Jimmy Benn

From Bari to Bologna 10th June to 6th July Stranded on the Amalfi Coast Well stranded may be a bit overzealous, but we were definitely stuck longer than planned. The windy mountain roads and long downhill stints over the last month or so took their toll on the brakes meaning all four pads needed replacing. Not an easy task when on the tip of the outcrop of land that the Amalfi Coast sits on. So if the Mountain won’t come to Mohammed, then the mechanic must go to the campervan. He looked more like a farmer who’d spent his life chewing on unlit cigar stubs and drinking red wine, and his car looked like he’d drank red wine before getting in it but to be fair he managed to source the right parts and come and ... read more

From Vienna to Krka From 25th April to 11th May Is there anything as good as the first gulp of cold beer when the sun is shining? Some would argue that you don’t even need the sun to be shining, and to be honest I do agree, but then that is not ice cold larger I’d be consuming. Today it is, and with good reason. 2 days ago there were storms that swept tents away, today it is roasting hot, and the beautiful blue skies are dotted with the odd high cloud that don’t threaten anything like rain. The west coast of Croatia is beautiful. One of the nicest places I’ve found so far, and very different to where I left off the last time which was Vienna. So going back to the 25th April, I ... read more

From Rhineland to Saxony – March 5th to April 5th It’s been a month since the last update, and that was done from a Mid West Germany. Now we’re in Mid East Germany but the route from A to B has not been as simple as it sounds. From Trier we were heading up to the low counties. Firstly a quick trip through Belgium and then to spend around a week in Holland. I did want to stop in Brussels but that wasn’t really realistic given that there is nowhere specifically designed to park the van and I had unsurprisingly done no research of a suitable place (shock horror). So the first and only stop in Belgium was in Antwerp. Now I know I’ve said this before, but would you ever go to Antwerp for a ... read more

From Provence to Bavaria – January 13th to February 24th What is it with the weather? We’re 320 miles away from Le Lavandou, a place we stopped at on the Cote D’Azur and it’s 25° C colder! Not that it’s stopping some barmy people here who are sitting outside on deckchairs, granted not in bikinis, but it is still -6.5°C! The sun is blazing and it’s 9am. We’re 900m up in the Bavarian Alps, which with the plentiful snow decorating the landscape, glimmering in the sunshine makes for a beautiful setting. The snow has been coming down for the last few days which has it’s good points and bad. It’s good for the skiing but bad for almost everything else! We started this leg of the journey on 13th January in Fonataine de Vaucluse, Provence, and ... read more

Sagres to Pas de le Casa, the Algarve to Andorra – 22nd November to 21th December Two weeks spent swanning around the sunny Algarve and then a few days Skiing in Sierra Nevada in Southern Spain, a weekend in Barcelona, then cruising the slopes again in Andorra. A lovely way to spend four weeks! From popular opinion, hear say, and reading the odd travel brochure, the Algarve is not somewhere I’d have expected to like, other than the sun of course. I didn’t expect the countryside to be so picturesque, and I expected every town and village to be overrun by high rise blocks full of white haired British and German retirees. I was quite wrong, in part anyway. There are a lot of towns which have been monopolised by high-rises. Some of which have been ... read more