Levico Terme

We don't know how much rain fell last night but it was a lot!! Nice and cosy in Essie waiting for the rain to stop so we could dash to the shower block. Then all hands on deck to prepare for breaking camp and moving on. Said our farewells to our neighbours and we were off. Remember us talking about the descent into the camp? Now was the time to crawl up the mountain and negotiate the narrow lanes of the village half way up the mountain before going down again into the valley. All entertaining stuff when behind the wheel. Turbo diesel, forget your GTi's and sports saloons this is what the car was built for.....grunt! The turbo for the uphills and brilliant engine breaking for going down them.

Down the valley heading south to our next base we pulled into a service station to have a coffee, they are a lot different over here. Got inside and it was obviously a truckers cafe.....with lace table covers! So the guys are all sat around them, some of them big buggers too. They were also enjoying carafes of wine with their brunch. What a life. We could stand our spoons up in the espresso...no sleep for us over the next 24 hours.

A little known fact is that Italian drivers drive on the left. That's cos they are always overtaking one another and us. Their mind set is one of, "Oh look a caravan, I must overtake at all cost" And they do very frequently. Entering a roundabout is another game of cat and mouse cos when they see you coming they pull out to get ahead and we are well into the roundabout.

Lessons learnt......Steve's Italian...bastardo! And "salute" in sign language. Will probably start collecting some FIAT parafanalia if they keep up like this.

Now then - that was Steve's contribution to the blog - I bet you could tell with all the talk of cars and driving. Now I have come to add my bit.

The drive was uneventful (to me at least as a passenger) and beautiful - we are still in the Alto Adige region so the mountains are still around us and bringing rain at times. Itook some photos as we drove along as you will see on the blog.

Today we reached the camp site at Levico Terme (so called because of its thermal waters)- further south than before though still in the mountains. It is between two lakes which we hope to explore by cycle tomorrow, weather permitting, and it is more Italian than the last campsite and area we were in. The campsite also has wifi - hooray!! and we have paid up and are sitting in the allocated spot to write this. When we arrived we set up and set off by bike to Levico Terme to explore, get some dosh and buy some provisions.

Dried mushrooms are very big here at the moment and in the town was a notice board with examples of local mushrooms on it. Steve became very hungry and had his photo taken beside it illustrating his wish to eat the lot! see pic.It was hot and sunny when we left and cool, grey and raining when we returned.

Having cooked and eaten a spag boll tonight and drank some very pleasant local wine we are having our internet time before going to catch upwith some other Brits we have met on the site. They are an endangered species out here you know! hardly any Brits at all. The Dutch have some English but do not understand everything and the Germans are hit and miss - in more ways than one. So it is a great pleasure to meet some true Brits and have a good old natter.

The football fans are cheering in the background - don't know what that means because we aren't interested but we do know that Italy have played today because it was on a chalk board outside - knowledge spent.

So off we go to do our thing then - we will update as we can.