"See, how she leans her cheek upon her hand! O that I were a glove upon that hand, that I might touch that cheek!" - William Shakespeare, Romeo and

Venice, but verona first. 3-6th August

(I will post photos soon)

…Twas in Verona we arrived before Venice (forgot to mention that!). Its worth noting that it rained all day, very hard. First things first, parking up. Id like to make a long rant about the driving in Italy but I don’t have enough time. Instead, I have far more beef with the signposting. I have a personal vendetta with the sat nav; it has no acknowledgment of one way systems.. at all. Picture this, a forced left turn (narrow street), sat nav says,‘recalculating’ …20 meters a forced right turn (narrower street) ‘recalculating’, further left and right turns...more annoying,‘recalculating(s)’ and a result in a street so narrow that we fear for the survival of our van. The buildings are so high around us it was feeling claustrophobic. Car beeping behind us, how on earth are we going to get out of this? Obviously my first impulses are to put my foot up on the dashboard and repeatedly karate kick the thicko of a woman on the sat nav. Pete appears calm in this situation but the reverse sensors are going off as a constant beep, result in him slamming down on the off button in a abrupt manner. Im curled up and the best thing I can do is bury my head in ‘grill pan eddie’ (the van pillow). Ah suddenly all is well…Freedom. Glad to be free from the maze we vowed this would never happen again.

We parked the van at the city edge and mounted up on our bikes to venture into the city. The cobbled roads and narrowing streets are perfect for bikes but I am not sure the one way systems enjoy us going the opposite direction. Who cared? We just conquered the inner city centre with our voltswagon van! It was still pouring and a particularly heavy downpour meant we had to seek cover. Pete insisted on blatant ignoring signs of prohibiting picnicking and with all due respect to the ridiculous law he proceeding to launch the biggest picnic of his life under one of the arches of Verona’s most prominent landmark, the Arena. Was today a good day? I felt my skin on my face, a particular indictor that stress levels were high (Yup). Happily, we ended up in yet another restaurant were pizza and lasagne was ordered but Pete took a sudden turn and ordered, Tartare de Cavallo (raw horse). He makes apologies to the animal lovers but he had to try it. It looked like a homemade hamburger mix but I never gave Pete the attention, as I am sure he would try to make me eat some. ‘How was it Pete?’, ‘mmm, its tasty…its kind of like eating mince out of a packet’. Yes, real tasty Pete.

So Venice… as I said the pitch was glorious. Another day of chilling, followed by a day excursion into Venice by boat…where yet again it poured with rain all day. It was miserable, not at all like my birthday bike ride. With so many tourists and 2 inch flooding all is bearable if its just two adults but Wilson was soaking and shivering and Jackson was screaming in the backpack. I was feeling for them. I’ve been to Venice three times and don’t think another trip is needed, first with the girls 18 years old (where we walked around in a palace with high heels, taking pictures of our hands on the naked statues bums etc), second on a romantic break with Pete (lovely) and now this. I recognised I had become painfully adverse to buying into a tourist economy but obviously couldn’t help paying about 12 euros on service charges. I suppose this time I saw beyond the bright lights and glossy tourist onslaught; instead a gondola punter smoking under a bridge, glitter on the floor from a restoration project, moody ice-cream servers and stressed waitresses. Here we are just another number. Sure you can appreciate the architecture, beautiful buildings, soak up the Venetian atmosphere but I struggle to feel the authenticity. Still a magnificent city on my return on the boat, I looked at everyone, soaking wet and miserable, thanking the day that ponchos exist.

Good memories but Ciao Bella Venizia.

The next day we were due to leave but wait… Wilson had picked up yet another lady; Melina, Fench, seven years old had invited us to dine with them over at their camp after they had a delightful meeting at the park, again. The family were lovely, crazy-hair dad and a very pretty wife, both with two daughters. The two girls were dishing up and role-playing ‘restaurante’. Neither spoke English but we got by singing rhymes. Every now and then Melina would go over to Wilson and give him affection. Wilson would look at me for reassurance, don’t worry Willy this is just the start me thinks! By the way, I love watching Pete speak French… it suits him. Together we went into the night, talking, playing and eventually exchanging addresses. Making European friends is a delight, I could get used to this.

“40 Euros to get into Switzerland? The roads had better be nice” (Petes response to Swiss Road-Tax officer at custom gate)

30^th- 2^nd August

Locarno- Switzerland, Lake Garda, Venice

Its been a while…its taken so long to update the blog as we dabbled in a bit of ‘free camping’ in Switzerland, obviously there is no wi-fi and internet cafes are a family trip out so not ideal.

We were due to stop at Basel and the weather was still awful…we were getting desperate for some hot weather. We had wet clothes in a big bag in the roof topbox and it was starting to feel a bit naff. We heard that Switzerland was expensive and apart from the classic ‘milka’ and ‘tag heure’ that was about all we knew. I’d been on holiday with the girls to Italy when we were about 17, by bus, and remember the mountains looking incredible then. They are still breath-taking and as we drove between two huge, steep mountains we looked at each other and smiled. Petes spirit seemed raised, as he kept pointing out all the irregular-shaped peaks. Later he announced that ‘he feels a real affinity with the mountains and lakes’. I imagined him running & climbing over the mountains naked, like he told me he did on the Yorkshire Dales as a teenager, listening to Ash on his walkman. The lakes yet again adhere to his naturist side, but the stillness of a vast pure lake and the grand surroundings make for a great escape for him a while (and if a pedalo is thrown into the equation, you’ve got yourself in real troubleJ). He’s a good swimmer, mind you, I would be if I had wings like him.

We drove through a tunnel which took 15 mins to get through, our dashboard temperature read 33…How did they build these things?

We decided to head down to South Switzerland, Locarno…which was another 2-3 hours from Basel. A rest-stop was in need. Without the internet it’s a struggle to see where the best panoramic, picnic spots are en-route. The classic map saved the day after 30 mins studying the Michelin map symbols.

Pesto Gnocci high on the mountain top

Nice flowers high on the mountain top.

You might be thinking how hard could it be to find a picnic table but we wanted the BEST picnic table in Switzerland! Im recognising a pattern here…I have come to realise that in this trip I have tried to get the BEST pitch, in the BEST campsite and with the BEST prices and I have been unconsciously stressed about the fact that we may be in a campsite that is notoriously crap and the one 100m down the road has 40 waterslides, cheaper restaurant with better food and all the pitches face the water. This would be an ultimate disappointment one I thought I couldn’t face…what fun are we missing out on? Nutshell? I have spent a lot of wasted energy avoiding it. Fast forward to us in Locarno at about 10.30pm, no campsite at all but a campervan-dedicated roadside heaven. I felt totally comfortable with the fellow campers from all over Europe, together we are getting quids in on what would have been 30 Euros a night camping. As we all bundled in the pop up, Jackson and Wilson continued their evening routine of rolling over our heads and legs until they were knackered enough to sleep. Here, every 5 mins a lads car drove past with music blasting out and all I could see were two sets of very awake, big & bright, beautiful eyes. This was the downside, I started to feel the pangs of disappointment…what have I done, the fun was never going to be here?

Locarno, what did it bring? In the morning the temperature read 25 degrees at 9.30, hitting 29 degrees midday…yes this is better weather, took 1 week into our travels to get it. We walked into the Delta campsite…100 m down the road and 5 stars, with a private beach onto the lake. It was horrible, like a concentration camp; the speaker systems around the campsite sounded strict and unfriendly. Electrical wires crossed the pathways. Also, (and this is not an exaggeration for once) there was not a single space of green grass to be seen under the ghetto-star campsite. Thanks for the use of the toilet and the private beach for a quick morning dip, but were off to our road-side dream. We came to learn that we were parked right next to a brand new lido with 3 children’s pool, thermal pool, Olympic pool, Olympic diving pool and water slides that looped round like a roller coaster. The entire park had a private beach onto the lake with more diving boards and distant rafts to jump of into the lake. It was amazing, we spend all day there and we loved it. Never before have I been to a place where my body shape and size was in the minority. No-one was as big as me (well maybe a few Italian, mama restaurant owners) and I know I am not big but this place was packed with men with washboard stomachs and the women were toned, brown, slim hotties with modest breasts (as opposed to those Hollywood beauties). I didn’t notice at first but when I did I asked Pete if I had a body like that woman over there (I considered her to me like me) he answered ‘sweatheart, youre bigger than her’. Mortified. Enough said on that. I felt for the bigger women of our nation. I’ve never cared greatly about my weight and I refuse to starve so I consoled myself with the fact I just had a baby. Mmmm

On the second day we went on an excursion up to one of the peaks on a cable car, which were scarier than I thought. On the top were beautiful panoramic scenes with insects I have never seen before flying into our faces. There was a trail for the children that ‘triggered the sensors’ (querky). Imagine Wilson and Jackson being totally engaged on a reflexology path and Pete joining in, repeating incessantly ‘woo, I rediscovered the sense of touch’. The food was delicious but here Switzerland gets me…50 euros for a meal! Everywhere you go it’s about 50 euros for 2 main meals a bottle of San Pellegrino.

In the evening we took the opportunity to test out our Solar Shower in the wood and weed in our porta potty..all proved to be a lot of fun.

All is well, a valuable lesson re-learnt…5 star is nice but sometimes the scabbiest, least popular and unorthodox choices are the best, cheapest fun. I say re-learnt as I remember as a child I seemed to pick the ice bun over the éclairs; never cared they were the cheapest runt of the patisserie family, I just liked them:)

It was time to move on but this time to Lake Garda, it was nothing like Locarno in my opinion and we missed our last stop. Lake Garda is still a beautiful place. It took me ages to feel like I could enjoy the Butlins workout in the pool and children’s evening disco. Initially, I couldn’t bear all the loud noise and ‘brits abroad’ atmosphere but it didn’t take me long to get into the swing of it and I was break-dancing with Wilson on the dance floor. Not only that but I felt better about my body in this swimming pool and found it completely necessary to do a bomb into the pool over the guests. However, I was mortified when I got whistled at for thowing Wilson into the pool, by his own request.

We are in Venice now, pitched up in the most amazing spot on the other side of the estuary from St Marco Sq. We arrived last night and there was a thunder storm, lightening going off every second. The wind was up and it really was powerful. I stood on the rock and put my hands up to the sky but I never got electrocuted this time so I put my clothes back on and retired to my pop upJ

cheeky Jackson x