Our camp tonight
So here we are…in French Alps, camping by a river bed, by a fire, drinking red wine from an empty tin of tomatoes! We’re not sure if we are allowed to be here but so far so good! One of the reasons we are wild camping tonight is because Dean forgot to transfer money in to his account (despite having gentle reminders…) so we have limited money until Tuesday when the bank allows us access to the money J This wouldn’t usually be a problem as I would be better organised but since I had an issue of fraud on my credit card about 3 months ago and am still waiting for the bank to get their shit together to send me a new one, we only have one card to work with…
Camping every night makes small things very important. Our ‘kitchen utensils’ consist of using paper bags for plates, cut in half beer cans for wine/coffee cups and any random bag as a bin. We were especially disappointed when we returned to our camp the other night to find that all these vital instruments were taken as rubbish and disposed of and we were left with nothing but a plastic spoon and a wine bottle…tough times…!
A beautiful village in Italy
So Italy…so ridiculously beautiful it’s stupid! Always a castle, a mountain, a ruin, prosciutto and aperitivos that everyone drinks no matter what time of the day it is! We went to a United Colours of Benneton shop the other day only to realise that there was a ruin in the middle of it…
“Is that an actual ruin or just a feature that has been designed in to the shop?” Dean asks the shop assistant?
“Yeah, its a Roman ruin from about 2000 years ago, there are loads of them here” she says as if she is talking about the weather
There wasn’t even a sign to tell you that it was there …amazing!
Just another castle in a random village
We spent a few and nights at Chiara’s, Deans cousins place which was lovely. We loved not moving for a while and it was hard to get on the road again. We headed to Verona, and on the way stopped for a lovely lunch in another historic building and a glass of Soave… in Soave of course. We then arrived in Verona and found a campsite which was a 10 minute walk from the centre which was pretty amazing. We spent the next day shopping and then rode out to Valpolicella and learnt more about wine. Very beautiful!
Restaurant in Soave
Verona… the view from our campsite
The following day wasn’t so much fun riding through a rain storm to Barolo but we ended up finding a nice camp and spent the next couple of days doing much the same!
Barolo
It is all very nice but there is a feeling that the wheels are starting to fall off… starting with Dean getting sick of seeing me in the same clothes (it has been a year to the day that we left…still in the same clothes), but also the zips on our bags are breaking…the GPS keeps freezing and turning off…my suit is no longer waterproof…half the bike is being held together with zip ties and to top it all off…our airbeds – which we are using every night at the moment are starting to disintegrate (we think) and have hundreds of tiny holes through them so once an hour we have to wake up and pump them up again. This results in a bad nights sleep in an already challenging environment and a slightly grumpy Sally…! So…tomorrow our mission is to try to find some airbeds, come hell or high water! We don’t see ourselves being able to afford a hotel room for another week or so until we get to Spain so it is quite important!
Another castle in Barolo
Despite everything wanting to retire, the sky is blue and the weather perfect (apart from the odd day of rain storms). Everything is green, radiant and oh so civilised. We are travelling through amazing wine regions, beautiful scenery and years of history. We are so so lucky xx
You see?! Stupid.