The beginning of the end.

Trips actually end when we park the van in front of our house, unload, , then drive it back to the farm on the outskirts of Buxton where it's stored. However, the beginning of the end happens much earlier, the moment when incontrovertibly we are homeward bound. More often than not it coincides with saying goodbye to the Mediterranean and turning northwards.

It is a valedictory moment that demands a symbolic act. Visiting Meze market seemed a good way to bid farewell. Every Thursday and Sunday the the big space in front of the market hall and the nearby square by the Marie are packed with stalls, some selling produce others bric-a-brac and terrible clothes. 

We bought some overpriced veg and a loaf that purported to be local. When we googled the name on the paper bag it turned out the bakery had a dozen or more outlets across Languedoc and the southern Auvergne, employed 250 people and was dedicated to supplying bread to many local markest. It raises the question how local is local. 

Still, Meze market remains a much loved  instutuon even if the people selling veg, meat and cheese aren't really local producteurs and half the non-food items look like they've been 'sourced' at Amazon. We'd hoped to get lunch from the Market Hall bar who usually serve up oysters and prawns from the Etang. 

For some reason food was not available. We had a drink anyway, Gill went for a local rosé, I decided on sparkling - water. My post viral taste problem forced me to go teetotal for the first time in 52 years. Over the last couple of months I 've managed a small glass of beer, more recently a spirit sizes shot of sherry. Sadly wine has a vinegary aftertaste, so here I am hitting the Perrier.

That's what we did yesterday. Today time to head north. It always makes me feel sad. This time we attempted to soften the blow by only heading 49km up the A75. 

Our original plan was to include a couple of stops at lakeside campsites so I could practice standing up on my paddle board. I can do it, but getting from a crouched position to upright still feels alarming and I need to practice the movement until it becomes normalised. 

At best the weather this trip has been unsettled, occasionally alarming. Our stay at Lake Idro was cut short when the van developed a leak and we needed to find a place that could repair it. We shelved our planned visit to Lake Trasimeno because storms were forecast. Cala Montgro was breezy and the swell in the cove too challenging for a SUP novice. It's all been a tad frustrating from my point of view.

So now we are here at Lake Saligou near Clermont l'Herault. It's a manmade lake in an area of spectacular red soil, it looks a little otherworldly.

We rented a house on the opposite shore in 2012, the area is not by the Med but close enough to enjoy a Mediterranean climate, which is a delightful thing - deep blue skies, sunny days, but breezy. From a distance the lake looked idyllic.

Up close it looked like this... 

 

Nobody was out on a paddle board, even the stalwart kite surfers found the conditions challenging, momentarily hydrofoiling across the lake like butterflies in a hurricane before falling in.

By evening the winds dropped a little, 17kph gusting to 26kph. I inflated my board, donned a wetsuit and headed out. Standing-up wasn't an option but it was fun just using the board like a kayak. Then it got squally, SUP's are light and currents and strong winds blow them about. I began to have difficulty controlling the board and became concerned that if I was blown into the middle of the lake I would not have the strength to paddle against the current back to the beach. 

I headed to a nearby cove and ran aground. It was a long way to carry the board back to the van but that seemed the safer option. Later, I googled SUP and wind strengths. The site recommended that beginners don't use their boards in winds stronger than 9kph, I had been out in more than twice that. What I needed was flat calm conditions to build my confidence up I decided. 

Next day we were due to leave the site before 11pm. When I woke the wind had dropped. I was back out on the water by 9am. However, it was still a bit choppy. Again I had fun using the board kayak style and paddled out into the middle of the lake, still I didn't have the confidence to stand-up, it's a mental block issue, I can do it but my brain says no even if there are the smallest of wavelets. Annoyingly two hours later as we drove out of the site Lake Saligou was like a mirror, a gaggle of standing up paddleboarders were out there. I can't see me getting back on the board until February when we are in Portugal. I had hoped that on this trip that I would have been able to get beyond the novice stage on the board, unsettled weather put paid to that. It's frustrating.

We are still at the stage of taking baby steps north, in denial that we have to be in Calais in just over a week's time. We headed to Millau. It's a place which we have observed over the past two decades transform itself from a dour looking upland bottleneck into a stylish, cultured town with a bit of a provençal vibe. 

Two things have contributed to Millau's makeover. The eponymous viaduct removed the traffic jams. Then some time late last century the drab looking concrete faced houses got colour washed in regulation Cote d'Azur ochres, terracottas and soft pinks.

We've seen this process of 'St Tropificaion' elsewhere. I've tried to find out a couple of times when exactly the fishing villages of the Cote d'Azur acquired their signature colouration. It's trickier than you might think, I haven't come across an article that directly explores the question. I would guess it can't have been before the mid-nineteenth, it was only then that developments in the chemical industry resulted in cheap pigments that allowed the mass production of coloured paints. When the pointillist Paul Signac visited St Tropez in 1898 his paintings reveal the waterfront houses were colour washed.

 

When we first visited the south of France the classic Riviera colour washed look tended to be concentrated in places near the coast. The towns and villages inland looked more dour, mainly dull concrete facades with the odd pastel painted frontage here and there. Then St Tropification spread, firstly in Provence then into parts of Languedoc. It's a nice thing.

We had no grand plans. The campsite we use in Millau is next to the Tarn and only a ten minute walk from the town centre.

We have a favourite café in Place Maréchal Foch, the food is nothing special but we love the location. The square lives up to every day-dream you might have about 'le Midi', cafe tables sunlight dappled, the square itself arcaded with a fountain in the middle. 

The town's primary school occupies one corner. The building is old, the front windowless with an ancient grand doorway. It looks a little forbidding for a place of learning for young children. At noon a gaggle of parents gathered outside to collect their kids. From benches dotted about the square a few of Millau's senior citizens observed the mid-day ritual. I sensed the familiar pulse of communal life, the moment exuded a quiet optimism, how small things can be uplifting in a troubled world.

The cafe's menu has evolved from last year when we ordered a well made croque monsieur with a side salad. The 'menu formule' was too much for us at lunchtime. It wasn't possible to go 'off piste' this time so we settled for two small salads off the lunch menu. As small salads go they were very big and somewhat random, a melange of ingredients thrown together without much thought about flavour combinations. 

Mine included a French attempt at spanakopita. Feta in filo packages was a bit Greek, but no herbs or garlic to make it flavoursome. Gill's salad was equally bland and the eggs with greyish yolks she left to one side. Nevertheless, it is a lovely spot to have a relaxed lunch.

Judging by the posters and graffiti the town seems quite left leaning and forward looking.

 

The modern developments are not horrible, just a tad over-styled. 

The place's post modern take on public seating was quite sculptural, better to look at than sit on.

And that's it, goodbye to the south. What follows next is a long drive home breaking all our self imposed rules about not making a mad dash for it. Experience has taught me that three days of driving with two stops is the longest I can manage easily before I need a two night stopover somewhere. To fit in a visit to Gill's sister in northeast France we are planning a six day drive home with five consecutive overnight stops. Why am I doing this to myself? I have no idea.

A patch of new fashioned charm

Camping Car Parks is a network of 500 motorhome aires, mainly in France, that you can pre-book using an app. It lists all the locations and how many places are available in each. The app isn't perfect but it has taken a lot of the uncertainty out of finding places to stay in France. Furthermore, their aires are well maintained so you have some guarantee that the water will be turned on at the service point and the chemical toilet emptying less of a biological hazard than in the free Aires established decades ago by local 'municipals'. They seem to have more or less given up maintaining them. This trip we stumbled upon an inadvertent advantage of the app. It provides an approximate indicator of just how busy an area is. If the Camping Car Park with forty places is listed as full, then the chances are the nearby campsites are going to be rammed too, So when the Camping Car Park at Meze showed it had a handful of places we upped sticks and headed for it hoping that the nearby municipal campsite at Loupian would be have space too.

It worked. We stayed one night in the aire in Meze, phoned the site at Loupian next morning and were settled in there well before the reception closed for lunch at noon. We did consider just staying put at the aire, however, though the surrounding area is a bit of a rural idyll the immediate environs are somewhat god forsaken. The Camping Car Park adjoins a municipal run outdoor leisure area established between two 'plan d'eau'. Typically French, but in this case the 'eau' has dried up in the 'plan' which is now a cracked mud lake bed. To give a slightly urban vibe to the dismal scene the motorhome parking area is adjacent to a graffiti daubed skate park of Olympic proportions. 

Judging from our fellow travellers, sixty plus French males' preferred retirement present to themselves tend to be petrol head orientated - either a gleaming 1000cc plus motorbike or a funky looking dune buggy. As they faffed about with the trailer to load or unload their boys toys  disconsolate spouses stood by clutching two crash helmets. 

When we turned up at the Loupian campsite it did have a few spare emplacement, but was much busier than we had ever seen it. Lots of caravans from Holland and Germany and next to us a British one. The couple from Devon were nearing the end of a month long stay. It was something they'd done regularly for years apparently. 

Caravanning versus motorhoming, they are fundamentally different propositions I think. Two tribes, with different expectations, preferences and attitudes. In our twenties it was the limitations of cycle tourism that attracted us, its less is more vibe. To some extent the same is true with a motorhome. Caravans do offer the possibility of home comforts on wheels. Our van may have leather upholstery, but basically it's just one step up from a transit van with a mattress in the back.

How long have we been coming here I mused. I looked it up, the first time was in late October 2014. The village of Loupian has changed in the last decade. On our first visit it was a bit of a backwater, beautiful, but somewhat decayed. A few of the village houses looked abandoned, including a couple of the big ornate mansions that were former wine makers properties. 

Each year we've returned things have developed a little. Now all the houses are occupied, there are more families living here, not just old folks. The village shops have reopened and the village's infrastructure and transport links improved. 

This year's innovation is a weekly produce market on Wednesdays, supplementing the larger ones that happen in nearby Meze every Thursday and Sunday.

I am not surprised the area around the Etand de Thau has become much busier. There's a lot to do and see around it's landward shore, places to sample oysters and local wine, a string of small ports all connected by bike tracks. The crusty old Mediterranean port of Sete is easily accessible by bike, bus or a ferry across the Etang.

Everytime we came we discover something new. Last year it was the flamingos that gather in the marshes beyond Meze. This year we turned off the bike trail to Balaruc les Bains to visit the village of Buzigues. It was delightful. 

There are still tracks across the marshes towards Marseillan that we have not explored, so I guess we will return again.

However, not in September probably. It is very busy now, vibrant rather than peaceful. The older I get the more I crave tranquility. 'The world is too much with us late and soon', Wordsworth observed, and he didn't even have to deal with Instagram or X.

Cala Montgro, while the world went mad.

I am not someone who gives up easily. I have determination, or as Gill sees it, I'm very stubborn. So it took an act of considerable will power for me to abandon our original plan to go to Lake Trasimeno and head for Languedoc and the Costa Brava, so even if that was going awry I was not open to be easily persuaded to change my mind again. 

We stayed two nights in Roquebrun-sur-Argens' sanatorium for the bewildered caravanner. It wasn't a total waste of time, we did some laundry while looking for somewhere else to stay for a few days near the Etang de Thau. Every site Gill phoned was full, as were all the nearby Camping Car Parks apart from the one at Remoulins near the Pont du Gard, it had a couple of free pitches. The app recently introduced a new feature wich enables you to book ahead, but it's an additional extra you have to pay for. We decided it was worth having, then booked in for a night and hoped for the best, as the messaging on the app seemed quite ambiguous. It does work though, there was one spare pitch free when we arrived mid afternoon.

Gill continued phoning around. The only site we found with space was one a couple of kilometres up the road next to the Pont de Gard. We stayed there in May 2018 on the way to Corsica, I remembered the place fondly, a nice informal wooded site that attracted a good mix of people. So we booked in. It was as I remembered it, a lovely spot among pine trees by the river, a five minute cycle ride from the famous aqueduct.

It's an easy going, relaxed kind of place with a calming atmosphere, just what we needed after days of driving on busy motorways. 

We unloaded the bikes and pedalled off to admire the bridge. 

It is spectacular, not just the structure itself but the sophisticated understanding of hydrology and topography that the larger system implies. 

Later I took an evening stroll down to the river. I got chatting to two young German women who were hauling their paddle boards onto the small shingly beach. I wondered earlier if I should inflate mine. They reckoned the river was so low that standing up was not an option as they kept running around. So probably it would not have been worthwhile, especially as a rocky stretch upstream means you can't reach the Pont de Gard itself on a paddle board. 'In a kayak maybe', they surmised.

The forecast for the next week or so in the Costa Brava looked promising. We decided to give up on the Languedoc coast, it was full, and head for Cala Montgro early, staying a few days in the area around the Etang de Thau on the way home later in September when some of the Cyrils and Mabels, Hans und Elkes, and Jans en Betjes decide to trundle northwards. The past week has been frustrating, but we made a good call, disastrous flooding in northern Italy is all over the news, more or less exactly where we would have been staying.

Illa Mateua campsite was busy but not heaving. How busy places have been has surprised us, but when we checked back through the blog we realised that we don't travel in early September that often and maybe the first couple of weeks of September is especially popular - summer warmth but fewer children on sites. This year our six week trip to Japan and New Zealand beginning in late October has forced us to travel earlier than usual. However, the Schengen visa rules have affected us too. We require a three month break somewhere in the year to 'reset' the visa 90/180 rule. November - January makes the most sense for us, we can have Christmas at home then head off to Spain in the last week of January on the ferry. The downside to this is it forces the starting date of an autumn trip back into the latter part of August as we need around seventy days to have enough time to explore the more distant parts of this Mediterranean, like Greece, Sicily or Sardinia. 

We don't like rushing about, though we just have in order to dodge the storms in central Europe and Italy To make amends we booked into the site at Cala Montgro for a week. 

It just slipped by. In the beginning we were happy to simply relax. We both were a bit off colour. Some minor bug we'd caught, possibly on the bus into Bologna where the artsy looking guy sitting across from us looked very 'pale and wan', coughing weakly as if cosplaying John Keats.

Cala Montgro is one of the most beautiful coves we know in the Mediterranean, developed on one side, natural forest on the other. 

Nearby l'Escala is a pleasant low rise resort, the area is easy to be in, somewhere we are happy to come back to.

One of the things I was looking forward to on this trip was getting beyond the novice stage on my paddle board, I know I can do it, but still find the act of standing up a bit alarming. I just need more time on the board to the point where being on it feels natural. Cala Montgro is sheltered and can be flat calm if it's not breezy. Sadly the one thing the weather isn't at the moment is calm. I did go out on the board, it was ok using it like a kayak, but just too choppy for me to have the confidence to stand up.

So we just mooched about, took walks along the clifftop path at the back of the campsite,

and wandered along the promenade by the beach.

The beachside restaurants aren't expensive, but they are places to have a meal rather than tapas. My taste is still affected by what I suspect is some sort of post viral problem. It has also supressed my appetite, so eating out is not quite the treat it used to be. Delicious snacks are a better bet, and luckily Spain's tapas culture makes one of the best places in the world for tasty morsels. 

'WAIKIKI', a cocktail bar near the beach opens six days a week from 8.30am to 2.30am, serving tosta style breakfasts until eleven then classic Spanish tapas plates from then on. We had lunch there one day and promised ourselves breakfast the next time we're back.

We keep returning to Cala Montgro because it's a particularly lovely spot with a laid back vibe. A place where it's easy to sense that life can be good. And it can be, but not for everyone. I have a habitual morning routine when we travel. Usually I wake up before Gill around 7.30am, get up and put the kettle on to make coffee. While waiting for it to come to the boil it is difficult to resist the temptation scroll through the BBC news app. The headlines are rarely uplifting but generally not particularly shocking either. Today they were. The news of Mossad's plot to maim and kill Hezbollah's commanders by booby trapping thousands of pagers and walkie talkies seemed scarely believable. It had the intricacy of John le Carré novel combined with fiendish ingenuity you get in James Bond movies. It really was a moment when truth seemed much stranger than fiction. It was only when my initial incredulity waned that I sensed the true horror of the act, state sponsored terrorism really, carried out mercilessly with no consideration on the impact on civilians including children. Why do Western democracies continue to supply arms to Israel when they use them to kill and maim civilians? The world does feel as if it is sleepwalking towards a horrible global conflict. I thought of the lines Auden wrote as a young man reflecting on the rise of Hitler, how prescient his anxieties turned out to be

"Soon, soon, through dykes of our content 

The crumpling flood will force a rent 

And, taller than a tree,

Hold sudden death before our eyes.. "

Beyond Franced out (The end of the affair).

We first went to France in the summer of 1977. It was my first visit, Gill had been before as a teenager on family holidays. Is there a year since then when we haven't taken a trip across the channel? I can't think of one, and in most years we have made multiple trips, not just for holidays but also to visit Gill's sister who lives in the north near the Belgian border, as well as a few emergency booze cruises back in the day during February half-term to stock up on wine and beer. 

I guess we were a bit starry eyed about the country at first, observing the place through a Peter Mayle inspired rosy glow. Some of our colleagues bought second homes the the Vendée, Poitou Charente or Le Midi for very little, we were tempted but never quite had the means to do it. Still, we had great family holidays camped out in the sun and we loved the outdoorsy existence, the inexpensive wine, the beautiful, uncrowded countryside and the gorgeous beaches of Les Landes, Gascony and Corsica.

Towards the end of the last century France changed, and so did we. It happened quickly. I remember visiting the Dordogne in the mid Eighties, perhaps the town was Argentat, it was very beautiful, but somewhat rundown and ramshackle, conforming to every Francophile stereotype you can imagine - sunbleached denim coloured shutters and Deux Chevaux, mossy cobbled streets, a rusting pissoir, the stench of drains and whiff of Gauloises. A couple of years later we returned, the entire town had been given a facelift. The hazardous cobbled path by the river had become a stylish paved promenade complete with geranium filled planters and the rickety steps replaced by marbled ones with a wheelchair ramp next to them. The ancient houses were freshly painted, the pissoir removed and the drainy smell had gone. It was an improvement without a doubt, but it felt charmless. You cannot design the idiosyncratic, it happens by accident.

The process we first noted in the small Dordogne town engulfed the entire country over the next quarter of a century. Now retail sprawl encircles every French town and city with an enormous hypermarket at its centre. Somehow a country once famed for gastronomy now boasts the most Macdonald's restaurants in Europe. France can feel corporate and bland, once endearing idiosyncrasies have been reinvented as the deliberately quirky, lamposts at bizarre angles, ridiculous sculpture on roundabouts, hazardous over-designed traffic calming. It all can become somewhat tiresome, Gill coined a phrase for it - 'Frenched-out'.

However, it's fair to say it wasn't just France that had changed, we had too. As our elder two kids reached their teens they became disenchanted with camping by the beach type holidays. Nobody wants to spend a month in the sun with disenchanted teenagers! So we started to rent villas with pools and ventured further afield than France, to the Costa Brava and Tuscany and Croatia. Later fly drive trips became the thing, to Greece, southern Italy and the Atlantic seaboard of the US and Canada. We realised that some destinations are far more welcoming than others. Spain, southern Italy, New York city were all places where the locals made an effort to make us feel at home. What we also realised is that easy going and welcoming had not been our habitual experience in France over the years, offhand, rude and occasionally belligerent was the norm. I guess the sunnier climate, regional food culture, beautiful countryside and lovely coastlines, attractive towns and villages, all of these things more than compensated for the cool reception. However we learned as we travelled more widely that you can find these qualities in other places that also offer a warm welcome. So, we became 'Frenched-out'.

Avoiding the country altogether is difficult if you are heading for southern Europe. So after this year' failed attempt to make a go of our bumpy relationship with La Republique in future we'll stick to familiar fast routes through it, splashing the cash on its overpriced motorways to reach more amenable destinations or by using the direct ferry to Spain.

I think the last four days have been the final straw. Our plan was to spend time in Loupian by the Etang de Thau then move on to Cala Montgro in the Costa Brava. A simple enough, but we have been motorhoming long enough to know nothing is ever as simple as it seems. 

The first day was fine, a drive of about 200kms from Bologna to a campsite near the mouth of the river Magma near the border of Tuscany and Liguria. It was a trip of two halves, the first part on the autoroute to Parma, arrow straight across the flat plain of the Po basin, past Modena and Reggio Emilia, stylish modern factories line the roadside, the area between Turin and Bologna, along with Germany's Rhineland is a hotspot for European manufacturers and one of the EU's wealthiest regions.

At Parma we turned south joining the E33 towards La Spezia. I thought we had been this way before but it seemed unfamiliar. I realised that I had mixed it up with the motorway to the west of it linking Milan and Genoa. They look similar drilling through the Ligurian Alps in a series of tunnels and viaducts. It's Swiss civil engineering that gets the plaudits but Italy has equally spectacular infrastructure. 

The highest mountain on the route were near the coast at Carrara. The scars of two thousand years of marble quarrying meant their rock faces gleamed in the summer sunlight like petrified snow. 

Italy boasts some famously beautiful coastal scenery - the Cinqueterra, Amalfi, Cilento, the northern coast of Sicily and Taormina. It's also fair to say that this is the exception, much of the country's seaside is somewhat tawdry and over-developed, somewhat poverty striken in parts too - more reminiscent of Rhyll or Clacton than St. Trop or Marbella. Our destination, Sarzana, at the mouth of the river Magna was indisputablly more Rhyll than St Trop. In truth we had few expectations, the name of the campsite was hardly uplifting - Irongate Marina 5b. It sounded a tad B movie, an impression re-forced by the nearby Italian naval helicopter base whose constant coming and goings reminded me of the opening credits of Apocalypse now. The site itself was a tad run down, geared towards seasonal pitches not tourers, but ok for an overnight stay and the riverside location was quite attractive.

The main reason we stopped here was quite mundane, on Streetview the local Lidl seem to have a very big car park. We've struggled with parking the moho at supermarkets on this trip. They've either been impossibly busy or had height barriers. Happily the one at Sarzana was almost empty so we were able to stock up for the next week or so. The town itself looked to be one long strip of grim retail sprawl, but being Italian it oozed vulgarity with panache. A somewhat weather-beaten bill board next to Lidl boasted that the the nearby sex supermarket stocked 10,000 different articles. This led me to speculate if this signalled that the natives were much more imaginative between the sheets than us, or perhaps less so as they required so much additional hardware, or maybe it's the case that in this, as in life generally, they are simply more theatrical.

Next day we drove the length of the Ligurian Riviera, past the Cote 'Azur and into Provence, all on toll motorways. There is no feasible alternative. It's further than it looks on the map - 360kms. The more urban sections around Genoa and Savona in Italy and skirting the urban sprawl of Nice and the Cote d'Azur were busy and at times hazardous. 

Once over the French border we descended into a nostalgia fest. For us the route is dotted with memorable moments. The giant white pyramids of the Marina de Baia des Anges appeared for a second or two then a patch of forest on the banks of Brague. "Camping Antipolis!" I exclaimed. We spent four or five Easters there over the years when our elder two were small, now three decades ago. A motorway sign to the picnic aire at Sophia Antipolis flashed by, we celebrated Sarah's fourth Birthday there at the play park. 

Soon we left the coastal sprawl behind and passed the big forest of Mediterranean pines covering the craggy slopes of l'Esteril. On our very first Mediterranean trip in 1992 our aged Vauxhall Cavalier suffered a split radiator hose on one of the area's mountain roads. A local French family came to our aid. The man fixed the hose with my minimal assistance and his wife accommodated Gill and our two kids, proudly presenting her with a cup of tea.

Their remote farm house was overlooked by the outcrop's tallest peak, Mount Vinaigre. It was and still is topped by satellite dishes and masts. As we sped past it on the motorway we recalled that Matthew, then aged five and a bit, was convinced he had discovered the whereabouts of Thunderbirds headquarters. Onwards, passing Mont Ste Victoire on our right then Les Alpilles. I was changed by my first encounters with these landscapes, they smoothed my edgy northern soul and the colour and light came as a revelation. So these days we may have become somewhat 'Frenched-out' but I am indebted to 'Le Midi', in my thirties the place opened my eyes to a wider world and made me more adventurous.

However, right now it became increasingly obvious that we may be in a bit of a pickle. The south of France appeared to be 'complet'. Gill phoned ahead to our usual place - the Camping Municipal in Loupian - it was full, as was every other site in the vicinity that she tried. She then noticed that all the coastal aires in Languedoc on the Camping Car Parks app were listed as full. I was feeling quite weary having driven almost 700kms in two days, struggling to find somewhere to stop was the last thing I needed. We decided to try some places further inland. Gill eventually got through to a site that neither rang out without answering nor was set to unhelpful message mode and actually had a pitch, it was not too far off our route up a minor road to the north of Roquebrun-sur-Argens.

If you wanted to stay for a couple of weeks in a camping bungalow in beautiful Provençal woodland setting, or park your caravan with a view out the picture window that reminded you of Cezanne then Camping lei Suves would be perfect. Hilly sites with trees are never great for motorhomes but we found a pitch eventually that was merely tricky to manoeuvre into rather than nigh on impossible.

The place was packed with elderly German and Dutch caravanners here for the duration. I can see what attracts themn to the place, especially the big poolith landscaped terraces around it. Serried rows of well basted septegenarians sunned themselves by the mirror still Hockney blue waters. 

No big splashes here though, just quiet sizzling in the afternoon heat. We were glad to have found somewhere to stop, but it wasn't somewhere we would choose to go back to. It was perfectly situated for seeing the sites of Provence and the Cote d'Azur, most of them within an hour's drive by car. However the narrow road outside the gates was a bit of a rat run and not safe to cycle, not was there any local places to take a walk. Instead we explored the maze of tracks between the trees within the campsite. Before the place became packed with emplacements it must have been a beautiful tract of woodland. 

Most people seemed happy enough to simply sit in the sunshine. September is definitely high season for the grey haired. It gave the place a faded sanatorium vibe, packed full of people, most of them younger than us, aspiring to be elderly; collectively 'going gently into that goodnight'. Over the past year or so I have begun to 'feel my age' too, but I am affronted by it, I am not going gently, surely it is better to 'rage against the dyng of the light' and grow old with as much disgrace as you can muster.

Italy, then..

The Mincio is a major tributary of the Po flowing south from Lake Garda. It forms a series of lagoons around Mantua turning the place's skline into an inland mini-Venice before flowing into the larger river a few kilometres south of the city. Both rivers have cycle tracks running alongside them and you could easily spend a couple of weeks exploring the lower Po basin using the free sostas provided by local towns and villages. It's a relatively unvisited area, most of it an expansive poplar dotted plain, dead flat, but not unattractive. One day maybe.

We only managed a few kilometres of the marked cycle routes, the first stage connecting Monbazano to Peschiera del Garda. It was asphalt all the way, well signed and well used, by all age groups, shapes and sizes. 

We parked our bikes on the edge of Peschiera's ancient centre at a handily placed rack next to one of the old gates. The town is dominated by impressive moated bastions dating from the sixteenth century. The it was a frontier town between the Duchy of Lombardy and the Republic of Venice. The figure of a lion carved above the gate tells you it protected the latter's side of the border.

It was Saturday and Peschiera was heaving, not just with foreign tourists, - the place is much loved by Germans - but also day trippers. Verona, Mantua, Brescia are all less than an hour's drive away. We've had lunch here quite a few times, it's never been terrible but never memorable. We found a place on TripAdvisor that had positive reviews. 

Ristorante Pizzeria Sosta e Gusta is about a kilometre out of the centre but the walk proved worth it.The place was much less frenetic than the restaurants in the old town. It had a contemporary ambience, but the service was a tad off-hand. Gill had pizza, I chose a salad.

Back to the old town and a much anticipated return to Gelateria La Romana. Peschiera is a touristy place, search on Google maps for Gelateria and fifteen pop up. We haven't sampled them all because we went to La Romana first and loved it. The place has been going since 1947 so it must be doing something right. 

Then back down the cycleway to Monzambano. We were pleased to get back to peace and quiet. Well in truth relative quiet, you can't expect silence in Italy, manic campanology and unsilenced Vespas are a given .

We first visited Peschiera del Garda in 1995 at Easter, even back then it wasn't exactly quiet. Then as now it seemed to be the go-to place for people from southern Germany to take a short break. One of the pizza places had a variety called 'The Bismarck'. It involved sliced sausage. 

Over the years we have returned maybe seven or eight times, always early or late in the season. Though busy the Peschiera we remembered exuded a laid back, relaxed charm. This time, in early September, the town was traffic choked and somewhat frenetic.

Next day we drove less than eight kilometres south to Borghetto, a medieval village on the Mincio - or perhaps more accurately, in it. The heart of the settlement is formed by a collection of ancient water mills occupying small islands mid-stream. 

It's very picturesque, and consequently very popular because most of the mills have become restaurants. The place is clearly a much loved Sunday lunch spot. 

We decided to give lunch out a miss and settled on having coffee and cake instead. 

The server was very friendly and helped us with the pronunciation of the local delicacy. - Sbrisolona. 

It's a crumble style cake made with almonds and lightly spiced - very delicious. 'Ss-brisolona' is the sing-songy way to say it, not 'subrisolona'.

For some reason the village was full of small groups of men wearing identical William Tell style hats. 

Half a dozen of them sat down at the table next to us. We should have asked them what mysterious sub-culture they belonged to, but we didn't.

A christening party had gathered on the church steps, couples paused to take selfies on the bridge queueing up for the most picturesque shot. Read the news and you can despair of humanity, hang out with a bunch of Italians at Sunday lunchtime and you immediately feel more optimistic. I wondered if there was a specific term for a selfie with two people in it, it's a bit of a contradiction in terms if there's not.

Borghetto is one of those places you might well choose for a romantic lunch out. A wire mesh fence in front of one of the ancient waterwheels documents decades of these 'momenti di amore eterno'.

As we left the café it began to drizzle, rain had been forecast so with untypical foresight we had taken folding brollies with us. In truth hazmat suits would have struggled to protect us from the deluge which followed. In minutes the cobbled streets became rivers, by the time we reached the van we were soaked to the skin. The thundery rain persisted for an hour or so then it drizzled until early evening.

The long range forecast for Italy is unsettled, France and Spain less so. What to do, carry on heading towards Lake Trasimeno, heading home via the Cinqueterra or cut our Italian trip short and spend some time in Languedoc and the eastern Costa Brava. Common sense might tell you that it would be crazy thing to do - to cover northern Italy, the entire Mediterranean coast of France and a bit of Spain in a six week trip. However, when I did the maths it turned out there was little more than 100km. difference between the two. What price an azure Med view? By my calculation, a 100km is about €3.20 worth of diesel and less than a couple of hours driving. The head for the Med option could be the way to go.

Whatever our future plans, tomorrow we are heading to Bologna for a couple days, we'll choose between Umbria and the Costa Brava based on the long term forcast after then.

The big car park for tourists on the edge of Borghetto has been extended to include a sosta for a few dozen vans. As well as a service point it has a newly built sanitary block with showers (50 cents for two minutes), washing up sinks with hot water. It's great.

From Borghetto, rather than head south to Mantua we doubled back towards Peschiera so we could buy another camping gaz cylinder for the Cadac BBQ and hob. As we crossed the old fortified bridge across the Mincio the crenellated silhouette of Castello Scaligero filled the windscreen momentarily. It looked oddly familiar, then I realised that we had been here before. The castle dominates the main avenue of Parco Giardino Sigurtà. We visited the famous gardens on our first visit to Garda in April 1995, I took some video of the castle's striking outline. Somehow it must have stuck in my memory because as soon as I saw it today - ping!  "I had no idea we were so close to Sigurta," I commented.

The local road from Borghetto to Peschiera was narrow, big coaches from Germany kept bombing towards us, heading for the giardini, I guess. Sigurta is on everyone's North Italy bucket list along with Venice, Isola Bella and Juliet's balcony. 

To begin with the autostrada south towards Mantua was quiet. It's classic road trip stuff, the Alps diminishing in the wing mirrors as ahead in the misty distance the smoky outline of the Apennines slowly appear. Somewhere south of Mantua you cross the mighty Po, previously in 2022 on the way to Greece, full of shingly islets due to a long drought, this year swollen, the trees on each bank partially submerged. It can't all be down to the recent downpours, Italy must have had a very rainy summer. The verges on the roadsides are still green, usually by July they're straw coloured.

As we neared Modena the traffic intensified. You need to keep alert. Italians' reputation for crazy driving is probably ill-founded these days, certainly so far as speeding goes, partly because 40kph limits have been placed on many rural roads backed up by lots of cameras and double white lines. However, drivers remain opportunistic, so long as there is a gap a few metres longer than their vehicle they will nip into it irrespective of whether they are travelling at 20kph or 120kph. Moreover It doesn't matter if they're on a Vespa or driving a forty ton truck their approach remains the same. I don't find it scary anymore, but equally I am not inclined to emulate them. 

Bologna has two motorways around it, the inner tangentiale, and the E45, the northern Italian stretch of a 5000km long trans European highway. It runs from Alta in the Finnmark province of Norway to Gela on the southern coast of Sicily. I would love to drive it, but Brexit put the kibosh on trips of this length. It would be 1900km to drive from home just to reach the starting point in the Arctic, and a 3000km drive back to Buxton from Sicily - making the entire project a 10,000km round trip. Back in 2015/16 the van was out of the UK from September to June, but we flew home at Christmas and Easter leaving dear old Maisy in secure storage. Now, even with the Schengen rules in place, you could still do a mega trip if you split it and stored the van somewhere in Europe for three months. The problem is post-Brexit insurers in the UK have become very risk averse about long term European travel. I cannot find any insurer willing to cover the van for storage abroad, and next year, when we are both over 70, even maintaining the cover we already have is going to be a challenge. So my E45 project is doomed to remain a fantasy trip, but I have lots of those sloshing around in my head.

Which is just as well, because I'm reality were were not going anywhere, Both Bologna's motorways had ground to a halt, one big "ingorgo stradale'. 

Finally we arrived at 'Centro Turistico Città di Bologna. Italians have never quite escaped the Baroque era, understatement is utterly beyond them, so traffic wardens have epaulettes like Rear Admirals, traffic police conduct chaos like La Traviata and Bologna's municipal campsite sounds all the more grand when called 'Centro Turistico Città di Bologna'. In truth it's the best urban campground we know. Not vaguely sinister like the one in Bois de Boulogne in Paris, or comedically mis-managed by spaced -out gen zedders like the London sites in Lee Valley. Sadly, due to the city's year round popularity the campsite no longer accepts the Acsi low season discount card. At €44 per night plus tourist tax it's the most expensive site we've ever used. There are no other options, so we paid up for two nights, giving us one day to revisit the city. 

Bologna is made up of a network of arcaded thoroughfares built from the sixteenth to nineteenth century surrounding a compact medieval centre. It has to be one of the most people friendly urban designs on the planet especially as its food culture is equally renowned. Bologna, Donastia/San Sebastian. Puglia and Singapore are all places we have had amazing food. All good, all different, it's so tricky to decide which is our favourite, so we have to keep going back.

This time, rather than making a bee line to the foodie streets clustered around the old market we decided to head to Osteria dell Orso. It's been serving Bolognese classics for decades at a price students and workers can afford and continues to do so despite its worldwide renown. 

We caught the late morning bus from the campsite which dropped us outside of the main railway station. We hurried into the city even though it was still twenty minutes before the restaurant opened at 12:15. Arriving early is important as a queue usually forms well before then. 

Luckily only about a dozen people had made an orderly line outside the place. We joined the end of it and soon were seated on the terrace on the opposite side of the narrow street. The outside space is a newish addition since we ate here previously in June 2018.

Gill chose tagliatelle a ragu, I went for tortellini broddo, both are classic Bolognese dishes, the pasta handmade, cooked with love and respect for tradition, it's world heritage cuisine for about the same price as Bologna Starbucks lunchtime sandwich deal. 

Great cookery is not the preserve of Michelin starred chefs, it exists everywhere, hiding in plain sight if you know where to look. Even so, it's rarely as good as  here, in this unassumingly osteria in a graffiti daubed side street opposite a crowded parking lot for Vespas.

We had planned one further gastronomic mission - two small 'coppas' from Cremeria Santo Stefano - which we reckon, after extensive research, is the best Gelateria we have found in Italy. We mentioned this to the campsite manager when we booked in. He did not disagree, but added that he felt that Cremeria Cavour was equally good and that we really should try them both. Two gelateria in a single afternoon, ice cream orientated flaneurie, was this, I wondered, bordering on the the dissolute? Maybe, but we did it anyway.

Osteria dell Orso is a ten minute walk north of Bologna's Mercato di Mezzo, Cremeria Cavour five minutes or so south. I thought we knew central Bologna quite well. It's Italy's reddest city, with one of Europe's oldest and biggest universities. It's been a hotbed of leftist dissent for over a century. 

Generally Bologna's style is shabby chic rather than swanky. However Galleria Cavour, where our target gelateria was located is an exception to this rule of thumb. This compact mall is an island of Milano style high fashion marooned among the old city's proletarian, graffiti daubed alleyways. 

All the usual suspects were here, Prada, Gucci, Amarni, Polo Ralph Lauren as well as a few smaller high end outlets that I'd never heard of. One window showcased a single, dramatically lit faceless mannequin dressed in dusty pink trakky bottoms, a pale blue sweatshirt and ochre bucket hat sporting the fashion house logo. This cost of the get-up was listed discretely in the corner - astronomical! The bucket hat alone cost €400! Who would pay €400 for a bucket hat? The fashion industry is completely beyond me, I simply don't get it.

As you might expect from it's location Cremeria Cavour looked quite swanky. As was the cafe next door - the two seemed to be linked. However, they were no more expensive than anywhere else - I think we paid six euros something for two small 'coppas,' each with two different flavoured scoops. Reviews of the café next door commented that an espresso was only €1.60 despite its up-market demeanour.

I can't quite recall what we chose, other than the creamy concoction that Gill emulated the taste and texture of cannolo with flakes of caramelised Sicilian orange. It was sensational, 'a food memory' in the making something that you might recall years later..."remember that amazing orangy gelato in Bologna..."

Cremeria San Stefano is about a 15 minute stroll from Piazza Cavour, all of it through Bologna's incomparably beautiful arcades.

They have to be regarded as one of humanity's greatest achievements. if you are looking for something that epitomises the Italian renaissance I think you could make a case that Bologna's arcaded streets express its humanist intent more profoundly than some of the more obvious candidates, like the Sistine Chapel or Raphael's 'Stanzas'. I am not being preposterous here, what I mean, if you take the Sistine Chapel as an example, Michaelangelo's celebration of the human form does embody the new spirit of humanism, but it is used to assert the predominance of the sacred. In the end it is papal propaganda. 

Bologna's arcades celebrate the secular on a monumental scale asserting how ordinary life can have a grandeur too, and given proper consideration how the mundane can be soulful.

We arrived at Cremeria San Stefano to find a small crowd gathered around the shop front. The place 

is well known, queues do happen. Luckily it was a gaggle of American visitors being frogmarched around the city by a tour guide. He was mansplaining how to order a gelato, going through the ingredients of each one in minute detail. 

We snuck past and got served well before the guide wrapped up his spiel and the shop filled with well informed Americans. 

So who won in the Gelateria stand-off? A dead heat we decided, flavour of the day had to go to Cavour's cannolo inspired effort, but in general San Stefano's gelati are a little less sweet, so the flavour layers come through more.

We headed back to catch the bus but soon realised there was no way we would be in time for the 14:40. The next one was two hours later, but we were in no hurry. We wandered around the market area then mooched our way up Via dell'indipendenza. By the look of it Bologna's 'Oxford Street' was built in the latter part of the Nineteenth Century. 

It adopts the style of the earlier arcades but the architecture reflects the confidence of a newly unified Italian state, somewhat florid and overblown like High Victorian on steroids. Some were built later around the 1890s by the look of them. What is the Italian term for Art Nouveau? Something else I've forgotten, Google to the rescue.... 'Stile Liberty'. I decided that actually I never knew this in the first place! 

It seemed a shame to me that this particularly beautiful example ended up as a branch of H&M. 

As befits a street that celebrates the unification of Italy a large equestrian statue commemorating Garabaldi overlooks the it. 

We browsed for a while in the Bialetti store. Once the manufacturer of humble stovetop aluminium Moka pots, now has re-invented itself as a bit of a style icon. 

The classic Bialetti pot pimped-up by Dolce and Gabbana and re-engineered to work on an induction hob retails at €108. We've used the basic version for years. It produces perfecto espresso machiato every lunchtime when we are travelling, and will continue to do so, especially since Gill took the opportunity to buy a replacement filter while we were in the shop.

Somewhat footsore we took a short cut through Parco della Montagnola, resting a while on exactly the same bench as we had occupied briefly five hours previously on our way to Osteria dell Orso. Google fit app on my phone reckoned we had walked over 7km, my legs felt that was a conservative estimate.

Back at the van we flipped through the photos we had taken and agreed that Bologna had to be one of our favourite cities. However the weather forecast for the next ten days still looked decidedly mixed across the whole of Italy. The plans we had, paddle boarding on Lake Trasimeno, a visit to the Cinque Terra - all demanded good weather. As the downpour in Borghetto had demonstrated, motorhoming is a fair weather pastime. The western Med looked to have a much sunnier outlook. What started as a joke became a distinct possibility, 

"We could head home via the Costa Brava, it's only 100km more than going back via Umbria," I had suggested unseriously a couple of days ago. No prizes for guessing what we did.