The Golden Wedding Extravaganza - 1st August 2010

I left Fran taking to the high seas on a kite.  He still insisted on taking lessons after all my instruction on the lilo kite surfing technique.  I headed home for a long weekend to celebrate Mum and Dad's Golden Wedding Anniversary.  50 years and counting!
It was lovely to be home for a couple of days but even more lovely to spend time with everybody at the party.  It was such a very splendid day and there are big thank yous to be said to so many people but especially my Aunty June and Peg and to Uncle Paddy and Bruce for all of their hard work.  Rivendell Garden was at its most beautiful.  The day was perfect and I know Mum and Dad had such a brilliant celebration. 

You would have thought after 50 years of marriage it would have been the 'little white van' to have taken them away but no it was the big red bus, thanks to Colin!

People came from far and wide and there was much reminiscing from those who were actually there on the day.  Even though Avril still insists that she was only about 3 years old on the day - the wedding pictures do prove otherwise though Av, you were nearly as tall as Mum on the day.
Entertainment came from several different sources:-

Evie read some poems for the sailors amongst the party and Flo sang some tunes and really blew us away (although I think she would like me to add she did not have balloons on her head at the time!)and Paul entertained with not only balloon art but some excellent slight of hand tricks, I think people are still looking for their watches and wallets if you are reading this Paul!

It was a good trip home and I was very proud to have been able to be with my Mum and Dad to celebrate their 50 years of marriage.

4 Foxes and 1 dragon!

Camping Tellina, Manfredonia - 25th July - 7th August

Back on the beach, in the heart land of ancient Sapponto (so it said in the blurb anyway).
The campsite was basic, a wonderful graveyard of ancient caravans that the locals used for their weekends/hols. A family run business headed by a lovely grandmother who, with a glint in her eyes, would ring her hands together every time you entered her domain for an over priced stale loaf of bread or out dated milk. Boo managed to get 1 euro out of her, after a shower she'd paid a Euro for lasted for only a minute, to carry on showering granny gave Boo a euro, which was never returned.  Like a chess player she stalked that Euro at every given opportunity for the two weeks of our stay.

Boo had to go back home for a few days to celebrate Dave and Sylvia's 50th wedding anniversary (see special post) which left me at a loose end looking after the teardrop and all our other worldly possesions. To keep myself entertained I decided to try out some kite surfing. Boo thought it best to give me a few points in the do's and dont's of this new sport and in her gentle manner not only impressed my fellow kite surfers but the whole beach on the art of lilo kite surfing.

It took me a bit longer to get the hang of things but managed it in the end, but I might have to take up lilo kite surfing, its cheaper!

To sum up - Tellina was mixture of stale donuts, kites, reggae parties, Shylock grandmothers, jellyfish, picking tomatoes growing in the sand by the beach, thunderstorms, gypsy waltzing and Bari airport. Nice.

Camping Le Foci - Opi, Abruzzo National Park - July 22nd - 25th July

Pit stop on the way to Camping Le Foci

The next leg of the journey was somewhat hair raising as the route took us very high up into the mountains of the Abruzzo National Park. The drops were as spectacular as the scenery though. The campsite was surrounded by forest and they proudly told us, as we were leaving, that there were not only 'bears in them there woods' but lynx and wolves as well! Nice thought.

Swimming Lake, near to campsite was a welcome relief from the mad heat during the day.  All in all it was a quiet visit to this area and not much to report, well no glimpses of any bears anyway.

Villa Cresta, Caprese Michelangelo, Tuscany - 11th July - 22nd July

Villa Cresta - Small yet perfectly formed

The day Frodo Baggins came to visit!

We headed for inland Tuscany with a half fixed car and hoped for the best.  The 'mini' villa was spot on and had everything we needed, not to mention a SAAB dealership in Arezzo. Arezzo turned out to be quite interesting in a typical Italian way, a big square surrounded by restaurants and genuine antique shops.

We had hired the mini villa before leaving home thinking that we'd need the space and comfort of a king size bed after six weeks in the Gin Palace, it was a treat not having to trek through a campsite in the middle of the night to use the loo.

This was also a good location to go exploring from. We went for a day to Florence via train on which the ticket inspector tried to get a back hander because we hadn't punched our tickets on the return journey, there was a lot of head shaking and pointing to £80 fine signs, but he'd let us off for just £40, and no we couldn't pay with a credit card, which was a shame as we had no cash, this went on backwards and forward for about an hour until the train arrived at our destination, where we just got off with a quick flick of the V's.

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Going to Florence was quickly followed by the most important day of the year being of course Boo's birthday.  We headed for Siena to a hotel (with AC). Yet again Siena did not disappoint, we managed to find our favorite restaurant, from a few years previous, the food was so good again we just know we'll be back to Siena which has to be la creme de la creme of Tuscany.

Fran finally drove Boo up the wall!

So she got him locked up!

Twelve lovely days of clean spacious comfort. Now back to reallity of life on two wheels.

Our Guest Blogger - 28th July

The Lovely Ms Levene (and Boo of course)

Guest Blogger: Ms Charlotte Levene, Hackney London


Mid Italian tour 2010, I had the great pleasure of reacquainting myself with the delightful Mr and Mrs Dolan. My Gazbund and I were taking a leisurely break to escape the ever hurly burly London and were fortunate enough to coincide our trip with the afore mentioned couple.

We arrived on the Tuscan coast and headed straight to our pitch, stopping momentarily to great my dear friend Mrs Dolan. After erection had completed it was time to visit properly. What a delight it was to see that Mrs Dolan still had the Cheltenham lady about her. Our marvellous host greeted us with a G and T at a table. What a glorious way to start our seaside adventure. After a slightly boozy early evening we were given the grand tour. The teardrop is truly a delight and there is a place for everything and a kitchen to boot! Thank the Lord Mr Dolan won't go hungry.

The Dolans were charming hosts, offering us hearty Spanish food one night and showing us the local eateries the following night. Parlour games were played and gentle conversation ensued.

My Gazbund and I would like to say a joyous and exuberant thank you to the Dolans. Our holiday went from an A to an A plus plus.

Much love to you both

Charlotte and Gaz

xx

Tent A Go Go!

Marina di Bibbona 3rd July - 10th July

Take this piece of junk away!

Well as you can probably tell from the picture the breakdown finally happened, on the positive side it was neither Boo nor I (but theres still time, as doing nothing but lounging about for a long periods of time can be stressful).
Luckily the car broke down once we had reach our destination, lovely yet again, on the coast and only 100m to the beach. This was the Westward Ho of Italy, every thing you needed on your door step, perfect for when you haven't got any transport.
We had a  welcome surprise visit from Charlotte and Gaz who were on their way to Puglia. They stayed for a couple of nights eating pizza, drinking, playing in the sea and more drinking.
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Another past time of ours is Lilo Surfing, so we purchased one each and took to the breakers!
We are not at award winning level.

I think the Italians were impressed with our skill and looks.

So that's how we spent the week, with friends, lilo surfing a bit of football and waiting for news on the car which finally came on Friday evening, the day before we were leaving. It was fixed enough for us to use and move location but some electrical still needed fixing.

When in doubt...paint your toenails! 

Deiva Marina/Cinque Terre 29th June - 3rd July

We left Rapello on the Tuesday for fear of never sleeping again and headed down the coast about 90 miles and near to the famous Cinque Terre towns.  We landed at a campsite that was directly on the sea front and although the smallest 'caravan' on site managed to muscle our way to the front.  We had a lovely view straight out to sea and made the ordeal of camping on the hard shoulder more bearable.

Wash day yet again!

We spent a good couple of days on the beach and Fran did some snorkeling to pass the time.  We also spent a lot of time doing guided tours of the teardrop and entertaining passing campers.  We did think about charging admission but were told it was strictly against campsite rules (of which there were many!)

We also took the opportunity to visit the Cinque Terre.  There are 5 in total and they are spectacular, clinging to the edges of cliffs and ancient to boot.  We actually only managed to visit 3 of them but did go to all 5 train stations, does that count?  As famously said about mad dogs and Englishmen we were out in the midday sun that was topping out at a casual 40 degrees.  So you can imagine that the steep climb to some of the town was not worth even contemplating.  But we got a good feel for the place and had really good day.

Eating and drinking again!

ITALY! Rapello, Portofino, 26th June - 29th June

We took the motorway which hugged the dramatic coastline into Italy and our campsite at Rapello.
We should have just camped on the motorway's hard shoulder as our new pitch was only 10 meters from it. To knackered to move on we decided to stay at least till the following day. Having set up home I joined my fellow motorway workers in the bath tub, sorry pool, for a swim.

Later that night we strolled into Rapello and were pleasantly surprised to see the town in full swing with bands on every street corner and people of every age milling around, we had no choice but to join in with a couple of icecream, wild!

The following day we tryed to go for a swim at a local beach with emerald green water but couldn't park the car and ended up in Portofino. For two hours we wondered around catching flys with our mouths open due to its prettiness and not to mention the price of a beer (small one at that).

While I was distracted Boo managed to swap the deeds of Garden Cottage for the property below.

Being too lazy to move we stayed another day and spent it on a taxi boat tripping around the coast, like an open top tour bus you can jump on and of. We ended up on lovely beach at the foot of a medieval monastery where some crazy monk had either thrown a huge statue of JC into the sea or had some how managed to chisel it under water, I presume, with a very long snorkel.

On the way home we past Portofino again, where I saw another of Boo's purchases. I wasn't allowed on.

St Tropez 19th - 26th June

We arrived in St Topez just a week behind the floods. We had heard some really sad stories about what had happened there but were assured that we should carry on with our trip and everything would be fine and functioning.
We got to our campsite just outside Grimaud Port. A massive campsite with Olympic size swimming pool and water slides to match (sadly no pictures). Must just mention Fran was asked to leave the swimming pool as his shorts were too long and wasn't allowed to return until he had bought some little 'speedo' style hot pants (again, sadly no pictures!).
The weather was much better at last and we started to cook with the temperature in the awning getting up to 49 degrees.
We spent several evenings in the port of Grimaud and St Tropez itself even though all we could possibly afford to do was look at the boats from a bar balcony.

Another day was spent with Michael and Anne in their beautiful villa above the hills of Grimaud and we were exceptionally well fed and really well watered through the day. Their salt water pool will be very hard to beat in any location, many thanks.

Val De Cantobre, Nant - 16th - 19th June

Once over the Millau bridge we found ourselves driving along some huge gorges which were stunning. Our new campsite was set within one, so we'd wake up in the clouds. We spent a morning in a town in the gorge, Cantorbre, which we hadn't noticed for a day because it blended in so well to its surroundings it was virtually invisible to the naked eye, small and lovely, that was the extent of our sight seeing. Other wise the remaining time was spent at the pool on the water slide. We did a good job at making our self's out to looking like Gypsy folk (all that was missing was the satellite dish and the dog on a string).

Millau Bridge - 16th June

We were told that to miss travelling over the Millau Bridge would be a mistake - so we made sure that the trip to next campsite incorporated the bridge.
It really was a sight to behold and surprisingly our fortune changed and the sun shone on our crossing (for 10 minutes anyway). We stopped before going over to take a good look from a viewing area, which nearly killed us as the climb up almost required oxygen.
It was well worth the effort though and although we didn't get a picture of The Teardrop crossing we did manage to take a few.

Spot the Teardrop!