Italy Part 2 - The week of Punctures

The week that didn’t go to plan!

So as all of you know we don’t plan much for the trip but we try and have a few plans, ie where we are going to sleep and what towns we are going to visit and the many outdoor activities we are going to try and fit in. But this week it seems that every plan we made we had to change for one reason or another. 

So our plan for the Tuesday was to head to a camperstop about 15km outside of Florence and cycle into the heart of the city for an explore, similar (although further) to what we did in Pisa. So we headed to Sesta Fiorentino which was essentially a car park but what we quickly discovered that the car park backed onto the train station so we decided to save our legs and get the train into Florence (especially as it was only 1.50 each per journey). We arrived in Florence 20 minutes later and started our tour of the city, first heading to the large food market where we got some lunch (freshly made pasta), an arancini (an Italian rice ball) and a smoothie. We also bought some local biscotti for later in the day. Then we headed off for the Duomo which was a large cathedral in the centre of the city which we had to queue to enter. As it is a cathedral there are restrictions on what you can wear to enter it and several people were turned away at the entrance but luckily enough we were covered up just enough to be allowed in. The cathedral was large but from the impressive outside i did expect a grander interior. Also in the basement of the cathedral was a museum and gift shop which did ruin it slightly for us. Next stop on our tour was an international second-hand bookshop as Rich needed some new books, this also gave us a great excuse to be indoors when a quick rain shower happened. Once it dried up we headed to the museum “Galeria De Academia” which required queuing again to enter and see the David statue. The statue was large (in most areas) and impressive but the rest of the museum just contained religious paintings, mostly of Jesus on the cross, and there are only so many of those you can look at. After this we headed back to the food market and got some little bits to go with dinner and headed for the train back to our little car park. 

We had planned to spend two days in Florence but as we appeared to have seen most things in one day we decided to head to our next destination a day earlier than planned. So off we headed early in the morning to Lake Trasimeno. We parked up at a new camperstop and as we were paying for this we got electricity for the first time in a while. This was very exciting as it meant we would be having hot showers in the evening (I would like to reassure you all we could have hot showers without electricity but given that a- it takes an age to heat the water, b- its very hot over here, c- the cold showers aren’t that cold as the heat of the sun seems to warm the water during the day, we usually have cold/cool showers to cool us down after a hot day). So first we made sure we were full with water and let the heater do its thing while we went out for the day... but what to do. We knew we wanted to kayak on the lake and do some cycling around the area so we decided to get on the bikes and go for a little bike ride today and kayak the following day. I joked and told Rich the whole lake had a cycle route and that it was 75km – BIG MISTAKE – cue us riding the whole lake and me wanting to kill Rich. We did make a couple of stops – I told him they were mandatory (one for lunch, one for ice cream ect). It took us about 5/6 hours to get around the whole lake and while some of the route was nice cycle lanes, there was also bits that were main roads so we were being overtaken by articulated lorries which wasn’t pleasant. Following my well deserved hot shower I cooked dinner and we sat outside to eat along it along with the well deserved Prosecco. Our campervan had been surrounded while we were out by a French group who were singing some cult like songs and even provided us some of their poison – to be fair it was really nice lemoncello. 

The following day we decided to drive around the lake a little to the town we had eaten lunch at (as it looked like the perfect place to kayak in the lake (and rich wanted to try and get to one of the islands – after yesterdays mission, I wasn’t that keen on the idea). Anyway after carrying the kayak to the harbour we inflated all the relevant section just to discover that there was not one but three punctures in it, obviously from our less than graceful landings on Cinque Terre. So we needed to fix these and this took time, so about an hour later we had someone fixed them but decided that it probably wasn’t best to take it on the lake as the patches needed to dry fully (and I wasn’t sure how well they would hold – I needed proof before I was going anywhere near water)

Instead we headed back to the van to re-plan what we were going to do. We decided to leave the lake behind and start heading in land to Perugia as I had seen a chocolate factory that you could do a tour around (just like being at home and going around Cadburys). Off we headed and an hour before the factory closed we turned up and the security had to phone to see if we were allowed to enter as we hadn’t book (whoops) anyway we managed to get a tour of the factory (not fully working as its low production season). However they did explain the history of these famous baci chocolates (we had never heard of them) and gave us lots of them to try (the best bit of the tour). Our personal tour guide spoke very good English with a TV taught American accent but she did throw us a little with her pronunciation of the word ‘Hazelnut’ which sounded like ‘Hazle-nut’ – a key ingredient on their famous Baci Choclate. After an hour we headed out to the local camperstop but it turns out it was on a main road and very expensive so we had a quick bit of research on the side of the road and decided to head to the next town where there was a free one which looked quieter. Sure enough the next one seems nice as it was behind to a community centre which looked quiet and there was a short walk into town. As i had cooked for a couple of nights we decided to splurge and head out for dinner, we even decided to try as the Italians do and have more than one course. This was a mistake of course and I struggled with my first course of spaghetti carbonara let alone my cod in a tomato sauce, while rich flew through his pasta and pork but started to struggle with the wild boar stew (and the litre of wine we had ordered) but we did really enjoy it. 

The next day we headed to another national park, this was on a mountain – Monte Cucco – where we wanted to go caving but we had to until the following day as we knew that they only took large group bookings in the week but anyone could go on the weekend. So to fill the day we found some parking and decided to go for a couple of walks (getting lost a little along the way as normal) but at we did stumble across some beautiful horses on the walk before turning around and heading back to the camper. As there was only one camper stop at the top of this mountain and it didn’t look very appealing we decided to be naughty and wild camp (which means to camp outside of the designated areas and is technically illegal but mostly overlooked as long as you do not leave any mess and are considerate of others. The only thing police would do is move you on to a designated area, there are no fines or anything for wild camping). We found a car park with great views and settled in for the night by cooking and eating dinner in the van (as no camp behaviour is allowed with wild camping) and as there was not much entertainment we decided to settle in and watch a bit of TV. However this was short lived as the horses we had seen early appeared out of no-where and headed up to the hills around us. Then as we started to watch the TV again a car pulled up and a man and dog got out, after some surveillance we realised that he was going to free camp as well. Anyway we started to watch TV again and then suddenly the man and dog were back in the car and we could hear some bells... Well when we looked out of our other window we soon realised why! There were about 30 cows/bulls (well cows with horns!) surrounding the car park. We did chuckle when the cows seemed to be interested in the other cars warm bonnet. We thought they would head up to the fields shortly so we tried to hang on, even when they were centimetres outside the window looking in (thank god for our blinds so we couldn’t see how close they all were). However they started to rub up against the van (horns and all) and started interfering with the bikes on the rack so we (and the other car) decided to hot foot it out of there and find somewhere else to sleep. We ended up in a (non flat) lay-by which did not make for the most comfortable sleep ever.  

The following morning we headed back to the cow car park (they were now on the hill above the car park) and had breakfast while waiting for the caving place to open. In the mean time there was plenty going on, people were arriving with hand gliders and paragliders and throwing themselves off the hill which was terrifying to watch. Once 10am hit we were off to the cave which first entailed a 45 minute climb up the mountain and then a serious set of ladders to climb into the cave (which did my fear of heights no good). We then walked in the cave for about 1km looking in various holes and at various rock formations but our tour guide did not have great English so mainly spoke in Italian. On our way back down we had to participate in the mandatory group photos and then got back to the van in time for lunch and more planning as I had put my foot down and said I want a real stop for the following night. 

We decided to head to Fabriano which was on our way to the next national park. As we got here at a reasonable time we were able to spend some time fixing the kayak properly this time and fix my bike which seemed to have received a puncture at some point during the 75km  bike ride.  After this we explored the town, bought some essentials, had some street food and had an early night.

Now we have left Fabriano and headed to the next national park “Parco Nazionale del Gran Sasso e Monti della Laga” where we plan to do some exploring tomorrow. For tonight we are in another free camperstop in Tossicia where we are being serenaded by some truly terrible karaoke in the community centre. As its a Sunday not much is open in the town (there is only one bar and a pharmacy in the whole town that we can see) so we are just going relax and enjoy some nice views until the morning.