An Italian Hatchet Job

We were keen to be out of the Alps – between the narrow roads and chilly welcome for motorhomes it was feeling a bit too much like what we had just left behind. So we turned our wheels back south.

We were heading in the general direction of Turin but wanted to make a couple of stops on the way. The first of which was Fort di Bard, an old fortress perched on cliffs above a pretty river

The roads to Bard were fine but once we arrived in the town it was a different matter. We struggled with tight, narrow streets and tiny car parks that we had no chance of getting into. Eventually we found a small car park with a space just about big enough but found a sign that said no motorhomes. We decided to take the risk and headed off on foot towards the fort.

Fort di Bard has a long and convoluted history and we weren’t really able to make much sense out of the information we found when we got there. But I think it was destroyed and rebuilt a number of times over the last 800 years, most recently in the 1800s.

It looked impressive from below

And the tiny town of Bard was pretty

With some quirky art dotted around

A cable car goes up and down through the ramparts

But the signs were so confusing we accidentally walked up and took the cable car down which would not have been our preference!

It was actually a very confusing place all round and we may have spent longer trying to find the entrance than we spent inside.

The exhibition on the Alps was interesting, although entirely in Italian and French

And the prisons were entertaining but not photogenic.

However, we did discovered that the Fort has been the location for numerous movies

Eventually we ambled off, back through the town and over the pretty, Roman bridge across the river

When we arrived at BigMog we were relieved to find we hadn’t been issued a ticket and sped off to our next stop – Castle Savoia.

By the time we arrived at the small car park outside the castle it was late in the day and getting very cold again. The car park allowed overnight stays so we left our visit until the next morning.

This castle had been the summer home of Queen Margaret in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries. It was like a fairytale castle

Queen Margaret bought the land and built the castle in order to enjoy the views over Mount Rosa. From the grounds of the castle we could see why she chose this spot

Inside, the castle was small but beautiful

We had a guided tour around the rooms and learnt all about the Queen and her life

Apparently she was very active and loved to climb the mountains, doing so as often as she could. There were photos of her doing this climbing….

From here we had planned to visit the quirky Damanhur and the Temples of Humankind. Damanhur is a spiritual community who created a system of psychedelic underground temples, built entirely in secret over 15 years. It sounded fascinating.

But despite driving all the way there and sorting out an aire to stay in, we did not think to book tickets in advance. When we arrived we found there were no tours available for three days and the cost was eye-watering. We spent the afternoon in the truck disappointedly making plans for our next steps.

We found a farm stay just outside Turin that looked lovely so drove straight to it the next morning. It was beautiful

So quiet and surrounded by greenery and a few cows

We were beginning to miss nature, feeling as though we were just going from one town centre car park to the next and never able to enjoy sitting outside breathing in fresh air. So this was a great find.

The only downside was the 2.4km walk to the nearest bus stop. We were keen to get into Turin in time to go to the Automobile museum and that meant a 2.7km quick-march to a tobacconist that sold bus tickets, negotiating the purchase and running back to the bus stop. We were sweating and out of breath by the time we got there but had miraculously made it with a minute to spare. We stood for just a few seconds before the bus came round the bend towards us….and carried on without stopping.

We were standing on the wrong side of the road.

I almost cried.

But James was sanguine about it all and told me not to be so hard on myself. The next bus arrived 30 minutes later and 30 minutes after that we were in Turin.

But that was only the start of a pretty grim public transport experience. The museum was right on the other side of the city and Italian public transport is a long way from the clean, German efficiency we had got used to in Switzerland. It took three hours on four different busy, hot and sticky buses to get across the city but we finally made it to the museum. We just hoped it was worth it.

It was!

We spent a happy afternoon wandering around rooms full of cars dating back to the very beginning in the early 1900s

Through to the 1950s

To the muscle cars

And everything inbetween

All in all it was a great afternoon for a couple of petrol heads.

But by the time we got back to the farm we were exhausted. We made bruschetta and cooked pizza outside then fell into bed

So far, whilst the museum had been interesting, Turin itself had not appeared very exciting. All that was about to change.

We did a much shorter bus journey to the historic centre the next morning and spent the whole day awe-struck by the beauty of this city.

Our first find was the busy food market in Porta Palazzo where we could have bought any type of fruit and vegetable we wanted and it all looked lovely

We then carried on to the Roman Palantine Gate, built in the era of Augustus

The Torre Campanaria was next door, sitting alongside the Cattedrale di San Giovanni Battista

The tower was closed so we couldn’t go up but I did want to have a look inside the cathedral. And I’m glad we did because it turns out that this is where the Turin Shroud is held

The real thing is stored underneath the red cloth and only comes out on special occasions.

We wandered up to the Piazza Real and Piazza Castello where we got our first real sense of just how magnificent Turin is

I had no idea it was such a beautiful city.

There was so much all piled in together that it was getting confusing knowing what we were looking at

At the other end of the piazza we found the Palazzo Madame which was under renovation so the outside was not much to look at. But when we poked our heads inside we were met with the most magnificent staircase

Which, as some film buffs might recognise, was where the minis in the Italian Job were filmed driving down

Across the road was the Real Chiesa di San Lorenzo which had an amazing dome

And the most intricate decorations

From there we headed to the Galleria Subalpina, a Victorian shopping centre

They don’t build them like that anymore…

We stumbled across the Palazzo Carignano which was enormous and another beautiful building

And then we had a wander around the market in Piazza Carlo Alberto

All this wandering had made us hungry so we sat ourselves down at Chez Camille – a French restaurant that served galettes. It was a perfect pit stop but we decided against the sweet pancakes for desert.

Having given up on pudding, James was in need of an ice cream so we searched out the best looking place – a chain called Venchi. His ice cream was huge and by the time he had queued for it and stood outside eating it, I had bought myself a very large bag of pick and mix chocolates, all sampled and discussed with the very nice manager of the store who was happy for me to try as much as I liked – I think he realised I was a serious buyer!

We were both feeling rather sick by this time, so to work off the sugar rush we decided to do a tour of the Royal Palace. It was remarkable

But not all of it necessarily in a good way. Every room was intricately decorated in gold and silver

Or deep red with chandeliers everywhere

Not an inch of the walls or ceilings had been wasted

It sent my head spinning, it was so overpowering. I was glad I wasn’t an 18^th century Italian aristocrat!

But there were also rooms full of Roman statues and objects dating back as far as 300-400 BC

And in the crypt was a necropolis, with ancient mummies – some of which have been dated to 4,500BC whilst others are almost new, from just 500-600AD

At the end of the tour we found the Cappella della Sacra Sindone which was another amazing chapel with a fabulous dome

By now we were Turin’d out so we jumped back on the bus and headed back to the farm. We were stuffed full of galettes, chocolate and ice cream so had a quick dinner of left over pizza and enjoyed the peace and quiet of the farm with a glass of wine

We had had a wonderful few days and Italy truly is a gorgeous country. But it was not to last. We had been here before – busy enjoying ourselves, feeling as though we had found La Dolce Vita, when all of a sudden we’re thrown a curve ball. And this time it was a much bigger ball than the first one, which only spoilt one day when we tried to find the Matterhorn. This time, the ball took out almost a third of our itinerary.

We were planning to head for the Italian Lakes. I had been working out what to do and where to stay around Lake Como and we had been hoping to meet up with a friend at Lake Maggiore. I had already spent an hour or so making plans before I decided to check the low emission zones in the area. That was the point at which everything fell apart.

I discovered that almost the whole of the Lombardy region is covered in numerous low emission zones with lots of different rules. The map showing these areas was incomprehensible and the chart showing when we could go through and when we couldn’t contradicted itself so much that we were left with no clue.

We sat together for two hours trying to make sense of it before I threw the towel in. We had no choice, unless we wanted to risk heavy fines we could not enter Lombardy at all.

That meant missing out on Lake Como, Lake Maggiore, Lake Garda, Milan and the Dolomites.

But, if that wasn’t enough, our hearts sank when we realised that Lombardy also stood in the way between us and both Verona and Venice. I stared at the map feeling a huge sense of loss. The whole area was supposed to be a real highlight of the trip so this turn of events was more than a little disappointing.

Picking ourselves up by our coat tails, we decided to head south to the town of Portofino on the Riviera but when I looked at our park-up app I found that there was nowhere in the town that would allow motorhomes to stay. The nearest place was a large car park in the next town over in Santa Margherita Ligure. We set our sat nav and hoped that we could find public transport between the two.

But public transport was to be the least of our concerns. After a two hour drive in blistering heat (unlike Henry, BigMog does not have air conditioning), we arrived at Santa Margherita Ligure to find the police manning road blocks, turning everyone away as the whole centre of the town was now a no-traffic zone.

We tried three different routes to the car park but they were all blocked and the chaos of the traffic trying to find a way through was getting dangerous.

We fled. We got straight back onto the toll road with no idea where we were heading. I suggested to James, in all seriousness, that we leave Italy straight away and head out of the EU and as far east as we could get.

Instead, however, we found ourselves parked up on the side of a tight bend in the road just outside the town of Monterosso, the first of the famously beautiful Cinque Terre.

The layby was barely big enough to get BigMog’s rear end in but we didn’t care, we’d had enough of Italy’s roads for one day

The Cinque Terre are five pastel coloured towns perched on the cliff tops of the Italian Riviera. They are surrounded by vineyards and make a sweet wine called Sciacchetrà. We had heard that they get packed with tourists during the summer but are relaxed in the autumn whilst the locals harvest the grapes.

It was getting towards the end of September so we hoped that we would be there at just the right time.

By 8:30am the next morning I had bought our bus tickets from the hotel across the road and found the bus timetable. We had only been waiting at the bus stop for a few minutes when the bus arrived and took us down the steep, winding roads into Monterosso.

When we first arrived, the whole place looked beautiful

There was an ominous number of umbrellas out on the beach but not so many people under them

The Cinque Terre are within a national park so our first stop was the ticket office to buy our tickets for the day along with the train ticket we would need to get us from one town to the next.

Having got that sorted we ambled about to take in the views

We found a small church and abbey

With lovely views over the sea

And I had a fabulous lemon slushy!

With Monterosso fully explored we jumped on a train to the next town of Vernazza. It only took a few minutes but when we arrived we seemed to have found the tourists, the streets were starting to get busy

We climbed up a steep staircase to go and see a castle but the guy at the entrance shouted at me for some unknown reason so we turned around and went back a little affronted

The sea view was lovely though

Next stop was Corniglia. The train station here was slightly out of town and a long way down. A shuttle bus took people from the station to the town centre but there were huge queues and every bus was rammed to bursting point.

We didn’t fancy that so followed the small but sturdy band of people who were hiking up the twisting staircase to the top

It wasn’t as bad as it looked and there were beautiful views over the vineyards as we climbed

Eventually we found ourselves in amongst tiny, twisting streets and, as it was time for lunch, we sat down at a restaurant that looked nice with pretty parasols. But my pasta was one of the worst meals I have ever had, although James said his bolognaise was nice. It was, of course, eye-wateringly expensive and we mooched off feeling a little as though we had accidentally taken a wrong turn into tourist-hell.

The next town was Manarola

We tried to find cake to make up for the poor lunch but to no avail.

By now each town was starting to feel very much the same as the last and there was little to attract us – souvenir shops, restaurants, crowded streets, nothing that felt authentic

James was keen to cut our losses but I wouldn’t hear of it, we had come to see the Cinque Terre not the Quattro Terre so on we went to Riomaggiore. But our hearts weren’t really in it

We walked from the station to the town through a long tunnel, making very slow progress amongst thousands of other tourists. When we finally got through, the town looked just the same as all the others so we went straight back to find the sea.

I have to admit that it was very picturesque and I’m glad we didn’t miss it

And we found something to amuse ourselves with here. Where the town dropped down to the sea there were rocks and cliff edges from which the locals were diving

One girl in particular did a very impressive back flip and received a hushed gasp from the crowd.

We ambled about for a while and leaned against a railing laughing quietly to each other as tourist after tourist got shouted at by a woman who was fed up with people not knowing they needed an extra ticket to enter a cliff walk. It was the most entertaining part of the day!

That night we had a storm, rain pelted down on us and the box rocked with the wind. But we were safe and sound tucked up inside with our very Italian dinner

We woke the next morning with renewed energy to keep fighting our way though Italy.

We were nearing the centre of the country which is dotted with gorgeous, historic little towns and we had a series of them we wanted to visit.

The first stop was the hilly town of Barga. We had chosen to stay in an aire at a vineyard on the edge of the town. When we arrived we were thrilled, it was beautiful

After the precarious layby we had spent the last two nights in and the hustle and bustle of the Cinque Terre, this was exactly what we needed

We walked up the steep hill into the town the next morning

It was all cobbled streets and old ‘palaces’

Apparently Barga sold their town to Florence a few hundred years ago for protection and trade during a turbulent time and the architecture reflects that, albeit on a much smaller scale

We headed to the top of the town where we found the Collegiate Church of San Cristoforo

There was a wedding about to start but we managed to nip in before it was too late

We stood on the terrace looking out over the town and the hills beyond

And then the bride arrived so we crept away, leaving her to her day

Slightly down the hill was the Chiesa del Santissimo Crosifisso

And further down still, a little piazza with a statue of Antonio Mordini, a beloved MP from the early 1800s

We found a lovely little restaurant for lunch where we had ham and truffle bruschetta and very simple but delicious pasta

Barga is only a small town and we had seen most of it before lunch. There was only the old convent left to explore

As we walked back, we passed some Roman bridges and aqueducts which criss-cross the town

By the time we arrived back at our campsite we had been joined by a large number of other campers, but it was still peaceful and just as beautiful

As long as you looked in the right direction!

The next morning we found our hosts, paid our bill and bought a few bottles of wine from their store. We then headed an hour further south to the mediaeval walled town of Lucca.

We had heard much talk of Lucca being unsafe with motorhomes regularly being broken into, even during the day. It didn’t seem to fit with the beauty of the town itself but we were nervous. We asked around and finally found one car park that was said to be secure. When we arrived it was noisy and busy, full of motorhomes but felt very safe – there were far too many tourists around for much trouble to happen

Lucca is an absolutely gorgeous town with beautiful, historic buildings around every corner

We found the tunnels under the old Roman walls

Then walked along the wall itself

We found the Porta San Donato housing a small exhibition on the history of the town

Then went into the Museo Nazionale di Palazzo Mansi which was another breath-takingly ornate, 18^th century royal palace

The Chiesa si San Michele was pretty

And there were three towers dotted around the town which loomed up everywhere you looked

We were wide-eyed as we stumbled across piazzas, statues and buildings with no name but so beautiful

For lunch we bought a few bits and pieces in a local supermarket and sat on a bench in one of the many pretty piazzas watching the world go by

There was still half the town to see but we were exhausted so the rest was left to the next day. This side of town, however, was not quite so impressive. It had a few gates and piazzas

And the Museo Nazionale di Villa Guinigi was packed full of old art and archaeological artefacts

We treated ourselves to a wonderful sandwich at a local café but then it started pouring with rain so we hid under a tree on the Roman walls for a while before making a dash for the San Martino tunnels

These were lovely with floodlights changing colours

That evening we put our diesel heater on for the first time ever and dried everything out after the rain storm – living in BigMog has some advantages!

We were very close to Pisa and I had never seen the Leaning Tower so we decided to brave another big city and go for a look. We found a small town nearby which had a convenient car park near a bus route. The bus only took a few minutes and before we knew it we were in the famous Piazza dei Miracoli – I had no idea the area was so beautiful

The first things we saw were the striking horses, a fairly recent art installation

And beyond them towered the Cattedrale di Pisa

The Battistero di San Giovanni

And, of course, the Torre di Pisa itself

Which is beautiful up close

There were a lot of people visiting but it wasn’t as chaotic as I had expected. The weather wasn’t great with grey clouds and drizzle but nothing could detract from the beauty of the whole place

James was hobbling today, having woken up with a bit of gout, so he sat in the entrance to the museum whilst I bought a ticket into the cathedral

And the baptistery

There are plenty of other things to see and do in Pisa but we had had enough of cities for a while and James wasn’t going to be able to walk much in his current state. So we decided not to hang around and instead went straight back to the truck and set off for the small town of Vinci

Vinci has one claim to fame and, whilst the town is very pretty, it is entirely dedicated to its most famous son – Leonardo. There are a large number of Leonardo da Vinci museums in the town and we weren’t sure whether we should pick one, two or do all of them

We walked into town early the next morning and the first museum we came to was called Leo Lev. A guide was standing outside encouraging visitors to go in and we chatted to him about the options. It turned out that there was the ‘official’ museum that was made up of three different sites and this museum which was privately run and offered something a bit different.

So we went inside and found a very odd but rather absorbing exhibition

Whoever decided to bring these paintings to life must have a lot of imagination, but some of them were a little creepy!

We went on to the official museum where we found much larger models of his inventions built a couple of hundred years ago which are historic pieces in their own right. The second of the official museums was full of his most famous paintings and the final one housed various exhibitions providing background and detail of how he worked – from dissecting bodies to understand anatomy, to the layering techniques he used in his paintings, to the engineering environment he was working within. It was all fascinating.

We wandered down to the terrace to see the famous Vitruv Man di Mario Ceroli

A lot of people had started milling around and it turned out that a Free Palestine march was just about to start. As we headed back to the truck they came down the road behind us waving flags and chanting but it was all very peaceful and good natured.

Things were going well again in Italy and we were finding a lot to enjoy here. But it was hard work every day – working out what roads we could drive, where we were allowed to stay, planning public transport routes. It was a full time job.

And although the people were warm and friendly and there was a welcoming atmosphere, the wide open spaces, the joy of being in nature and the freedom to be spontaneous just weren’t there. We fought for everything and planned meticulously. And some days just went horribly, horribly wrong.

A part of us needed to get away from it all and find somewhere where we could relax and just be – but could we find that in Italy? We were beginning to doubt it…