Italy

It reminded me of Holland! But more of that later. First of all we had the best hotel breakfast we've had so far - cereals, croissants, yoghurt, fruit and the first appearance of cheese! We're finding we're becoming base-animals in a way - a good breakfast and Adam & Joe or Ricky Gervais on the iPod and I'm completely satisfied on the road. And again in the evening if we can't find a hotel straight away it's a pain but an hour later when you're sat in a restaurant eating and drinking it's all good.

So we set off from Ancona, Ed with a bit of a hangover, in the lovely sunshine but the air was quite cold. Stopped for lunch in Ravenna where Ed downed some balsamic vinegar which sorted him out a bit and kept me happy! We then had some tea/coffee in one of the many squares of the nice town before heading out on the one-lane-each-way road the rest of the way to Venice along the Netherlandic-flats and marshes and across water. Never seen so many lorries!

I waved to the aircraft passing ahead as we approached Venice itself and we found a good spot to park the boys on the island and caught the boat to our pre-booked hotel a 5 minute walk from St Marco's square. A friendly German guy who works in Venice and is half-based here was having as much trouble as us finding his way around but we got there in the end and went out for some lovely food and drink.

208 miles today and on through Slovenia to Croatia tomorrow for a day off!

We went downstairs for breakfast and the hotel was freezing. We were the only people in it (and possibly the only people on the whole street) and after another unsatisfactory Italian breakfast (toast style biscuits and a cuppa) we took to the streets and left the weird place behind.

It had poured with rain yesterday evening and this morning, but cleared up for our departure initally into the mountains again with rocky outcrops reminding me of the lake district, possibly helped by the clouds and rain! Yesterday had reminded me of Banff in Canada and the day before Wales, so where tomorrow I wonder?! We had to stop on the road for a huge herd of goats and dogs to pass. I managed to miss the photo opportunities.

Beautiful scenery......

The Italians love putting their mark on a place, usually with graffiti or rubbish!

We stopped for lunch at a place with a cracking view over tha flat-as-a-pancake sea and carried on up towards the North again. We found a couple of motorbike shops on the way, but they really annoyed me with their lack of stuff. One of them was enormous, spread over both sides of the street and three floors, but it had nothing in except motorbikes and helmets. They wouldn't even let me up onto the top two floors which you could see from the street had loads of stuff in. Grrr!

After that spent the rest of the afternoon chasing an impressive enormous CB/thunderstorm which was slowly making its way up the coast too and managed to avoid any rain all day. We arrived in Ancona (after 217 miles today taking us up to 5848 miles) which was a bit of a suprise again, hard to find a hotel but lots of nice squares and fountains, lots of younger, attractive people - we're going out for dinner!

We departed from our hotel in Rosanna Statzione at around 12pm, the day on the road previously had been a long one and it took some time to wake up! After a rather unsatisfactory breakfast of nothing more than some Italian style 'toast' and a coffee/tea we packed up and got back on the road, heading north around the boot's instep.

The road was mainly single carriageway with a speed limit of 70kph! Needless to say we didn't stick to this! We had 260miles to cover and we needed to do them slightly faster than that! Most other road users including the Police also disobey these rules I might add!

We stopped for lunch in Taranto where we found a set 3course meal for 8euros - nice a cheap we thought. From there we had made the decision to head to Bari on the East coast. The road throught the mountains went past some very Greek-looking villages and then opened up on the plains towards the coast.

From there we bombed up the coast towards our stop for the night, San Giovanni Rotondo which was recommeded to us by an enthusiastic chap we'd met at breakfast. We found it a slightly odd place, it has a lot of churches and seems to be some kind of religious centre. Based quite high up in the hills, inland slightly and with as many hotels as there are people staying here at present! We shall see some more of it in the morning.

We covered 266miles today.

Today we arose quite early because we had lost a day to Roger's leaking engine. We were once again watched by our slightly odd hotel waiter, but this morning he kind of had a reason for staring because of James' fantastic hair!

After packing the gear on the boys we settled up and set off around 10:30, which is pretty good going for us initally South East towards Ascea and some of the Coastal roads recommended to us by Antonio.

The roads wound their way up into the hills passing lots of small villages and were quite damp from the night before's rain which kept us alert. Also keeping us alert was the state of the roads - pothole-arama - and we even had to stop once while some locals repaired a section of Tarmac! The Italians don't like to drive on their side of the road all the time either and on several occasions we were faced with a 10 tonne lorry head on!

We managed around 60 miles in two hours on these roads, so we decided to head to the Autostrade to rack up some more, so after a short petrol/coffee break we proceeded south on the A3 towards Catanzaro. From there we headed East and stopped on the back of the toes of Italy at a place called Capo Rizutto (again recommended by Antonio) where we took in the beautiful sunset before it disappeared behind Sicily.

Bombed up the coast to our stop for the night on the in-step (Rossano Stazione) which was relatively dead by the time we got out but we stumbled across a lively restaurant with great pizzas and footie (Juve Lazio) on the telly.

323 miles today takes us up to 5365.

Awoke and had breakfast in our hotel (the only people in a huge room with our assistant watching on silently as we ate - very odd!)

Ed looked at Roger and thought it would just be a loose nut, but some friendly mechanics came along to have a look and took the bike away in their van!!

In the meantime we got showered and cleaned, I ruined my hair trying to give it a trim (so no photos of me for a week without my helmet on!) and then we headed out and had a lazy lunch at the Ristorante Le Giare where an extremely friendly waiter Antonio took an interest in our travels and let us use his laptop to put some photos up.

Ed's problems were minor this time, with just a ruined washer, so he's off to pick it up now - should be back on the road in the morning.