Andy & Gillie's Big Adventure!: Ciao Bella

Phew! Not wishing to rub it in to our friends and families suffering under an English summer (or Aussie winter), but it’s really fuckin’ hot here. Here, at the moment, is the Adriatic coast of Italy, where the temperature rarely drops below 30C, there’s no breeze, so even the simplest activity, such as eating and sleeping, become a trial. We’re not complaining, we’re just hot (and kinda looking forward to moving towards more temperate climes. Although, as our friends mentioned the other day, be careful what you wish for…).

The computer is also complaining, so will be writing this in short bursts.

We left you in Hyères, France, where it was just starting to warm up properly and we enjoyed a beautiful sunset and moonrise on the Longest day, followed two days later by our Darkest Hour. All the Europeans we’ve spoken to since the referendum result are bemused by Britain’s (Little England’s) behaviour. Enough of politics already. (For the moment).

After Hyères, we drove a short way along the coast to St Tropez. Well, you have to really. Felt like we were in a Peter Sarstedt song. St Trop is, as you would expect, full of people with big yachts and fancy cars. €18 for two beers! Fuck that.

We hightailed out of there and drove on to Ventimiglia, just over the Italian border, with the intention of visiting Monaco from there the next day. But there was a rail strike on, so we wandered round a very hot market and went back to the campsite for an extremely unsatisfactory laundry experience. Nuff said.

Our next stop was a bit of a mistake, but definitely an unexpected treat. We were looking for a cheap site for the night near enough to Portofino so that we could visit. Well, with the help of our trusty book, app and phone sat navs (we use two sometimes as one gets a bit confused in the heat), we found a very nice basic, well, car park on the top of a mountain, sort of. It was miles from Portofino, but it was very near San Rocco, which is a delightful spot in the Portofino National Park, or something.

One of the reviews we read about this car park, apart from being quite cheap, was that there was a lovely walk down to the sea. But it was 900 steps back up! We did it and had to revive ourselves with several cold beers when we reached the conveniently-situated bar back at the top, which was invaded by very trendily-dressed wedding guests soon after we got there, so we went and looked at the bride standing in the square outside the church, while the groom was at the bar (this was after the ceremony, so it was ok). We then went to another bar and had more beer.

We had our tourist heads on proper after this and drove on to Viareggio. Well, Torre del Lago Puccini, actually. So named as it is the birthplace of the chap who wrote ‘Madama Butterfly’. It’s fair to say that we had a mixed experience during our time there. It was a very easy cycle ride to the beach, where we had to use the (dirty) public beach as we had our own chairs!

Also, as it was a short ride to the station and both Pisa and Florence were easily accessible, we decided to make this our base while we explored these two historic cities. Pisa was first. Short ride to the station. Lock the bikes up. Short train ride and hours wandering round visiting the sights and sites and of course, The Tower. It seems to lean more in photos that in real life (actually, it only leans 3.39 degrees, but it does look quite wonderful).

Sometime during our sojourn in TdL, we had to suffer the embarrassment of England’s defeat to Iceland – the lowest-ranked team in the Euro Championship. Serves us right, really. At least our rugby and cricket teams are showing the way.

Next day, beach – public again. We don’t mind mixing with the hoi polloi. Then Florence. Once again, short ride, padlock bikes in full view of houses and businesses, middle of the day (you know what’s coming). A very hot, but rewarding day visiting one of Italy’s loveliest cities. Back to Torre del Lago. No bikes. Some bastard’s nicked them. In broad daylight. More swear words (fill in your own expletives here).

On our last day here, we were lucky to catch up with one of Emily’s oldest friends, Katie, and her soon-to-be-husband Davide (hope I’ve got this right!) as they now live just 15 kilometres north of where we were staying, so we had a lovely lunch with them, before carrying on to Orbetello, where we witnessed Italy’s defeat to Germany in the football, so we pretty much lost what little interest we had in that silly sport and started thinking about Wimbledon…

More beach at Orbetello then the big one – Rome. It was, as expected, beautiful and, as previously noted, very, VERY hot.

We saw lots of stuff – all the famous sights – and walked and bused and tramed/trammed (?) all over. Weary and footsore, we made our way back to a very handily-placed campsite just near the city (€15/night – can’t complain) and prepared for the trip to Pompeii, which wasn’t at all bad as it happens. Hot though.

As we drove into Pompeii that evening (Thursday 7^th July. Keep up), we saw a poster advertising none other than Dave Gilmour playing IN THE RUINS THAT NIGHT. AND THE NEXT!!!!!! We parked up and thought we’d just, you know, check tickets. We could get some, but the best price was €328 each. Ah well, at least we can say we were in the same town when the first performance to an audience in the ruins for 2,000 years was going on there. (for the geeks among you, 1971’s ‘Pink Floyd Live in Pompeii’ was recorded without an audience.)

We visited the ruins the next day and could see no sign that one of the world’s biggest rock stars was playing that night. We saw lots of ruins though and ossified remains. Pompeii is actually quite awesome. Could give you loads of boring stuff now, but you can look it up for yourself. Just getting back into teacher mode.

The drive across to the east coast wasn’t as traumatic as we feared. Just hot. And we arrived in Rimini after a couple of overnighters in simple sites. Today we went to San Marino, which has a beautiful fort high up on the mountain. World Heritage and all that. The oldest and smallest republic in the world and well worth a visit. And it rained, with thunder and lightning. Not much, but eased the pressure. Back at sea level and it’s getting muggy again.

In the next couple of days, we head north and leave the sea behind for at least 10 days while we drive through Germany and on to Sweden to visit our friends Hans and Eva. There will probably be only one more blog post unless we change our minds and head east towards Russia and on to Vietnam and South East Asia. Who knows?

As we write this, Theresa May has just become our new prime minister. The last time we had a female prime minister it didn’t end well…here’s hoping she doesn’t follow in the footsteps of the Mad Bitch Cow. Arrivederci.

PS. Oh dear! The end is nigh… How can two years have gone so quickly? It doesn’t seem two minutes ago that we were sitting in our kitchen in Fleet, discussing just how are we were going to go

around the world in a campervan and we’ve DONE IT!! Obviously there are zillions of places we haven’t been to, big gaps are South East Asia and Africa. However we hope in the not too distant future to remedy this, but they will be shortish hops and not marathons like this. I was feeling quite emotional when I said to Andy that we’ll never do this again, a sobering thought. Cheer up, we’ve still got two weeks of fun and games in Europe and then it’s Edinburgh Cropredy and Putney, leading on to our new (temporary) life in London.

I must admit we’re a bit nervous about coming back to the UK, with all the disasters that are currently going on (as well as the horrible weather!) Will it feel like a different country to the one we left? We both feel so sad about the Exit and still can’t believe it’s really going to happen.

I’m going to cheer myself up again by telling you about the wonderful Italian countryside. We’ve been travelling through fields and fields and fields and fields of glorious sunflowers. The gentle hills are covered with them and every now and again there is a red roofed farmhouse or a tiny village on a hill with a church spire sticking out of the top. The sky is as blue as blue, with the light so intense. It’s just beautiful (if a little hot!)

There that’s better! Another lovely thing is that Andy is getting better and better at the ukulele, I can recognize most of his songs now (eat your heart out David Gilmour!)

Bye for now, roll on Berlin, Denmark and Sweden… G. xxx