Torino

Today we drove north to Torino (Turin), stopping en-route at the Basillica on a hilltop to the east of the city.

The Basillica - which after driving miles up the hill we discovered was closed for 3hrs!

A view of Torino from the Basillica

Snow falling in the carpark where we stayed the night. Unfortunately the locals lads decided to take advantage of the downfall to practice their snow driving (ie: skidding round in circles) skills.... until 3am!!

Genova

Today we are visiting Genova (Genoa in English).
The rain has stopped and the sun is shining again - a beautiful Italian day!!

Monument to Vittor Emmanuelle III

The Duomo San Lornezo

The Biosphere in the harbour

Renzo Piano's mast structure over the Genova Conference Centre

San Rocco

The view, north west from our overnight parking place at San Rocco, towards Genova with the Alpi Appennino in the background.

Stick Man looses Briefcase in Stormy Sea

Cinque Terre

Today we are exploring the Cinque Terre which are a string of five tiny fishing villages clinging to the cliffs. The villages are only accessible down very steep roads and even then no vehicles can actually get into them - the locals all park along the roadside and in specially built parking garages above the towns.

Wisely, given the size of Kiki, we parked at the top of the hill and walked down to explore Manarola which is the most accessible of the five.

As we walked down the main street towards the harbour we found it to be full of boats!!

Manarola clinging to the cliffs. The tiny exposed harbour is in the right of this picture below the town - now we understood why all of the boats had been laid up ashore for the winter.

Wanna buy a boat?

Further along the coast we looked down on the village of Corniglia which is surrounded by miles and miles of terraced grape vines.

Our View this Morning

This picture was taken from Kiki as we woke up this morning. After our snowy trek through the mountains yesterday we stayed overnight in a carpark overlooking the village of Riomaggiore on the Cinque Terre.

Snow!!

We are now driving from the east to west coasts to explore the regions Leguria and Piedmont before heading north to Switzerland.

Yesterday we drove 160 miles and stayed overnight in Pistoia - it was very cold and we woke to find a layer of frost on Kiki.

Today we drove through the mountainous Garfagnana and Parco Naturale delle Alpi Apuane.

As we left Pistoia and started to climb into the mountains we saw that the cars coming the other way had several inches of snow on their roofs! We soon found out why - the rain we had been having had fallen as snow on the higher ground.

Kiki pauses for breath on a very snowy mountain road

An alpine village - snow covered roofs everywhere

Fortunately for us the snowploughs had been out and the temperature was just above freezing which meant we didn't need our snowchains - a good thing too as we don't have any!

Grotte di Frasassi

Today we drove from our overnight stop in the Auchan carpark at Ancona approximately 60km east to visit the Grotte di Frasassi. This is the largest underground cave system in europe and one of the top five cave formations in the world. The caves extend to over 35km and the public guided tour which we took is around 2km long and took nearly two hours.

Stunning formations, including a massive cave that's big enough to contain Milan cathedral!

Some of the most beautiful white stalagtites and stalagmites we have ever seen - pure calcium deposits with no impurities to colour them. The caves were only discovered in 1971 which also explains the lack of contamination from oil lamps/candles etc that we have seen in other caves.

Lost in Translation

We weren't sure either....

Conero Penninsula

Today we drove around the Conero Penninsula which is a very small National park just south of Ancona - its the only natural feature in several hundred kilometers of unbroken (read bland/boring) beaches. The headland itself doesn't have any roads (that you can drive a motorhome along!) so we could only really get to the two ends of the Penninsula.

Looking north from Numana towards Mont Conero

Portonovo - a tiny, pretty cove backed by the inevitable string of bars and restaurants.

Probably our last view of the east coast as tomorrow we are heading west again.

Parco Nazionale d'Abruzzo

Today we're heading North through the mountainous middle of Italy and the Parco Nazionale d'Abruzzo which is one of the largest national parks in Italy. Unfortunately we left the clear blue skies and sunshine behind when we came inland and started to climb up the mountains.

Lake Barrea - stunning unspoilt countryside.

At over 1500m it was cold - there's snow on the top of the surrounding mountains

Hill towns cling to the edge of the mountains

Gargano - Day II

After our early start today we continued our tour around the Gargano Penninsula. Here are some of the highlights of the day...

Sea Caves

Natural Arches

Rock pinnacles

Trabucco - huts perched on the rocks with fishing nets in the sea

Sunrise

We got up at 6am this morning to see the sunrise - unfortunately there was low cloud so we didn't see much sun.

Kiki's overnight stopover - wild camping at it's best!

Gargano Penninsula

Today we are on the Gargano Penninsula which is the largest national park in Italy.
We left the campsite at Manfredonia this morning and drove along the south side of the penninsula. It is absolutely stunning - there is hardly any development and what there is has been strictly controlled which means that unlike the Amalfi there are vast area's of unspoilt natural coastline.

A small development and some fish farms off the coast.

Natural Arches in the rocks

Stunningly beautiful, unspoilt coastline - quite a rarity it seems in Italy!

We parked for the night in a tiny carpark nest to an old Spanish castle - the picture shows the view from our windows as the sun sets.

Manfredonia

We are currently staying on a campsite close to Manfredonia. On Sunday we drove from Paestum on the West coast to an Ariee di Sosta in Troia which is about 3/4 of the way across the country. The Sosta was free and had even had free electricity so we decided to stay two nights despite the fact that there's nothing in Troia - I walked the length of the town in 10mins!

After Troia we drove towards the Gargano penninsula (which is the "Spur of Italy" on the east coast) and stopped at a supermarket on the outskirts of Manfredonia to stock up with essentials such as beer, cheese, pizza, wine etc...

When we came out we saw that another English motorhome had parked alongside. We got chatting with the owners (Robin & Gill), swapped some books and stories. It was raining and we suddenly realised it was getting dark and we hadn't decided where we were going to stay for the night. Robin said they we heading for a campsite a few miles away so we decided to do the same.

We had such a great evening eating, drinking and swapping tales with our new found friends that we decided to stop a second night (and do two loads of washing at the same time).

Kiki and her new friend on the campsite in Manfredonia.

Paestum

Today we visited Paestum which is just down the West coast from Salerno. Here are some of the best preserved Greek temples in Italy. Apparently the city was abandoned in the 9th Century because of the plague and only re-discovered in 18th Century. The guy on the campsite where we stayed on Friday night told us they found it when they went to clear the area to build a road!

The temples are amazingly well preserved.

The Doric temple of Poseidon

The temple to Athena

The Amalfi coast

We were really looking forward to exploring the Amalfi coast having heard so much about it so we set off early on our scooter hoping that the rain we'd had during the night would hold off for the day.

We rode the entire length of the Amalfi, from Positano to Solerno and back which was around 100km. In Solerno we stopped for a coffee and to warm up as it was quite chilly riding.

Positano - a village popular with the jetset clinging to the cliffs above the sea

The village of Praiano

The Amalfi was nice but not quite what we were expecting as the majority of the narrow winding coast road was taken up with hotels, bars and restaurants. I guess we thought it would be a stretch of wild unspoilt coastline...

We returned to the campsite around 3pm and decided to move on rather than spend another €30 for a second night - this is the most expensive place we have stayed!

The way out of the camping place was very narrow and at 90deg to the track which then went steeply uphill. As we turned onto the track disaster struck or rather we struck.... a tree..... Kiki now has a nasty scratch along her side and a hole in the plastic trim on her offside rear. Having extricated ourselves from the tree we then attempted to drive up the track which was steep, green and slippery - no chance - wheelspin and smoke ensued! After a couple of minutes we gave up and then the owner came down to us with his 4x4 lorry and with the aid of a long rope, pulled us up the hill.

Having extricated Kiki and covered up the damage with Duck tape we drove on to Cava de'Tirreni and the Ariee di Sosta where we planned to spend the night.

Again we didn't have an address, just a town and a road name. Fortunately as we got close the the Sosta we spotted a sign (pointing uphill again) which we followed for a little until we got to a T junction - there were no signs here and the had road started to narrow so we stopped and I walked along both roads but found nothing. In the end I walked back down to the sign to check the direction and asked a local guy who had just walked down the hill where it was - he pointed back up the hill - I acted dumb and he walked all the way back up with me and into what looked like a private carpark. He asked someone else if it was the right place and sure enough part of the carpark is available for motorhome parking. We tucked ourselves in a corner and enjoyed a well deserved supper of Lasagne and chippy potatoes (an Em special).

The Sorrento Penninsula

Today we left our campsite at Pompei and drove south towards Sorrento. We didn't actually go into the city but took a road across the Sorrento penninsula towards the Amalfi coast. We were heading for a parking place that had been recommended to us by a guy who lives locally. Unfortunately when we arrived we found it to be too close to a busy road so we went for option two which was a campsite he also recommended.

The campsite was called Agricampeggio Oasi Verde and was only a few kilometers away however we didn't have an accurate location. We drove along the road towards the campsite and spotted a sign off to the left. We turned left and followed a narrow road uphill and round a few bends. Suddenly the road got a lot steeper and Kiki struggled to get up - we were stuck halfway up a hill :-( A local chap stopped and we explained where we were going and he said we'd gone the wrong way!! He helped us to reverse back down the hill and watched whilst we turned round in the narrow road. He then said follow me and took us back down the the main road where we saw that the sign was in fact pointing to an entirely different Agri.... something or other. It turned out we were about 1km from the proper place and he drove all the way there with us following and made sure that it was correct before returning the way he had came. The locals around here are very friendly and helpful.

Anyway we had arrived at Agricampeggio Oasi Verde but the adventure was only just beginning because the way to their camping area was down a steep and narrow track. When we got down it took two of them to help us to manouver into one of the camping places. Once we were settled they scurried around tidying things up. A lady came down and cleaned the toilets and showers and then spent ages sweeping all the leaves up.

It was a lovely quiet place to stay in preparation for exploring the Amalfi coast on our scooter tomorrow.

A few pics taken on our drive from Pompei to Sorrento

Sorrento on the Northern side of the penninsula.