Lago di Garda - last roses, first snow.

Early onset cabin fever here, it's rained constantly for the last thirty six hours, sometimes drizzle, mostly a steady incessant thrum perked up by the occasional torrential downpour. The autostrada connecting Florence and Bologna to the main Milan Venice route are tricky at the best of times, in rain they become positively scary, especially when packed with artics jostling for position. 

This was something we'd been expecting, the forecast has been steadily worsening day by day. Still, we left Trasimeno in pallid sunshine which continued between there and Florence.

We needed to stop for lunch and pulled into a picnic area about 20 kilometres south of the tangle of horrible interchanges that make skirting the city so challenging. We know the area around Figline Valdarno quite well, or at least we used to, as we had three or four Easter holidays here back in the nineties and early noughties. The picnic area had a pleasingly familiar name too - 'Vallombrosa' - but for an entirely different reason.

The spot may look like a dreary car park, which indeed it is, but the name has serious literary credentials. Hidden behind the trees and the truck is a big forested hill topped by a monastery. It  developed as a famous seat of learning in the early modern period century. Later it became a place of pilgrimage on the Grand Tour due to Milton's description of the Satanic army in book one of Paradise Lost.

"Nathless he so endured, till on the beach

 Of that inflamèd sea he stood, and called

His legions--Angel Forms, who lay entranced

Thick as autumnal  leaves that strow the brooks

In Vallombrosa, where th' Etrurian shades

High over-arched embower;"

Wordsworth, the Shelleys, Edgar Allen Poe, Friederich Nietzsche, they all stopped off here to pay homage to the Milton connection. I know the lines because it was one of the passages I had to mug up on when I was revising for 'A' level English Lit and it stayed with me ever since. So much so that in 1996 I took the entire family for a trip up the narrow, bendy road from Figline up to Vallombrosa just so I could say I had been there too. The lines are famous as an example of an extended simile, a classical trope that Milton adopted in his attempt to match the lofty tone of  Romam writers such as Virgil.

At the same time as thinking about all of this I happily munched away on a cheese and ham sandwich and watched the antics of two Czech truck drivers next to us as they unloaded empty pallets out of the back of their trailer and stashed them in big storage lockers slung under the chassis. The one doing most of the carrying became ruddier faced by the minute. Pallets must be heavier than they look, we decided.

Watching other people working is definitely more satisfying once you've retired yourself. Still for all the fascination of the free pallet show, something about the Milton business still bugged me. What was the name of the figure of speech that featured in the Vallombrosa passage. I am increasingly plagued by minor memory failures, stuff that once I could recall in an instant now is just a blank. Usually in the end the thing comes back to me eventually. The Czech guys finished their pallet marathon, we finished lunch - then ping! Epic simile? No, heroic simile, that's the thing's name. I googled to double check; sadly I also discovered that there was no actual evidence that Milton had ever actually visited Vallombrosa. It is now thought he simply picked up the reference from another poem he read when he visited Galileo in Fiesole in 1638. Still if I had been hoodwinked so had a whole clutch of literary geniuses that went before me.

The traffic around Florence was as horrible as ever. As we headed north the promised rain materialised, though it was not until we reached Bologna that we were affected by it as most of the autostrada before then tunnels through the mountains. 

We were heading for the Camper Club of Modena's sosta. We stayed here in 2015, it's well designed, has ehu and a small sanitary block, in an area distinctly lacking in campsites it is a good alternative. In normal times we would have spent a day or two in Bologna's municipal campground, but these are not normal times and we are staying clear of urban areas.

Next day we crossed the broad plain of the Po valley. When we reached the river it was clearly in flood, though not quite breaching its banks, the drizzle here must be falling like a monsoon in the mountains beyond Turin where the Po rises. We joined the main Milan Venice autostrada a little to the north of Verona. It's one of Europe's main thoroughfares, trucks from Turkey and Greece, Spain and Portugal attesting to its importance as an east/west artery. As well as that, most of its route across northern Italy is lined with factories and warehousing underlining the fact that alongside Germany, Italy is one of the EU's manufacturing powerhouses. The result - lots of HGVs jockeying for position, all attempting to meet some 'just in time' deadline. In pouring rain, driving a motorhome among them was a nerve-frazzling experience.

There was a momentary break between the sharp showers as we reached Peschiera di Garda. Before we headed to Camping Bella Italia we stopped off at Lidl. We plan to stay in Peschiera for four or five nights so we needed to stock-up on life's essentials, the fridge is looking quite empty.

The site looked much the same as we remembered it. The first time we came here was in twenty five years ago, two of our kids were in primary school and the third a bump!  Over the next decade we returned from time to time, always at Easter, last time about 12 years ago, picking Sarah and Matthew up from Bergamo airport - they were at University by then, Laura had just started Secondary school.

 

Bella Italia is an enormous site, mainly consisting of camping bungalows these days, replacing the mobile homes we used to stay in. These are located in a wooded area near reception and the swimming pool. The camping pitches are down by the lakeside, so for the first time we a have Lago di Garda view. Not that this mattered particularly when we arrived, the downpour returned and the lake was lost in mist.

In fact our arrival was tricky altogether. In all but one respect our current van is superior to the first - better layout, easier to drive, faster, more fuel efficient. Dear old Maisy was built like a builders' truck on a Ford Transit chassis with rear wheel drive and double wheels at the back. She dealt with any surface or gradient we confronted her with. Now we have leather seats and a Fiat Ducato cab with cruise control and a six speed gearbox. It is front wheel drive, quick down the autostrada but flummoxed by the smallest patch of mud -front wheels spin, van slithers to a halt. Which is exactly what happened when we tried to use the leveling ramps to position ourselves onto our pitch, made squidgy after two days of rain. We got there in the end, but not before swapping pitches and utilising our plastic tread mats - our final defence against becoming bogged down completely.

It had been a difficult day. What I needed was a good night's sleep. Instead the heavy rain pummelling on the roof and bike cover, about a metre from my ear kept me awake for hours. It stopped in the small hours and I dropped off. We woke to pallid sunlight and clouds lifting from the mountains to the north.

As we were having breakfast the peak of Monte Baldo peeked out of a wreath of clouds, it was snow covered. A beautiful, if slightly unwelcome sight, I pulled on some jogging pants and a hoody and headed down to the lake to take a few photos.

'Last roses, first snow', I commented when I posted on Facebook. We concluded we should be thinking about booking Eurotunnel soon and discussed whether to head home though Germany or France. Cases are rising in both countries as well as here in Italy. We are going to have to quarantine for a fortnight when we get home whichever route we decide to take so we'll probably opt for the most direct, through France.