Wednesday 13th April.
We are parked up this evening in a tiny car park for motorhomes at Saint-Laurent-du-Var (43.68548 7.18534) about 5 kilometres west of Nice. There are only 7 spaces here and when we arrived there were already 8 vans parked up. So we squeezed in, blocking the egress for two French vans, as you do! However during the course of the afternoon we've spoken to the occupants, one of which said he isn't moving anywhere soon ( big signs - Max 48hrs stay ) and the other isn't moving till tomorrow morning, "quelle heur?" I enquired. Ten fingers were held up which suits us. Even we can be up and on the road by 10am. There's nowt to do here apart from admire the headstones in the cemetery over the road but it's an ideal stop between France and Italy without having to pay campsite fees. We've stopped here twice before and always taken the last available pitch and I don't know how long our luck will last before we have to find somewhere else.
Bit of a rubbish drive here today, we could have taken the coast road - which looked pretty scenic - but instead elected to travel inland. Not too bad until we hit Frejus, lots of traffic and roadworks. Then the "route de Cannes" D97 which only gets up to about 320 metres but it's hairpins all the way up and back down again. Then Antibes. I always thought of Antibes as a glamorous resort full of the " beautiful people". We must have missed that bit but found the traffic and the crazy roundabouts. It was only a journey of 99 miles but took us the best part of 4 hours! We have an aversion to toll roads but on reflection it would have been less stressful to take them today.
Since starting to write this another two vans have arrived, one a massive Concorde at about nine and a half metres - a bus basically - and a smaller van a little larger than ours. There's going to be some shuffling in the morning I expect as people try to leave. At the moment we have a clear run to the exit but I suspect if anyone else turns up we'll be in trouble tomorrow.
Thursday 14th April.
Well, we escaped the car park after a bit of shuffling and set off for Italy. Driving through Nice, Menton, Ventimiglia and Bordighera took it's toll and after 42 miles in two and a half hours we gave up and stopped at San Remo (43.80302 7.74785) which is not really as far as we had hoped we get today but, hey ho. It's a lovely town but the Motorhome parking is basically a big car park and the filthy facilities, such as they are, a 400m drive away over dirt tracks. All this for €15!! Anyway, we walked into the town which is about a mile away looking for some lunch. Last year we found a great little pizzeria in a back street where the pizza was delicious and inexpensive. Due to my innate directional skills (I've been likened to a homing pigeon in the past, or a walking compass,which I take as a compliment) I found the place straight away. Unfortunately it was closed and shuttered! Recession victim? Just around a few corners we found a pretty Piazza with a pretty restaurant where we had a couple of lousy pizzas and a couple of drinks for an exorbitant price. We declined all offers of the "genuine" Gucci, Versace, Maschino etc handbags for only €30 from the itinerant street salesmen and I even refused a "genuine" Rolex for €20.
Friday 15th April.
We left San Remo this morning with a plan to drive to Finale Ligure, a pretty seaside resort which we've been to before and which wasn't too far up the coast, or to push on a bit further to Santa Margherita Ligure, the other side of Genova, and where we also stopped last year. One thing we decided was that we couldn't face the coast roads, driving through the resorts and taking half a day to get not very far. So the motorway it would be. Before we left we met an English guy who was heading for Florence and after a short chat wished him Bon Voyage and we set off. After 45 minutes we stopped at a service station for coffee and five minutes later the same guy and his wife arrived, David and Linda (Lynda?). Now, we've had some coincidences as we've travelled around - we've met folk from nearby towns and villages in England - we met a guy in Spain who lived a few hundred metres from us when he was a child. We've bumped into folk that we met the year before in Europe but today was a first. Phil and Linda went to the same school when they were teenagers! And only a year apart. They didn't remember each other but remembered their teachers and some of the school rules, mainly to do with acceptable skirt lengths!
Today was a special day for them, it was their wedding anniversary and I'm sure, should they be reading this , they won't mind me telling the story that they told us of how they met. Linda was at the RVI in Newcastle doing her nursing training when her and a friend saw a card on the notice board from a sailor looking for a penfriend (for you younger folk, penfriends were what you had before Facebook). Linda's friend dared her to reply, which she did and, if I remember the story correctly, it was David's friend in the navy who had put the card on the notice board and passed Linda's correspondence on to him. The rest, as they say, is history. What a lovely story.
So, after leaving the anniversary couple we pushed on and just before our turn off on the motorway stopped again and decided we would keep going to Lucca, where we are tonight in a large Motorhome parking area (43.83974 10.48831), it's clean and tidy, has the usual facilities and it's a five minute walk to the medieval walled town.
The drive today was great, we covered the best part of 200 miles without any stress. Between Loano and Genova there are quite a few tunnels and viaducts but from Genova through to Beverino Castello, some 60 miles or so it was just a series of tunnels, viaducts, tunnels and viaducts with hardly any "normal" road between them. An impressive bit of motorway engineering.
So, we've been in to Lucca, admired the buildings and gawped in the designer shop windows, enjoyed an Aperol Spritz and an Americano in the main square in the last of the sunshine, returned to the van and cooked dinner/supper and we're nearly ready for some shut-eye.
Mind, I did see this sign today at the cafeteria on the motorway. All I can think is too many folk have been asking for a slice of pizza, a bottle of beer and a dodgy movie.
Pat
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