New tyres and a rendezvous with friends

Riva Del Garda at the top of Itay's largest lake

In our excitement to head  inland, after having spent just over two weeks on the Adriatic coast, we blew out a rear tyre. Thankfully we narrowly escaped a potential disaster pulling over in time as I could hear a subtlety different road noise to normal.

Bill changing the tyre with his Swiss pocket knife!

Our tyre disintegrating at speed on the motorway! I managed with some difficulty to change to the spare & limp into the nearby coastal town of Fano
By the time the salesman had sold and fitted us two new Pirelli racing tyres, we stayed another night on the coast in this quiet seaside town, now only stocked with locals, a few northern Europeans and us.
The racing tyres propelled us well inland the next day, the motorway falling away beneath our scorching tyres, arriving at the ancient Medieval town of Mantova, situated on a thousand year old artificial defencive lake, not a moat but a lake. It seems there is no expense spared in the pursuit of war or the making of ones own self safe in case of war.

Looking at Mantova from out on the lake

One of the canals through Mantova

Beautiful classic cars on display

A car rally was being held with classic cars. Beautifully presented cars, mostly the major Italian Marques but also some British and a yank tank out on its own.
The city was humming we tried to stay up late, the real entertainment starts after 10 ....unfortunately had to head home to bed early, but did hear the fireworks at midnight.
The next morning we did a launch trip, very scenic but not a lake I would swim, some wild fowl and swans which had the others on our trip in a tiss, many photos being taken.
Next stop was to be Pescheria but found the beautiful village of Borghetto on the way through, a small mill village on the river Mincio (the highly modified outlet of Lake Garda) with several mills now mostly restaurants. Soooo pretty. A lovely camper park 300 m from town, with BBQ. Great! Took a very pleasant 34km return bike ride on one of the many cycleways in the region the next day to Lake Garda, our next stop to rendezvous with Mark &Elaine. The Neville's (from our Auckland days) were going to be in town, they had heard of our, "no friends Nigel" plight and a rendezvous was in the offering.
We reconnoitred the town having a nice lunch on the canal side before returning home and walking out to enjoy a well earned beer in an ancient mill house on the river side.

Lovely picturesque village
of Borghetto

Lovely lunch on the canal in Peschiera

Cycle path heading into Peschiera

We drove into Pescheria next day fortuitously finding a camping park straight across the road from M&E  whom we had booked a hotel for as we had good Internet.
We spent a pleasant evening and dinner at Pescheria then next day heading to Verona by train to take in the old town. We hadn't done much research on this having bypassed it last time as its greater area is nearly a million so we took the circular bypass.
Elaine had researched. It is a lovely old town where none less than the Romeo & Juliet  hung out, the crowds thronging Juliets Balcony  were an experience. Verona also boasts the 3rd biggest Colosseum in Italy, and the obligatory amphitheatre. we spent a pleasant day there before training back.

Elaine in typical Italian pose in Verona - "You wanna how mucha??"

Looking out from the Roman theatre ruins
out across Verona

We then spent another 5 hrs in our car park enjoying nibbles and wine and speaking English all night with dear friends, something which we have really really missed. Also with our Swedish Camper neighbours who enjoyed a few wines with us.
M&E headed off the next day continuing their whirlwind trip of Italy with tons of good, or possibly dubious advice as we headed off to visit  the ruins of a roman villa on the shores of lake Garda in Sirmione. Being engrossed we ended up staying another night on the foreshore..

Our camper park on the edge of Lake Garda

The ruins are an enigma, being a private villa in a stunning position on the lake, much used as a trade route from prehistory. The building was huge and magnificent but of no known owners, little has been discerned, IE no connections with politicians or rulers, which leaves only a very very rich, well to do merchant or trading family.

The Roman Villa out on the point of Sirmione

Bill doing a little BBQ at camp

The ruins are the most significant Roman private dwellings to be found  throughout Italy and represent a household of such dimensions and grandeur as unparallelled in known antiquity.
The upper reaches of the lake begged exploration, setting off early on the Saturday as the peninsular got busy with the influx of weekend tourists (a lot of English now being heard and many northern Euro plates in evidence).

The pretty village of Lemone

Looking out to Lake Garda from Lemone
From 17th century lemons were grown on these hillsides

Enjoying the view over Lemone

Coming into the village of Malcesine

The lakeside drive also an enigma, I can't recommend it as a scenic drive unless you are on a motorcycle.  We saw some stunning vistas but so typical here, absolutely no provision to stop and look. Many "scenic stops"are barriered off leaving few stops even for emergency purposes. The lakeside is sheer cliffs of the likes not seen at home "least ways not with a road round them" and the road for a fair proportion is tunnelled round the shoreline with portholes out (where presumably much spoil was dumped). A stunning work of engineering. A motorbike is the answer here but being uber busy I couldn't recommend it. Our answer was to do a boat trip the next day.
We stayed in a another camper park, not good facilities but central and safe. The town of Riva del Garda is a gem set against the towering mountain on one side, Italy's biggest  lake on another, and gigantically scarred mountains on the other side, crossed  with huge land movement I would associate with fault activity on a scale of ,"holy Shite should we be here???". The vista extends back in the direction of Austria and Switzerland. Epic mountains to say the least.The town we can recommend as a nice place to stay and visit, and you can easily avoid the trauma of tunnels and narrow lakeside roads by using the nearby motorway.
The lake cruise was a great way to see two of the otherwise too difficult to access by motorhome, lakeside villages. The boat travels down the lake for 30 mins with stunning views that were denied us the previous day, leaving you in  the village of Limone for an hour and a half, simply beautiful. The boat then returned to ferry us across the lake to the equally pretty village of Macesine, both villages being orientated to taking money off tourists but still pretty pretty.We both had a small spend, with Sheryl getting a lovely teal winter jacket in a flocked material and Bill finally getting a leather jacket, which is a must if you're visiting Italy. No??
The boat also leaves you there for 1 1/2 hours here before the last leg, a  45min trip back to Riva Del Garda. A  pleasant way to spend our day. And only took 245 photos but have managed to whittle that down to a mere 60 exceptional photos. Can't wait to share.....

Fireworks, friends, beaches & thunderstorms.

Mattinata Beach at our camp.
And this was the quiet season 

We headed back to Montemiletto unexpectedly, having sustained some minor panel damage (perhaps the day we left M), and as Mario (Rico's cousin) is a panel beater\painter it was thought expedient to engage his services now, while timing was

One of the many mortar explosions during the 3 hour seige

still loose, rather than later in the UK. This was also convenient as his workshop is directly under the apartment of Rico's that we use. Easy Easy.The hard part was to get Mario to take payment, but we worked hard to make it happen. I was also able to help paint their twin boys bedroom, so we all got a good deal.
Another week in Montemiletto was not a hardship, the fireworks were still going strong everyday at surrounding villages, there are possibly 10 villages within a 10 km radius, almost running into each other, all having their own Saintly celebrations. The money spent on fireworks must be phenomenal!!!! Mario, Carmelina, and boys took us on a Thursday night at 8:30 for a roadside BBQ in a good viewing spot for Montefalcione's display. It was an experience in that we set up a table and BBQ  on the road side (no curb or footpaths here) with a dozen friends and proceeded to have a late (by our standards) meal then await the display. Dinner was over by 10 and the display reputedly starting at 9:30 but all quiet except for the stream of cars and people  up and down the hill, food stalls etc everywhere on the roadsides, kids everywhere.

A dug out dwelling in Daunian Necropolis

Bill looking gravely into burial cavities 

Then 11.30 it went off, amazing! And we've seen a few now, 20 minutes of stunning, body slamming, eye popping, mega display. Some of our group took it calmly, not even taking up position to watch, then when it was over, no one moved??? Turns out this was the first one of 4 competing displays...... 30 mins later round 2 started and so it went on. Getting home at 2AM.... Talk about being body slammed, we were shattered, deafened, blinded, traumatised. How do the kids manage it, let alone the local animals. It is something else. Carmelina asked us, after we said it was probably the most sustained fireworks we had ever seen, how the "Catolics" celebrated their village saint days in NZ. We were nonplussed. Indeed how do they???. One thing for sure, nothing like this at all !!!!!!
Whilst there on our last night Rico's mother and sister, Bernadette and Sandra, turned up  from Switzerland, for a wedding of a relative. Was good to once more catch up. Always a big affair these Italian weddings taking many days of bride and groom events, nothing as crass as a hen or stag night as we are familiar with. Big family events with open doors at both families houses over the week leading up to the wedding. The couple are shifting into a renovated part of the grooms family home, so son still living under the same roof and bride only shifting across the valley a km away, indeed can still see Mum & Dads house. This is still very normal in the small villages of Italy. It is good that this lifestyle is still attainable in this day and age.

Vieste Old Town

Sea cliffs of Vieste

Vieste Church out on the point

This mechanism keeps property in family hands for countless generations though can cause some confusion down the years as to who owns what? On occasion some one will sell out their part to relative strangers, or parts will be inherited by in laws etc causing much fragmentation of family holdings. There seems to be an awful lot of old housing stock in ruins, and as much partially renovated. Much seems to be renovated but unused, if as a holiday home?? I understand that property is not often moved out of family control so can stay empty for a generation or two, till family fortunes change, and or the families heritage is once again taken up.
The weather has produced huge rolling thunderstorms for 3 consecutive afternoons, They roll around the district sometimes hardly affecting your own locale, often staying hot and sunny, torrential rain a few kms away or perhaps torrential rain at your place. The thunder may last for two hours or more.We have witnessed these storms in several places during our tripping. Always awesome!!! Once more leaving Montemiletto  we crossed Italy to the Adriatic side in search of... well warm water, sun and more chilling.
We are meandering up this coast known for its nice beaches, and good facilities to cater for the crowds, IE lots of lidos, camping and apartments. What we find so amazing is the amount of infrastructure in place that is used for 2, sometimes 3 months and over that time is truly only busy for four weeks over the Italian holiday

Night times the right tme in Italy, every place
comes alive

The seaside fishing village of Peschiera

break when the country does stop for the month of August. We would think that staging the holiday season would work better for the country, the schools are off for the 3 months as are the universities, them supplying many of the staff for the holiday resorts. As we know from last year the shoulder season leaves the areas deserted with only a few foreign tourists taking advantage of the heavily discounted accommodation and meals whilst the beach peddlers and stores are trying to desperately rid themselves of stock. Then the lido are stripped from the beaches and all that is left in these towns are the few residents, truly turning into ghost towns. The cycle kicking off again the following summer.
The Daunians were some of the original inhabitants, about 9C BC on this part of the coast, with little known about them leaving only graves hewn out of the rock in a few places. They predate the Romans and Greeks, only really known from the Greek writings, and some pottery shards. Not much to be said about them except we visited a necropolis, simply an area with many burial holes on top of a hill overlooking the coast. The holes then turned into cisterns with channels cut to collect water for subsequent dwellers who enlargened some of the dugouts and lived there trying to eke a living from the desolate hill top. Interesting but light on detail for the consumer. The timeline of how all the mediteranean cultures overlapped is intriguing, and detailed, and a little beyond what I'm able to keep track off. Still I can't ignore looking into these graves and wondering!!

Trabocchi (Fishing machines) dotted all along this coast

Walked a long beach, an isthmus, with a large lagoon supporting a large mussell industry. Was sad to report the beach was awash with thousands of plastic stockings used to culture the mussells.

Where is everyone??
Broken chair is a sign someone was!

These long beaches are now deserted,
All the chairs & umbrella's will get packed away.

That and the habit of beach users to discard there rubbish as they leave, including all the broken beach chairs umbrellas and toys, despite the many signs extorting people to be tidy. This has been dissapointing and oft repeated.
The weather has stayed indifferent now for the week as we continue north with an amazing lightning storm at sea, thunder following, for many hours, finally fining up only to followed by another electrical storm during the night. Looking at our options it might be an idea to zag back to the otherside of the Italian isthmus and chase up better weather.
Time will tell.

Roadside stalls very colourful

Scenic fishing boats on the lagoon

Local fishing the river mouth!