Shades of autumn ( blue, grey, ochre and orange)

This morning's task, extricate ourselves from Camping Ostia Antica without ending back on the Rome tangentiale. If we headed towards the airport, then took the coast road towards Civitaveccio there seemed to be a decent road towards Viterbo connecting with the Rome to Florence autostrada a few kilometres south of Orvieto. However there was no way to avoid Ostia Antica's hamburger roundabout of doom. In the event, mid-morning it was more benign, a worrying experience rather than a terrifying one.

The Civitaveccio by-pass sneaks past the big docks, skirting the flank of the low wooded hills behind the coast. Old dunes we agreed. The grey outline Promontorio dell' Argentario ghosted the horizon to the north, we stopped there for lunch back in March 2016, it felt like bumping into an old friend by chance. The cross country route towards Viterbo takes you through a rolling landscape of fallow fields and big skies, the territory D H Lawrence wrote about in 'Etruscan Places'.

 His book is subtitled, 'A journey through forgotten Italy'; though it was published ninety years ago the area still feels a tad disregarded. 

We reached the AI, the autovia that connects Rome with Florence, surprisingly traffic was light, an easy relaxing drive. A little south of Orvieto we passed the Umbria sign. We counted up the different regions of Italy we had passed through on this trip, by our reckoning Umbria was number ten. Though we planned the trip as a return to Greece, in practice we will end up spending more time Italy due to our decision to use the Brindisi ferry crossing. 

Our final Italian destination will be Bologna, but it was too far to reach in one day. We found a Agricampeggio a few kilometres south of Florence near Figline Valdarno, another nostalgic stopover, in the mid-Nineties we had a couple family Easter holidays hereabouts. Tuscany is very beautiful in the spring, but maybe even lovelier in autumn.

We had no real expectations of where we were planning to stay, all we wanted was a simple sosta close to the motorway, but far enough away from the A1 for us to get a good night's sleep. Agrisosta Camper Valle del Sole definitely met our modest expectations and exceeded them on a number fronts. 

It overlooked a beautiful valley, all very Keatsian, in the evening mellow and fruitful looking and in the morning misty. In truth the mist was actually freezing fog, more Pennine than poetic.

The agricampeggio had ehu and a fairly primitive sanitary block including an ancient washing machine. The barrier is operated by an automatic system linked to a ticket machine. It wasn't completely de-humanised, in the evening Nicola arrived, a friendly and helpful Romanian woman there to check every one had what they needed and take our passport details. "I look after the place," she explained, "I am not the big boss!" She was full of useful information, such as the Bottega in the nearby village of Burchio had a small shop that sold bread. 

When the fog lifted we wandered down to the village in the valley, it was no more than half a kilometre but hazardous as the road had no pavement. When we reached the Bottega we found lunch in full swing. There were about a dozen tables in the place and well over half were occupied, which was surprising given it was a Thursday, clearly it had a local following. We decided to stay. There was no printed menu, today's choices simply chalked up on a board next to the kitchen door.

We opted for the Marammeni al ragu. It's a pasta filled with spinach and ricotta served in a ragu. What we experienced was local homestyle Tuscan cooking where everyday ingredients are transformed into something simply delicious. 

The stuffed pasta had been prepared perfectly, the ragu had complexity and depth. No wonder this remote Bottega was busy on a Thursday lunchtime, the person in the kitchen was a serious cook. Definitely a food memory in the making, all the more precious for being utterly unexpected.

The longer we motorhome the slower we get, these days more often than not we are the last to leave in the morning. Today was typical, I was at the water tap refilling our plastic jerry can when the only other van on the site reversed onto the service point beside me. It had British plates, a brand new biggish A class. "Are you heading out or heading home?" I enquired.

Very much heading out it transpired. The guy stopped waving his arms about and his partner lowered the driver's window. They explained they were three weeks into a two year trip, heading towards the southern Peloponnese where they intended to over-winter. We had a conversation about some of the site's we had stayed on in 2016. I had not seen to the couple before but I had bumped into the van's other two occupants. Their twin girls looked about six or seven, so uncannily alike that it looked spooky when they chased one another, as if the girl in front was being pursued by her clone.

It would have been great to be able to do this - travel long term with our kids when they were that age. We did travel with them, and I realise we were fortunate to have jobs that allowed us to tour for a couple of months most years, but in smaller chunks. Add them up and we did live abroad for over two years with our children, but a week or a month here and there doesn't really allow you to step beyond holiday mode and become immersed in a different culture. 

We needed to head off too. We left at noon, our next stop in Bologna was only a two and a half hour drive, so we were in no hurry. The urban motorways around Florence are relatively benign by Italian standards, then it's a short, but spectacular drive north through the Appennines. A new motorway shadows an older one giving you the choice of a bendy but scenic route or a straighter one where much of the time you are driving through long tunnels. It was cloudy, so we took the subterranean option.

Post Schengen, our travels have taken a particular shape, Iberia in the early months of the year, autumn spent the mid or eastern Med. We still try to explore new territory on every trip, but we have also developed favourite spots. So the final few days in Spain wouldn't seem right without a pintxos fest in Donastia. I think Bologna is destined to be our autumn equivalent. We rarely book places in advance but we phoned ahead to make sure that there was a pitch for us at Centro Turistico Città di Bologna. It was the weekend, Bologna jazz festival was in full swing, we had no idea how busy places would be, and aside from the city's campsite there are no other places to park a motorhome. In fact there was plenty of space.

 

Our plan was unambitious. On Saturday catch the mid morning bus from the campsite, head to the narrow streets by the old market, have a simple but delicious lunch, wander down to the Cremeria San Stefano for a gelato, then a stroll through the city centre to catch the afternoon bus back to the site. 

And that's exactly what we did ...

At the weekend the old streets behind the main square become a giant food hall, not just eateries...

lots of specialist shops selling vintage DOC parmigiano...

Parma ham...

handmade tagliatelle...

superb fresh produce...

you have to be quick to get a table, we were - then discovered that purely by chance we were in the exact same cafe as last time!

I went for.....

tagiatelle al ragu.

The Cremaria San Stephano is about a ten minute walk from the food market area.

More pf a shrine than a getateria..

What can you say? The best gelato by far that we have found in Italy, that takes some doing. Admittedly the two times we have tried to sample the gelato in Caffe Sicilia in Noto the place has been closed - so until we manage to get there Cremaria San Stefano remains our 'number one'.

Sunday involved an unimaginative variation of the day before, only swapping our lunch in the market area for Café Vetro. Situated near the eastern entrance of Giardini Margherita, the city's biggest park, the cooperatively run cafe is committed to sustainability and is a shining example of Italy's 'slow food movement'.

Giardini Margherita, a haven of tranquility after the bustle of Bologna.s centro storico on a Sunday.

As ever Caffe Vettro delivered inexpensive plant based dishes, locally sourced, beautifully cooked - viva slow food!

It's our third visit here. No matter what the time or season the place always seems full of students assiduously working away, judging from their open textbooks and laptop screens most appeared to be medics. The University of Bologna may not be the most prestigious or largest university in the world but is the oldest, founded in 1088. No wonder Bologna feels youthful, its students form a quarter of the population.

It may also explain why Bologna remains Italy's most radical city. Despite the recent collective lurch to the right as Italians voted in a coalition led by Giorgia Meloni, leader of the party with historic links to Mussolini, Bologna remains proudly bright red. Whenever we have been here there's always been a protest or demonstration happening somewhere, usually in the main square. This time the radical action stretched the length of Via dell'Indipendenza, one of Bologna's main shopping streets. Women pavement artists chalked huge portraits of the young women killed by the Iranian authorities for removing their hijabs.

In the Piazza Maggiore a grey haired man with a neatly trimmed beard handed handed me a leaflet about a forthcoming anti-war demonstration happening next weekend here and in Rome. Nearby, beneath 'torres Garisenda e degli Asinelli' - the city's famous twelfth century twin towers, a bill board sized image demanded the acquittal of Patrick Zaky, an Egyptian human rights activist and Bologna University postgraduate student. 

It's not just activism that animates Bologna's streets, I've blogged before about the great buskers and street theatre. There's always something going on to attract a gaggle of bystanders. Today happened to be an impromptu fashion shoot.

It's a bit of hike from the bus stop to cafe Vettro at the far end Giardini Margherita. By the time we finished lunch it was going to be a close run thing to get back to the bus stop for the 3pm. bus back to the campsite, especially as we had planned a return visit to Cremeria San Stefano on the way.

There was a small queue when we arrived, moving slowly as from time to time couriers from Uber eats and Deliveroo snuck-in, so there were two queues, one visible and another virtual.

Such is life these days. The gelateria has a few plastic kids-sized chairs on the pavement outside, each one occupied by an adult in the process of rediscovering their inner child. A rapt silence descended upon the ice cream eaters of San Stefano; gelato is a serious business hereabouts.

We made it back to the bus stop with a minute or two to spare. Bologna is great place to bid arrividerci Italia, especially at the end of an autumn trip. The city's orange and ochre stuccoed arcades have a  'fall' look. The place may be destined to be an fixture in our autumn travels, a foil to Donastia which tends to form the end point of our trip to Iberia in the early months of the year.

 

Ostia Antica

We headed north skirting the eastern slopes of Vesuvius. This side is no less developed than the one overlooking the bay of Naples, it is estimated that two million people live in the vicinity of the volcano, 800,000 of them in the 'red zone', requiring evacuation in the event of a major eruption. 

This level of 'dead cat on the table' thinking does not bode well for humanity's capacity to deal with impending environmental disasters more generally.

We stopped at Lidl in Caserta for a few bits and pieces. The town is Italy's Versaille, home to an enormous Baroque palace built by the king of Naples. We visited it in 2013, I remember the beautiful gardens better than the palace. It was big, cold and ugly. These days Caserta itself has a less salubrious reputation, the apartment blocks hereabouts built as a Naples overspill are blighted by  extreme poverty and are hot-beds for organised crime. None of this was obvious in Lidl, which as always achieved its surreptitious mission to be a haven of squeaky clean Germanic orderliness within Europe's more chaotic and dishevelled communities.

 

Chat in the cab as we sped up the A1 towards Rome became fixated on spot heights. The motorway follows the valleys of the Liri and Sacco, southerly tributaries of the Tiber. 

The hills are to the west were around 1000 metres, that's higher than any mountain in England. To the east the Appennines rise towards 2000 metres, brown bears are making a comeback. Outside of the Alpine regions stereotypical images of the Italian countryside tends towards the bucolic - the sunny vine clad slopes of the Chianti or Umbria, in truth the reality is more epic, much of Italy is dizzily mountainous. In a motorhome great to drive past, but a nightmare to drive through. 

Somewhere close to the border between Campania and Lazio autumn arrived - trees with yellowing leaves. Deciduous woods are definitely one of the defining sights of more northerly latitudes, the south is greener in winter than in summer which feels odd to people used to four distinct seasons. It's a sign of having many consecutive 'blue Med days' when you begin to regard the landscape a little to the south of Rome as a bit northern looking.

Past the Albano hills, skirting Frascati - you never see it these days in UK supermarkets I remarked. If you are planning to drive around the Rome tangentiale, half past four in the afternoon is not a good time to do it. The motorway itself was busy but free flowing but interchanges and slip roads were a dog eat dog scrum. If it was a single lane, three queues of cars formed, in two lane slip roads a gaggle gathered with much nudging forward, squeezing through and furious horn peeping.

We did well until we reached the vicinity of the Ostia Antica campsite. The road to it involved a 'hamburger roundabout' controlled by lights. Clearly at rush hour no self respecting Italian commuter is going to pay any attention whatsoever to signals. To keep some semblance of order the polizia stradale were on hand to act as referees. We managed to turn left, 1km to our destination the sat nav announced. Sadly the entrance to the site was actually 900m so we sailed straight past it. What I felt like doing was pulling over onto the verge an having a Basil Fawlty style nervous breakdown, what I actually did was drive on, taking a side road for a kilometre or so before finding some waste ground big enough to turn around in. Ten minutes later we were safely installed in Camping Ostia Antica. 

Pleasantly situated among umbrella pines, the place has excellent facilities and is next to a cycleway to the famous archaeological remains nearby. Note to self, if you ever decide to revisit Rome arrive in the middle of the day, the city's rush hour is strictly for the natives or foreigners with a death wish.

The remains at Ostia Antica are not as famous as Pompeii or Herculaneum but arguably they are more significant. Though Pompeii is somewhat more extensive, like Herculaneum it is an example of a large Roman provincial town. Ostia was ancient Rome's main port. As the city's population grew to a million during the 1st century CE the goods shipped to Ostia, particularly the grain imports were crucial to sustain the Imperial capital's population. The Emperor may have provided the circuses, Ostia supplied the bread!

The size of the site is overwhelming, it would have taken two or three days to see everything. After about three hours we had reached our limit. Still we managed to explore the central area where the main public buildings were situated:

The commercial area with warehouses and merchant's houses:

Rich citizens' mansions and villas:

An area of upscale apartments:

Parts of Ostia are exceptionally well preserved with the second storey of buildings still intact.

What you have to imagine is the grandeur of the place, buildings' rough brick finish would have been faced in marble. Even more modest or utilitarian structures would have been covered in stucco and decorated. 

It was mid-afternoon by the time we exited the site. Though lunch service was coming to a close in the café and restaurants near the entrance we managed to order a couple of sandwiches. 

Service was chaotic and slow, but we were in no hurry. The group on the table next to us kept bursting into song, Monteverdi or Palestrina maybe, certainly pre-Baroque. Definitely some choral society's grand day out, they were very good.

We pedalled back to the site. Luckily the rush hour had not yet reached the mass hysteria stage; we had to negotiate the hamburger roundabout from hell in order to reach the bike track back to the campsite. There are pedestrian crossings, we could push our bikes across, but some Italian drivers regard red lights as red rags, so you can't be certain the traffic will stop for you. The polizia stradale had already taken up their positions waving us across without a drama.

On the way to the ruins this morning we noticed a small local Conad supermarket, we needed a few things so we locked up the bikes and headed in. In fact the place had a series of hidden annexes and wasn't small at all. Prize purchase - a big basil plant ..

We head northwards tomorrow, a one night stopover in Tuscany then three nights in Bologna. We are not at the endishness stage yet, but with a ferry booked from Calais in 12 days time journey's end begins to looms on the horizon. It takes an act of will to drive from southern light towards northern gloom. I am not saying it is an act of deliberate self harm, but the prospect is not exactly self care either. It doesn't help that we are heading back to a country whose leader is trending worldwide on social media as a slowly decomposing lettuce. "Why are we going home?" We keep asking each other.

"Oh yes, our 90 days are up on November Ist, that's it, we have no choice." Still it doesn't stop me being...