Day 53: Riccione to San Marino To Maranello

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An early start today as we had some ground to cover and I wanted to stop off and see Imola race track today and Pam had promised Gerry that we would call into Forli’ on the way. Before that though it was off to another country, the 5th smallest in the world and the 2nd smallest in Europe, that is San Marino. Total population 27,000, I still don’t know how or why San Marino is separate from Italy but there you have it. San Marino is s small country located on the top of yet another hill with a large castle fortification, the day was very cloudy and the best way to get to the town is via the cable car. The best thing about San Marino it is tax free therefore a great place to do some shopping, very, very cheap. We spent a couple of hours in the town and watched a bike race to the top, we are talking cobbled streets so steep that it is hard to walk up let alone ride a bike up. The drive on towards Imola was a little boring I must say with industrial area after industrial area along ss9 and taking forever to make any ground. Passing through Forli’ we were looking for a computer store as Pam needed a card reader to try to recover her lost photos, not easy in a camper, not understanding the lingo and not knowing where to look, a few internet hits did not pan out so we gave it up in disgust, and anyway Forli’ was closed! Need some time in a big town to find what you need sometimes. We finally made Imola and it was great to see the old track, still in use today but not on the F1 agenda I don’t think. It must be madness on race days as the track is almost in the middle of town with limited access to the track parking, what there was of it. We had a location of a free camp site in Maranello so we headed for that planning to visit Ferrari tomorrow, at least I am, Pam has to work. Finding the location of this spot proved to be very difficult, no lat and long just a vague address, bloody unreliable the internet is for this type of thing at times. Anyway we thought we had lucked out as we found this nice park with good flat areas to stop but by a main road and a little sign that said no camping, this was no good so Pam was looking for another spot when a guy drove up and told us to follow him as he knew a place down the road. Was he right, down by the river, power hook-up and 5 bucks for the night, just great.

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