Post trip reflections

To think that I managed to travel 3,318 miles in 16 days in 9 different countries (Monaco counts as a country damm and blast you!) seems like a huge expedition. I have to say that apart from few very long days (Ealing to Bourges, Cannes to Marina di Pietrasanta and Macerata to Innsbruck) I think I was quite sensible with the number of hours and miles I was prepared to do in one day whilst trying to strike a balance between getting the miles done and seeing interesting things without the need to rush. I think I was fairly succesful in doing this and I was 100% right in knocking an extra leg off in France and avoiding the Pyrenees and Perpignan.

I don't really have a favourite place. Everyday was different. In France, Les Gorges du Tarn and Mont St Victoire really stand out, as did the Prune Tagine in Avignon and Grasse is a pretty town. In Italy, both Lucca and Florence were incredible, the Ferrari museum at Maranello was very good, but spending time in the mountains with Ele, Gianluca and Mickey was the icing on the cake as far as Italy was concerned.

Innsbruck is a sturdy little place, and I think I might pop back there at some point. The Bavarian alps might well be stunning but they always seem to be shrouded in fog as thick as a simpleton from Yeovil. It was also great to see Jasmin in Switzerland again.

I think really the point that I'm trying to make is that it doesn't really matter where you go as long as you have some friends along the route. I saw some stunning things but I was lucky enough to have enough friends around who made the whole road trip just that little bit more special.

So thanks to......

Ele
Giovanni (for giving up his room and having to share with his older sister)
Gianluca (for his tourist guide skills in the Marche area)
Mickey (his lovely wife for her driving skills and for keeping Gianluca honest)
Ele's mum Tiziana (for producing 3 star michelin food without having to swear, apart from telling the chicken to "vaffanculo")
Ele's dad Giorgio (for his sense of humour and his fearless nature)
Claudio (for showing me a genre of Italian film I haven't seen before)
Claudia (the woman with the pretty nose and a battered Lancia)
Natalie (for bring a little corner of England to Italy)
Jasmin (for having food and beer with in Schaffhausen and for bringing glamour and sophistication to the whole trip)
Jasmin's mum (for buying me a beer)
Michaela (for having lunch with me in Karlsruhe)
Catherine (for having lunch with me in Avignon)
Izzi (for having lunch in Beauvais whilst sitting on the coldest stone wall ever)
Femke (for being perky and for giving me her bed)
Saskia (for keeping Femke in line)
Meneer Van Der Sprong (for making Femke happy and perky)
Magali (for coffee and homebaked lemon tart)
The old fella who cooked my Prune Tagine in Avignon
The boys at Speedy for fitting new tyres and shock absorbers to Bertha
The Via Michelin website for finding me great hotels in Innsbruck and Koblenz
The Accor website for finding me the cheap crappy ones in France.
Falken Beer
Hertog Jan beer
German Service Stations for selling hot bockwurst with tangy mustard and a fresh bread roll.

Thank you all so very much for making my trip such an eventful one.

At last and not least thanks goes old Bertha who did 3318 miles without really giving me a mechanical headache.

Day 16 - Utrecht to Ealing

Well. With huge sadness I left Femke and Saskia at 0430am on Sunday morning to drive to Oostende via Breda, Antwerpen and Gent. I have to say that this was the first time I've ever had a woman baking me bread rolls at 4am! Femke, you're a fine woman.

Then it was a slightly boring drive of just over 2 hours to the Trans Europa Ferry terminal in Oostende. After getting out of the car to check in I was confronted by some bloke in a beanie hat asking me to take him and his girlfriend across the channel in my car as they were on a trekking holiday and didn't realise that this Ferry company don't take foot passengers. I'm sure if they caught me later in the day I might've taken them but at that time in the morning it didn't seem like a very good idea. To be fair the guy seemed like a bit of a twat anyway.

Day 15 - Utrecht

Much of day 15 was spent sleeping. We got back at 6am from a haloween party at the local irish pub via a couple of dodgy late clsoing boozeries in utrecht. One was the smoke filled place called the Carafon which was full of smoke and full of arseholes including this french moroccan guy who really deserved a slap and he nearly got one each from our entourage. The party was great, full marks to everyone who dressed up. There were some quite puzzling sights. There was an irish guy dressed as freddy kruger with a cricket box to make him look more manly and another one as a confused, puzzled and shy lion. I had some make up done to make me look like a zombie from this big breasted dutch girl in a corset with rather whiffy arm pits. We left there at 4or 5am to go to the Carafon and then left there an hour later to go to another place called bollokje. At least thats how it sounds! Nice chilled out place though. I had a small kebab and a coke. But I could barely keep my eyes open, being up for 24 hours was taking its toll. We got back in at 6 or 7am and I managed to sleep until 3pm. Then saw about an hour and a half of daylight before nipping to Albert Heijn to buy dutch food to take home. In the evening we went to a nice restaurant oppposite the irish pub and dined on fish. Very nice too.

Day 14 - Koblenz to Utrecht

Well today was quite a long one. The basic route was Koblenz, Remagen, Bonn, Cologne, Leverkusen, Duisburg, Arnhem and then into Utrecht.

I drove in the centre of Koblenz and parked up for an hour to have a little tour. The most famous is the famous "Deutsches Eck" (German corner) which is the place where the Mosel and the Rhein rivers meet.

This is monument of Emperor William the first at the Eck!!


Fortress Ehrenbreitstein

I then took the road that clings to the banks of the Rhein river and headed towards the Bridge at Remagen, passing through the wine growing towns of Hammerstein and Leutersdorf. I then crossed the Rhine on a car ferry from Linz to Krigg(not a patch on the Dartmouth-Kingswear in Devon).

Anyway, this is whats left of the Bridge at Remagen. Made popular by the film of the same name starring Robert Vaughan as the token Nazi major, George Segal as the cigar toting soldier's soldier and Ben Gazzara as the token nutter who's seen took much action.

A barge on the Rhein. Somehow the vision of Charles Bronson rowing his gay mate Danny along it looks more peaceful.

I continued from Remagen through the completely non descript ex FRG capital of Bonn, and paid a visit to the Rhein Energie Stadion in Cologne. I only got lost or 20 mins or so and they found out I had circled the fecking ground at least 3 times and taking wild detours via the forest and the neighbouring suburbs of Junkersdorf and Mungesdorf.

In Leverkusen. The coolest thing. Traffic lights with a countdown timer.

The Germany motorway service station lunch of choice. Bockwurst, mustard and a bread roll.

Polizei on the move.

Day 13 - Schaffhausen to Koblenz

Well, it was an incredibly cold start today for me and the old girl. She was parked overnight in Schaffhausen railway station car park. I had a very nice room in a youth hostel across the road. 4 pine bunk beds to myself, prison showers and a huge picture of a horse's head with the horse's facial expression suggesting that he's being castrated with a rusty, blunt knife!

Bertha in the snow..

First stop was the Falken Brauerai superstore. The poor woman who served me thought I was mad coming out in the snow to buy beer at 9am. She then thought I was insane when I told her I was driving back to blighty with it! Its a lovely beer though.

The Black Forest lives up to its name. Visibility was bloody awful. I have to say that the new Hankook tyres are excellent. No doubt I would have been in trouble with the old tyres doing 80 kmph. I did 130-140 kmph and it felt as secure as a bank vault in Zurich.

Next stop was Karlsruhe. I had planned to go to Stuttgart and visit the Porsche museum and the Gottlieb Daimler football stadium but they're building another museum which isn't quite finished yet and there are better stadiums to visit in Germany than the one at Stuttgart.

Anyway, first up in Karlsruhe was to meet an old friend from Paris who I haven't seen in 6 years or so. She's called Michaela and she works as a translator for Siemens.

And this is her! Glamour shot in the Siemens staff car park. Es tut mir leid Micha ;)

This is the Wildpark Stadion and is home to SC Karlsruhe. Its a lovely ground surrounded by a forest.

This is Karlsruhe's main street. The city centre is set out on one big grid. Either they had a town planner with an american vision or that British and American bombers really went to town during the second world war. Its very sad really. Most (if not all) of the big german cities lack a old historical centre which does them any justice. The centre of Karlsruhe feels like a Dusseldorf or a Dresden. It just feels like its completely missing its heart. I quite like the colour of the trams though. Reminds me of the old family thruxter Vauxhall Belmont we used to have.

This building is the Karlsruhe Palace. It was flattened like the city centre in the second world war but was then rebuilt afterwards.

Day 12 - Innsbruck to Schaffhausen

A shortish day today that started in a Innsbruck which was only 3 degrees celsius!! Only about 17 degrees less than the Italy I had woken up in, the previous morning.

Innsbruck is a rather pleasant city. It probably deserves another visit in the future. There's quite a nice mix of young and old in both the buildings and the people. I thought I'd cracked finding the Briel watch I have been looking for, but the snooty bitch in the boutique said it was an obsolete model. I spent a couple of hours looking around the old and the new town before heading off to see the football stadium and then a few kilometres outside of Innsbruck I took the right fork and headed over the pass towards Germany and Gamisch-Partenkirchen. i know all about Garmisch from a mad german teacher calle Petra Schlehuber who came from this place. I have to say that in the snow and on new years day with 100,000 spectators watching the ski jumping it must be an awesome place but I thought it wasn't that great.

After that it was just a little drive along a road that uses both Austria and Germany passing Friedrichshafen before heading back down south to Schaffhausen.

Once at Schaffhausen it was a case of waiting a short while for Swissy to come back from Zurich before going out with her for beers and something stodgy and Swiss to eat. I had the Schweizer Teller which was enourmous. I was quite hungry though. After this we went to her mums bar and had a few beers. Wednesday is gay night in mummy's pub so "back door man" by the Doors went on the jukebox. I know. I'm an evil man.

Anyway here are some photos of yesterday. As I look towards the station car park this morning Bertha is covered in 3 inches of snow!!

Innsbruck old town

The golden roof

Speck!!
Tivoli Stadion, Innsbruck

And no, Mr Noxon. I did not pull off the road, or on it.

Day 11 - Macerata to Innsbruck

Today was a tiring trip of around 450 miles made slightly longer with a couple of detours.

I said goodbye to Ele, Giovanni and Bartolo this morning with a heavy heart but its alway nice to move on and discover new places. The first strange sight was seeing the racing circuit of Misano virtually backing on to the Autostrada. This is on the Moto GP calendar and can probably best be described as Valentino Rossi's private test circuit as he's from the town of Gradara just a few kilometres down the road.

The orignal plan was to see San Marino but the rain started to bucket down and I decided to hit Bologna instead. I got as far as the crumbling wreck of a football stadium on the outskirts and decided not to venture any further as the buckets of rain were replaced by something much more substantial.

After driving twenty minutes north towards Modena I suddenly made a snap decision and headed inland to see the Ferrari museum at Maranello.

Anyway. Here are some pictures of today.

This is the Stadio Renato Dall'ara in Bologna. The very ground where David Platt swivelled on a six pence during Italia 90 to volley an unstoppable shot past the hapless Michel Preud'homme.

Ferrari heaven at Maranello.


F40

The 2007 F1 car.

Nigel Mansell's 1989 firecracker.

The Ferrari belonging to the late Gilles Villeneuve. The front wing looks like a snow plough.

The lovely arse of a Ferrari F40

The iconic Testarossa.

After this I had a very long drive to Innsbruck via Verona, Trento and Bolzano. I had to pay 7 euros for Austrian motorway tax and then about five kilometres after buying the "vignette" the nazi puppets have the bloody cheek to charge you another 8 euros for using the Brenner Pass. 19 euros from Bologna to the Italian-Austrian border and then they charge you another 8 euros for a few kilometres. Old Helmut in the toll booth might've taken 8 euros from me but he had to work his socks off for it.

Day 10 - Monti Sibillini, Castelluccio, Visso and Foce

This was a truly stunning day in a truly amazing place. We (me, Ele, Gianluca and Mickey) went drove inland from Macerata to the Sibillini mountains, which are a mountain range within the main Appenine Mountains which run down the spine of Italy. Most of the peaks are around 2000 metres tall. The highest mountain in the range is Monte Vettore which almost nudges 2,500 metres.

First stop was a fantastic church and stables in the middle of nowhere (place was called the Sancturio di Macereto) about 4 or 5 km up the road from the small village of Appenino.

God only knows what its doing there. Because of its size and stature it wouldn't look out of place in a fairly large Italian town. But its near to this village

Apeninno

Next stop was the town of Visso. Here are some pictures of there!

Cakes and coffee first. I had the double doughnut red thing in the top right. Custard and chocolate filling.

Visso's main drag.

The APE returns. This time its the articulated version.

A lovely little side street of Visso.

And a quaint little petrol station owned by API or Associzione di Petroli Italiani.

Next stop was the smaller town of Ussita.

The local Mafioso!

Then it was a drive to the great plains of Castelluccio.

Days 8 and 9

Many apologies for not posting any updates since Friday. On Saturday I had a another lazy day of helping Ele with her translation project which I think was translated into English by a couple of oddballs who'd been at the Schnapps a little bit too much. Saturday afternoon was a trip to the local cafe with Ele's brother Giovanni for a coffee and a punt on Totocalcio (their version of the football pools). The coffee was great. It was called a Cafe Jeffrey! Giovanni's mate turned up and labelled us as a couple of Gaylords for drinking coffee from a wine glass.

Saturday evening was a visit to the nearby town of Tolentino. We popped into to see the Church of St Nicolas. About an hour and a half later we emerged with the best wishes of a junior priest who had offered to give us a little tour of the church. The wee man explained the story behind every fresco and when each nook and cranny was built and then renovated. I know everything there is to know about that church. The bloke took us downstairs see the crypt of St Nicolas and then took us to see the main priest and they joked that all this exposure to and their efforts to convert me would make me rebel and become a muslim. Not the sort of humour I would expect! The rest of the evening was spent in the company of Claudia and Ele. We had a few beers and a meal out.

Sunday was another lazy day. In the afternoon I went to watch Atalanta V Milan at a mate of Giovanni's whilst Ele finished off the translation. It was a poor game and was only spark into life when Carlo Ancelotti (Milan trainer) threatened to bring on Pippo Inzaghi (a man born in an offside position). Some clever play from Marco Borriello set up Kaka who half scuffed and half chipped the ball past the Atalanta keeper.

Sunday evening was spent with Gianluca and Michela in the nearby town of Fermo which has a very nice main square. We had some tasty nibbles afterwards in a cafe owned by a mate of Gianluca's.

Day 7 - Day of rest, italian cooking lesson and live music

After one or two beers the night before I enjoyed a lovely nights sleep until all the dogs in the street (there must be 20 or 30) started up and the neighbours started shouting at each other. We didn't do much all day. I had another italian cookery lesson in the morning from the lovely Tiziana (Ele's mum). We did a Spinach, prosciutto and cheese pie. After we didn't have quite enough puff pastry I intoduced her to making a lattice style pie lid. I could tell she was suitably impressed. We also did a tasty and pretty spicy bacon and black olive pasta sauce with Bucatini (a thick hollow spaghetti). She also carved up a chicken. She bought it at the supermarket, it was yellow skinned with all the corn it had eaten and still had the feet, head and guts attached to it. Tiziana then set out butchering it and swearing at it when she managed to break her trusy butcher's knife. I haven't seen such food violence like it. In the UK we like to roast the entire bird and do very little to it unless of course you've seen an episode of Jamie at home and you enjoy stuffing its arse with all manner of tastless and pointless herbs. Over here in Le Marche the manner is to hack it into all manner of shapes and cook it in a big saucepan with olive oil, salt, pepper, white wine, water and rosemary until its nice and tender.

We then met up with Mr Giorgi a little later for a quick beer and nibbles.

Last night's entertainment was going to see Ele's mate Katerina sing live at a music bar in Civitanova. She was pretty good actually, a complete fruitlooper, but pretty good. She has a touch of the Nina Hagen, Cyndi Lauper and Debbie Harry about her.

Day 6 - Marina di Pietrasanta to Macerata

Yesterday involved a early start from my lovely hotel in Marina di Pietrasanta and crossing over from the west coast of Italy over to the Adriactic coast on the eastern side. The route I took was through the very pretty city of Lucca, the beautiful city of Florence and through Arezzo, Perugia before hitting the gateway over the high red potato producing plains of Umbria at Foligno and then down into Tolentino and finally to Ele's place near Macerata.

So, first stop was Lucca. Lucca is situated about halfway between Pisa and Florence and the main part of town is surrounded by Renaissance walls. Inside its a very compact centre and it has an air of wealth and prosperity. The people were immaculately dressed even by Italian standards. I spent about an hour wandering around and taking in the towns sights. There were one or two homages to the City's most famous son, Giacomo Puccini. As I could only park for an hour I managed to miss out on the main square and catherdral but i managed to see the church of San Michele in Foro and the Basilica di San Frediano. Both of which are much nicer than the main cathedral anyway, well of course they are. I'm not going to admit I got lost am I now?

Anyway here are some photos of Lucca!

This is the San Michele in Foro

Basilica di San Frediano

They run these tiny little electric buses around the narrow streets of Lucca

And finally Steve James flogs mushrooms in Lucca. The APE!!

There was also a student protest in full flow when I got there. Berlusconi is cutting student grants and university funding again.

Then I pushed on eastwards towards Florence and set the Tom Tom to take me to the city sentre where I hoped I would find ample parking. What I did find was a exciting city to drive in, then hit a complete maze of narrow streets where local urchins on Piaggos kept cutting me up. I finally parked up a stones throw away from the Duomo, which I have to say is unbelievable.

Have a look for yourself....

Its a splendid example of architecture but I last time I saw so as many tourists I was in Venice. So I drove out of the city centre and went to see the Football stadium.

Here is the Stadio Communale Artemio Franchi.

After this it was a pretty uneventful drive across the rest of Tuscany and Umbria to Macerata.