"Stockport, it's not exactly Pisa"

These were my opening words to Gill this morning. I guess, after 38 years of marriage, the quality of pillow talk inevitably declines. Even by my usually banal standards I do think I excelled myself today. However with the noon-day Easyjet Pisa to Manchester flight looming, followed inevitably by a slow trundle through the tawdry sprawl of south Mamchester thanks to the 199 'Skyline Express' then my sentiments may have been somewhat unromantic, but understandable.

We have used public transport a lot in Southern Europe. I don't ever recall having been at all disturbed or depressed by my fellow passengers. Back home, I know the day-time users of the 199 will be the old, the workless young and the bewildered. As today is 'Budget Day' the bus will achieve momentary topicality by resembling a non-works outing for George Osborne's losers. It would easy to feel a sense of superiority having jetted back from an extended trip around the Mediterranean, however, we too are stereotypical passengers; both our careers in the public services were brought to a somewhat early demise by Government austerity measures. Though as losers go, I realise we're really quite unconvincing.

So, back to Italy - after a night in the well appointed 'Camper Resort' on the Via Aurelia north of Piombino. it was a short bumpy ride up the SS1 to Pisa. There is a area camper a little beyond the city walls, basically a car park with electrical hook-up, but its good enough for a night. After the south Pisa felt prosperous, the outskirts modern and well designed. Within the walls, a kilometre or so from where we had parked, Pisa is a lovely old city. Even the tourist tat around the Tower fails to destroy the magic of 'The Field of Miracles'. Whereas some Pisan Gothic employs black and white striped marble as decoration, giving monuments a startling Liquorish Alsort look, the Duomo and Baptistery in Pisa itself features white and sea-green marbling which achieves a more subtle, and pleasing effect.

So we wandered about, stared at the sites, risked a slightly overpriced macchiata at a riverside cafe in a piazza containing a statue of Garibaldi. The sculpture managed to look effete and portly at the same time, a rare achievement only bettered in my experience by Russell Grant.

Away from the more obvious tourist traps, Pisa's old centre is basically a university town. I like university towns because they are full of young people. We played spot the hipster bar, easily identifiable by signage in English, distressed ill matched furniture, artisan beers and a long cocktail list. I like universities themselves, they are essentially optimistic concerns. Scholarship is one of the most important bulwarks we have against superstition. Depressingly there seem ever more people in the world convinced of the unique importance of their preferred imaginary being, and willing to kill anyone who disagrees. I am not so naive as to think that humanity is going to dispense anytime soon with its need for divine assistance. Perhaps though, we might accord deities equal rights, a UN Charter of Divine Rights that asserts that all gods are equally imaginary, so there is no competition, Then we could stop killing each other and put a bit more effort into saving the planet and eradicating poverty... Hmmm, perhaps I am naive after all.

So, homewards we go for three weeks. We  all survived scrutiny by the Easyjet handbag police, most of whom must appeared have had staunch supporters of Il Ducio as grandparents. Total respect goes to the young woman in front of us who secreted her transgressive hand luggage beneath the back of a voluminous poncho. I think she got away with it because the Gucci police assumed the bustle had made an unexpected fashion come-back. Now boarded, the PA has just squawked safety announcements in high speed Italian; I only understood two words, Brace! Brace! If we get to that stage we are all buggered anyway. Allegedly this side of the aircraft will get a good view of the Leaning Tower as we bank towards the sea. Maybe Gill in the window seat will get a photo....

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Italian delights

Finding wifi with a signal strong enough to upload the blog had been a pain for the past two days. I've been using the IPhone app instead, but even this has proved frustrating with the 3G signal wafting in and out. Anyway, more or less as soon as I had written the last post about how irritating Italia can be, she decided to turn on the charm and prove that really she is winsome and delightful really.

We've had a great drive from Lake Bolsena area to a good camper stop next to the Via Aurelia, a little to the north of Piombina. We camped on the shores of Bolsena some time ago in the early noughties. It is not the most spectacular of Italy's lakes, but it exudes a quiet peacefulness and the towns around its shores are ancient and interesting. Sadly, we did not have time to linger but headed west on the SS74 towards the coast.

Most roads are simply a means of getting from A to B, but some transcend mere utility to become things of beauty. This road is exciting to drive, first climbing from the lake through a stark landscape of spent volcanoes. Near Pitligliano it enters a series of steep ravines,. At the village itself set on a tufa cliff there are a series of tricky hairpin bends. Trucks are banned, and Maisy only squeezed through by taking up both sides of the road to negotiate the tightest turns. After a few miles the road reaches a more pastoral land of green hills topped with red roofed farms and cypress trees. These southern uplands on the border of Tuscany and Lazio are as lovely as the Chianti, but less frequented. Finally the coast is announced by a sky of silvery blue, the sea itself is hidden behind a littoral of umbrella pines.

If the SS74 was the first 'find' of the day, then the second was the Promontorio dell' Argentario, an island, similar Elba or Giglio, but attached to the mainland by three slender causeways. We ended up for a lunch stop on the quayside at Porto Santo Stefano. It's a classic small Mediterranean harbour that would not look out of place near Cannes, Portofino, or Positano, yet it not as famous as any of them. The view from the window was worthy of the rear deck of a super-yacht; actually it was from the back of an aged Ford Transit, but it still felt a bit swanky.

Talking about Ford Transits, Maisy was great to drive today, rock-steady on twisting roads, a bit of 'umph' climbing up steep hills, the automatic gear-box intelligent enough to deal with all the hazards we faced. Moreover, there was little traffic on these southern Tuscan country roads, so for once driving was pleasurable rather than stressful. The afternoon was a little tedious by comparison, a two hour trundle north to a Sosta beside the Via Aurelia, a few kilometres north of Piombina. Pisa and the flight home approaches. Not journeys end, merely a break in the proceedings, but a milestone nevertheless.

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Italian Irritations

We have been in Italy for a little over two months in all. The day after tomorrow we fly back home for a three week break. It would be overstating matters to say the break will be welcome, but there are aspects of being in Italy that I will not miss.

Driving is stressful, not only because of the erratic nature of fellow road users, but away from toll roads, potholes and unexpected hazards abound. As a pedestrian, outside of 'areas pedonale' often there is no pavements and you weave your way up the street dodging picturesquely parked cars and passing traffic, often driven by people more interest in their mobile phones than the road ahead. Then there are the unexpected complication of everyday life. For example, we stopped for fuel yesterday, a simple enough task you might think, until you came to choose the pump. There were three rows of them, each with a diesel pump selling the same fuel for a different price. The deluxe experience could be purchased at 1.42 per litre in row A, where orange-overalled Erg elves would fill-the vehicle at a premium. In row B, it was self service, but you handed your cash to an attendant. Here you got a discount and the diesel cost 1.30 per litre. Row C was the bargain basement of fuel retailing where the pump was self service and you used a card machine to pay - 1.22 per litre - that's the one for impoverished retirees like us! Except the pump could only be accessed from the left hand side, and the position of our fuel cap requires we use the other side. Crestfallen, we stumped up the mid-range price. I realise these are all minor irritations, but they stack up, especially when the weather is more Pennine than Apennine, blustery and cold.

We have no choice but to head north towards Pisa, our flight is on Wednesday and though we might bewail the grey, distinctly Blighty weather, in truth the whole of Italy, top to toe seems to be suffering a cold snap. Travellers in Sicily were posting on Facebook about cold rain and thunderstorms. Enough moaning! What about where we are now. We left Rome mid-morning in order to avoid the worst of the traffic so escaped more easily than we arrived. Rome seems to sprawl to the south more than to the north, so soon we were heading through the broad fields of lower Tiber valley with views across towards the snow-dusted Apennines. We were not planning to travel far.

Originally we had considered stopping by Lake Bolsena, but opted instead to stay at the Cantina Sociale of the wine DOC with the unlikely name of 'Est! Est! Est!' The place has a free camper park with EHU next to the Cantina's shop selling wine and other local produce. Even on a dull Sunday in early March both the Camperstop and the retail outlet were surprisingly busy.

The Camperstop is situated on the outskirts of the small Etruscan town of Montefiascone. It sits on a bluff overlooking the broad expanse of Lake Bolsena about 6kms to the north. We sat in the van for a while, but in the end donned scarves, gloves and wooly hat and set off to have a look at the town. Lake Bolsena formed in the caldera of a long extinct volcano. Consequently, Montefiascone is built of a dark lava stone. It's a typical ancient Italian hill town, but the slate-grey stone give it a particularly severe aspect. I had seen on Google maps that the place had a small museum dedicated to the work of Sangello the Younger who happens to be my favourite Italian Renaissance architect. We never found the musuem, and in fact the Sangello connection seems to be distinctly tenuous. He is reputed to have advised on the town's Cathedral ground plan, but as the monument was not completed until 100 years after the original plan, so really the building is Baroque-lite, and has little in common with Sangello's work which displays a wonderful geometric purity and had great finesse. Gill described the Montefiascone cathedral as a 'grim lump'.

The town itself is part of the pilgrim route of St Francis and the marked pathway leads to a pleasant public garden on the hilltop with views north over the lake, and south across the Etruscan countryside towards Viterbo. On a clear day it would have been spectacular.

We bought a couple of bottles from the Cantina and retired for the night. The wine was distinctly average, but Gill's ragu delicious as ever. Then it was an episode of Borgen and bed.

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Time Travel

I came across this limonate kiosk in Trastevere yesterday and concluded that it must belong to the Italian Timelord, Dottore Chi. It seemed fitting that he would travel the universe in a lemonade stall rather than some stuffy old police box. I guess the winsome giovane donna on the right must be his 'assistant'.

We've been doing a bit of time travel ourselves lately. In fact, we have been experiencing strange shifts in the time space continuum ever since we left England in late September. As we drove south from Oxford through the Thames valley the beech trees were beginning to turn. Although it had been warm enough to have a coffee on the Ashmolean rooftop terrace in the afternoon, by evening no one was sitting outside the riverside pubs in Wallingford. There was a palpable autumnal chill in the air. As we drove slowly south, through Lorraine, then Switzerland, past Maggiore, onwards through Marche and Puglia, across the Ionian Sea to the Peloponnese, time stood still. Autumn followed us the whole way like a Keatsian stalker. Even in early December, the south of Sicily managed a 'mellow fruitfulness'. Though hardly 'misty', when I took my last swim of the year, the light was golden and soft; but as you might anticipate, the sea was not exactly warm, though it was not so bone chillingly cold as to require a tri-suit. Only a couple of weeks before the festive season and we still seemed trapped in an everlasting autumn.

December and January were spent in the cold and very rainy Pennines. We were subjected to instant English winter and it felt miserable. By the time we returned to Sicily the locals at least were convinced that the season had changed. Out came their pneumatic black quilted jackets. Beneath hats - leather rimmed homburgs or black knitted beanies -  dark eyes peered over a swathe of scarves wound with Baroque exuberance to keep out the dreaded wintry draughts.

However, though the calendar asserted it was February 3rd, neither the weather, nor this couple of migratory Brits could find any sign of winter whatsoever. Yellow sorrel sprang into life in the hedge rows, pale mauve almond blossom covered the hillsides around Agrigento, the sky was blue and some days the temperature edged towards the high teens. To those used to seek signs of early spring in a few paltry catkins or the odd courageous snowdrop, no way could this flowery outburst be consider as winter. So just as Autumn had stalked our outbound journey, so Spring attempted to accompany us homewards, deasil around Sicily then north into Calabria. In early February almond trees had blossomed in Agrigento. A month later, splurges of puce brightened the hillsides north of Corigliano Calabro as cherry orchards bloomed. As we journeyed north Spring simply kept up.. Time slowed almost to a standstill.

Few days ago as we reached Campagna, normality returned. The trees in the Cilento had not yet come into leaf, the autostrada snaked through snow-capped mountains and the rain turned to sleet. Now in Rome, the buds are just bursting forth and the trees are full of birds busily nest building. Though the changing season may be a few weeks ahead of England, nevertheless the pattern seems familiar. No longer can we out-fox time, Here and now has reverted to the deciduous.

February - Capo S. Vito

Almond blossom - Agrigento

Mid March, little signs of Spring in the Cilento

Storm clouds over Capri

Bare trees line the Tiber

The first signs of spring in Camping Flaminio

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Pictures of Rome

A visit to Rome by motorhome needs a bit of pre-planning, especially out of season when many places to stay are closed. We opted to use Village Flaminio which is to the north of the city, and on paper at least looks easily accessible from the GRA orbital, a couple of kilometres down the Via Flaminia. The experience of driving on the Rome orbital motorway was not completely terrifying, but it did require a certain steely determination and total concentration. The photo above makes it look innocuous enough, but it's a still image and you have to imagine every vehicle hurtling along inches from each other. Along with football and hairstyles, tailgating is a major national obsession, and there is nowhere better to showcase your mastery of the art than here. 

Village Flaminio proved an excellent choice, it is easy to find and has good train and bus links into the city centre. Perhaps it is the best appointed site we have stayed on with the motorhome, excepting the one beside Zügspitz which happened to share facilities with a health spa. A visit to the sanitary block here was positively pleasurable with excellent showers each with a small changing area. The management had even attempted to make ablutions an uplifting experience by piping Italy's equivalent to Classic FM into the place. Over the course of our three day stay I showered to Chopin mazurkas, Ravel's Le Tombeau de Couperin and what sounded like a Vivaldi harpsichord concerto, emerging each time both cleaner and culturally enhanced - amazing! Then there is the bank of brand new Miele washing machines. After being beach bums in Arcady and gypsies in Calabria all this luxury felt almost overwhelming.

The reviews of the site all mentioned how central Rome was less than a 15 minute ride by train, that reception sold tickets and the station was a few minutes distant. All true, once you located the station hidden beyond the nearby Carrefour Market. Reaching the station requires walking on two foot wide pavements next to Via Flaminia. Apart from the 'areas pedonale' in the centre, most of Rome is highly dangerous for pedestrians. The car is king. In the end we found the station, the train arrived on time and we headed off for a day in Rome. After some discussion about visiting the Vatican or Capitoline Museum we decided on a much less cultured plan - a walk to Trastevere and pizza for lunch!

The train deposits you a few yards from Piazza del Popolo. It was instant Rome, complete with a parked Ferrari. If you've got it, flaunt it' is a kind of national maxim. We headed down Via Ripsetta. A group of teenagers approached us. They all were wearing identical purple tabards Suddenly one of them burst into song, the others picked up the melody then spilt into four part harmony and walked passed us, it was like being engulfed in a river of song. In a moment they had passed and the music slowly faded. "Sometimes" Gill observed, "it really feels like you are in a film."

We arrived at the Pantheon and stood for a while trying to figure out which bits were Roman and which were later additions. There is an odd connection between the building and our home town of Buxton. For over 1700 years the Pantheon possessed the biggest unsupported dome in the world, until the Duke of Devonshire decided to put a domed roof on his stable block in Buxton. So for a while that replaced the Pantheon as the worlds biggest dome. Now there's a useless fact!

We continued on through the square containing the remains of Porta Argentina.  Soon we we reached the Tiber, crossing it just above Isola Tiberina. We had reached Trastevere, an area of the city which previously we had not visited.

The district has the reputation of being a little more intimate than most of central Rome retaining a neighbourhood ambience. This is hardly the case in the streets in the vicinity of Ste. Maria in Trastevere which are packed with stalls selling the worst kind of tourist tat imaginable.

Even here, however, there were side-streets and little squares with ochre painted houses which glowed orange in the afternoon light.

A little to the south, the streets on each side of Via di Trastevere have small food shops selling all kinds of goodies. It was near here that we settled on a place to eat. It was inexpensive but good, our kind of place! 

Now it was time to head back. Though we had only walked about three kilometres the cobbled streets had played havoc with our feet. Given Gill's recent knee injury I was concerned that she did not overdo it. We took a slow walk back stopping at some stalls to the south of Isola Tiberia for a spot of present buying.

At a crossing near Piazza Venezia a street performer dressed as an elfish looking clown had taken possession of the traffic lights, pretending to control the traffic. If anyone tried to jay-walk he would give chase. All good humoured banter.

For some reason we decided to find the Italian parliament building and in the process became slightly lost, ending up on Via del Corso next to what I imagine must be the Column of Marcus Aurelius. By now we were feeling very foot-sore, and it had started to drizzle. We spotted an old shopping arcade opposite with an Illy coffee shop in the centre. We knew we were going to pay a capital city price, but we were past caring.

Across from our table was an opticians with a window packed with designer frames. Round heavy plastic is the look of the moment, and short beards. When I shaved off my beard twenty years ago I was wearing big plastic glasses. I thought I looked silly, but maybe I was simply the world's first latter day hipster. I mean, none of today's bearded wonders are proper hipsters, only Dean Moriarty et al.

Slowly we wended our way back towards the station. It was moment student. An orderly queue had formed outside a make-up shop offering free make-overs. We speculated in a culture where getting wasted was not a major concern of the young maybe they spent their cash on make-up, sculpted hairdos and wearable technology. We came across a forlorn looking dog tied up outside a Pasticceria. Momentarily I adopted it as a soul-mate and took its photograph. Rome - it's exhausting. I feel old.

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