Advertisement
Published: October 30th 2016
Edit Blog Post
In a very confusing situation we left Austria to find ourselves in Italy and a town called Bolzano or we were still in Austria in a town called Bozen depending on your point of view about territorial history. All your correspondent was concerned about was we were at a campsite that made it's own wine and had a pizzeria - oh happy days !!! To this day, I have no idea why Wendy the navigator wanted to leave the place !!! With a few litres of red wine consumed, Claude was directed due south towards Lake Garda and in order to reach it we had to drive along the A22 motorway towards Verona. For those of you who have never journeyed on this road,here is a bit of advice - don't. After 20 months of travelling this is the worst road I have had the misfortune to drive on - never again.
Happily we arrived at our campsite without mishap to be greeted by the camp owner who has never heard the word happy in his life. If you thought your correspondent could be grumpy on finding out he had ran out of cold beer, this man made that look
like a happy holiday. Any question was met with a blank look and a "I don't know " for an answer. If he could find a way to be unhelpful then he would merrily use it. To the surprise of your correspondent, he was not Welsh but actually German !! The campsite itself was perfectly placed beside the lake although the tightness of lanes and the pitches led to many moments of mass swearing and drinking of beer but soon we were happily placed and planned our next few days.
Lake Garda has always been a special place for Wendy. She used to come here with her mum and dad when she was a little girl and has fond memories of her times here. It was on these shores that she learned to swim. Her dad would pay her to let him throw her in the water - a prospect of financial gain that the young Wendy was quick to accept !!! She was able to swim quite soon afterwards and made quite a bundle of lira in the process. This visit, she spread some of her dad's ashes at one of the jetties on the lake where he
used to throw her in.
Talking about swimming, let me introduce you to Cusco the Chief Spaniel. To him a walk is not complete without him having had a chance to charge wildly into water, whether it is a stream, river, lake, sea, a fountain in a city square or a pond in a garden it matters not as long as his is wet or muddy or preferably both. In this aspect Garda was an excellent spot for him. As the signs saying dogs were not allowed to swim between certain hours of the day was in Italian there was no stopping him as he ran straight in chasing his ball. As he usually gets a treat for bringing it back there have not been many issues about his recall from water , especially as he has worked out the ball will be thrown back in so he gets another swim - until Lake Garda.
The throwing and retrieving was going very well, until the daft dog spotted something out of the corner of his eye, so he turned and looked.... and there were ducks on the water....his water....this was not good...he swam off in pursuit. Sadly the
ducks did not fly off in to the distance ( which would have helped as he would have lost sight of the mand given up ) but merely paddled a bit faster to remain just out of his grasp. A lesser but smarter dog would have given up but not our boy he kept after the pesky birds who were now paddling away from the shore and heading to the other side of the lake some 6 kilometres away with Cusco swimming after them. On the shore meanwhile amid much swearing and cursing, Wendy was able to swim in the lake again, this time chasing after her dog as he swam towards Sirmione !!! Stripping down to her bra and pants ( there are photographs) she plunged in and after swimming out managed to catch him !!! There were not many loving words shred between them at that moment.
The next day we went back to the lake and after extensive checking we were confident that there were no ducks or any other waterfowl in the vicinity so ball throwing started again. He was happy swimming in and out until guess what happened ...... a bunch of bloody ducks
flew in and landed a mere ten feet away from him and the whole scenariostarted all over again except this time it was your correspondent who had to strip to his bra and pants ( no photographs are available of this ) and had to venture out into the depths to rescue him again.
There were no further swimming excursions on the lake.
A happy reunion took place at the campsite as Jane and Terry ( the wildman of Cheadle Hulme ) arrived with their dogs Frodo and Pippin, and their caravan. Beer and wine was opened and drank only being interrupted by food occasionally. We told tham of our trials with dog, ducks and water and they laoghed dear readers, they laughed. Revenge was served very cold the next day as Terry had to wade in to retrieve Cusco's ball from the water as Cusco had no intention of going in after it - ha !!! We stayed by the lake for a week,spending time walking along paths, taking boat trips to Sirmione and exploring the area to try and find the appartment where Wendy had stayed as a child - eventually she spotted in when we
were on the boat.
Departing Garda we headed across Italy to Genoa. The campsite did warn us in advance that the roads to the site were narrow and very busy, which was information we had already received from Neil and Van(nilla) before they were forcibly deported from Italy for being Australian. To say that the advice was an understatement would be an understatement as the roads were incredibly narrow with packed cars on either side and almost as many hairpin bends that you would find on a Norwegian mountainside. We only stayed one night here but were rewarded for such a dangerous drive by having probably the best pizza ever in a small restaurant near the promenade whcih was washed down by some lovely cold Italian beer.
Reports had reached us that people of The Valley had been spotted in northern Spain, so after a three day dash across the south of France we entered Catalonia to see if reports were true..
Advertisement
Tot: 0.061s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 19; qc: 32; dbt: 0.0339s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Taffy
non-member comment
Memories
Well plenty of food for thought there!