checkout.

Autumn colours were spectacular - every shade of red, orange, yellow, brown and green imagineable

We drove up to the Dutch border via Germany Luxembourg Germany and Belgium (and the Moselle valley, which was complete with grape pickers and especially very slow grape laden trailers pulled by ancient tractors.)

Looking forward to our weekned in and around Haarlem - will go the beach on Sunday if the weather improves.

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