Heading for the hills

The 13th is lucky for me. Got a full tank of fuel and I've even managed to figure out how to switch my dashboard into kilometers. Not getting shot or killed by the locals was a real bonus(!).

Now I'm heading on to Verona where I'll be turning north for the run up to the mountains and Brennero.

Waiting in Brescia

With only 80km of fuel left and having driven past countless service stations that have all run out of fuel I have now found one near Brescia that is expecting a delivery. There's a very happy chap called (something like) Tinsoni who with his four words of English once visited Leeds and now feels like he is "my brother". He's brought me coffee and bread and moved my car up to the front of the queue - no one seemed to complain, I suspect he's the "big man" around here. I'm quite scared! :-)

In the meantime, an update from Yesterday. Venice was beautiful with a quite surreal atmosphere. At times it felt like we were in a huge themepark. And it was cold, especially on the water. We resisted the urge to take a Gondola trip as that would have been even colder. There's so much to see that in the end six hours was just not enough.

The trains and metro all worked well and we made it back to San Donato for 20:30, then to dinner with Dany. She took us to a truly fantastic Sicilian restaurant with some great fish dishes. The meal was great value too but for the €74 parking fine that Dany picked up.

A leisurely start this morning, a little bit of shopping and lunch. Then it was time for me to say farewell. Dany and Nobuko are hitting the fashion shops this afternoon and I'm hoping to make it over the Brenner Pass to Innsbruck before it gets dark.

Italian fuel strike!

I've just been reminded of a little problem that Dany failed to mention to me before I arrived in Italy. Every petrol station we've seen has been beseiged with customers trying to fit just a few more drops into their tanks and apparently now 8 out of 10 stations have no fuel at all. The queues are just crazy and do little to help a city already paralysed by too many cars. All very reminiscent of the UK protests a couple of years ago that were rumoured to be repeated this week.

I think I have 145 miles of diesel left which will hopefully get me far enough into Austria to find supplies. Otherwise it's going to be a long walk home. (Perhaps the BBC will send Ewan and Charlie's crew so we can make the third episode in the "Long Way" series.)

Trenitalia to Venice

Having escaped the morning mist and morning traffic(!) of Milano, we're now on the fastest train we could find to take us to Venice for the day. Out of the window we've got the fantastic vista of Lake Garda and the mountains on a clear day - picture postcard stuff.

My drive down yesterday went well in the end, despite the A1 being closed overnight and a late ferry crossing due to heavy seas. I decided to try the German Autobahns and this time they lived up to expectations. However, speed was tempered a fair bit by the rain from Koblenz to the Switzerland. As soon as I got to Basle everything got much colder and the driving snow as I headed up to the Gotthard tunnel was very exciting. Once on the other side everything was much drier. Tomtom had a laugh guiding me through the city centre to Dany's home in San Donato to meet with Frank and Nobuko. We then ate and drank the local fare before collapsing in preparation of an early start today.

A brief update on Nobuko's visits so far. After arriving on Saturday she's done: Lake Como with Dany on Sunday, Florence on her own (!) on Monday, Verona with Frank yesterday and Venice today with me. Tomorrow she's off to Madrid (flying via Roma) to see Javier before flying home again the following Monday.

The Nobuko reprise

As we all know Nobuko failed to make it to the party in Tuscany. But it would seem rather than not coming at all she is just running a little bit late(!). She arrived in Milan on Sunday and Frank's going to join her probably around about now.

I'm just about to set off and will hopefully meet up with the party in Verona sometime tomorrow lunchtime to early afternoon. We're then going to take in some of the sights of Northern Italy before Nobuko heads off to Spain to see Javier on her way back to her frozen home.

Updates for families and friends along with some photos will be posted as we go along.

Route post-mortem

I've been having a play with the routing you can do on Google Maps. If you click on the links below you should be able to see the route we followed, where we stopped and some of the places where significant "events" took place.

All works well apart from Day 3 where Google Maps simply won't navigate only the roads we travelled, hence this day appears in three parts.

The tally for the Google Maps route is 4520km. You can see from the picture that the actual distance driven was 4562km. No doubt some of the delta is by a couple of undocumented excursions to use the phone and the like. Even so, it's amazing how Google Maps manages to be 99.1% accurate over such a long trip.

Day 1 - Helmshore to Doncaster, Ashford, Dover, Calais, Bruges
673km, about 8 hours 42 mins

Day 2 - Bruges to Maastricht, Frankfurt, Davos
1,051km, about 10 hours 5 mins

Day 3 (Part 1, part 2, part 3) - Davos to Stelvio, Trento, Bar, Ristorante, Odina
611km, about 7 hours 13 mins

Day 4 - Odina to Castello d'Albola, Castello di Metelo, Odina
94km, about 1 hour 55 mins

Day 5 - Odina to Florence
72km, about 1 hour 22 mins

Day 6 - Florence to Helmshore
2,019km, about 20 hours 51 mins

Been there, done that!

Lisa kindly recorded (you can download it from Usenet if you haven't got a Lisa) episode 1 of the new series of the BBC's Top Gear programme that was broadcast while we were away. In it James, Richard and Jeremy set out to find the best driving road in the World.

Starting with a bit of fannying around near Monaco they head up to Switzerland and, after being booked overnight into a rather poor hotel, end up in Davos. From there they take the roads over the hills to Italy and ultimately Stelvio and realise they've found just what they were looking for.

This story sounds remarkably similar to our own experience. A similar route and a truly great road (although there was nothing wrong with our hotel). Anyway, the programme is well worth the watch if you get chance to see it.

Jeremy Clarkson, Oct 2007: "Davos to Stelvio, the greatest driving road in the World!" :-)