A brief visit to the UK and back again!

On Monday we spent a lazy day and had a pleasant hour chatting to our German neighbour Martin, who speaks excellent English. It turns out he spent a bit of time working in America and living in San Diego, which explains his fluency.  We invited him and his family to have a drink with us that evening but we ended up dropping in on them instead, and exchanged views on just about everything including Brexit!  It turns out he’s a tax consultant, and has run his own business for many years.  His wife, Simone didn’t speak much English, so this helped Karol refresh her German.  Their daughter, Malou (short for Marie Louise) stayed out of the way in the caravan and the gorgeous George their dalmatian was outside with us!  We now have an invite to visit them at their home in Kassel in central Germany.

We moved from Golden Sheep on Tuesday 25 July.  They were very kind to us, presenting us with a bottle of Prosecco and a couple of Golden Sheep pens to remember them by.  It was quite a job getting the caravan off our pitch as we had to manoeuvre it around two other caravans, and onto the narrow entrance road.  The motor movers did their job though, and we had another appreciative audience to make sure we didn’t hit anything!

We were all set up at Camping Poncione by twelve o’clock and spent a pleasant afternoon by and in their pool.  For some reason, many pools in Italy insist you wear a swimming hat in the water, and Olga the owner saw us on the sun-beds and lent us a couple of caps, which we duly modelled for one another. Olga runs the site with her daughter Andrea, both ladies are very beautiful, stylishly dressed, helpful and always smiling, and thankfully Andrea speaks excellent English – our command of Italian hasn’t improved much! The only problem at this site, so far, and we don’t mean to harp on about this subject but it is important to us, is the lack of clean shower and toilet facilities. We hit a new low here as the facilities were minimal and not clean. There was only one shower in the ladies area for a campsite of around 40 pitches. Hot water for the shower cost 1 euro and only lasted a couple of minutes. There were four ladies toilets, but we were back to no toilet paper and no soap by the washbasins. Things were no better in the gents. Come on Olga and Andrea, you can do better!

As Wednesday was our last day before travelling to the UK, we decided to explore a bit further afield, and went to Varenna on the right leg of the Lake.  We’d seen it from the boat to Como, and it looked like a quaint little place, and that’s exactly what it turned out to be. We parked up at lunch time, and found a restaurant by the quayside for lunch, where we were entertained by the cars getting on and off the ferry, and not knowing where to go.  It was chaos, not helped by a delivery driver turning up, and abandoning his van right in the middle of everything!

After lunch we decided to visit the Castle, which according to our tourist map was a short walk up the mountainside.  45 minutes of strenuous walking and climbing later we arrived at the castle.  The walk was all on shiny cobbles, and we were wearing flip flops – not a good combination!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

However it was worth it as we had some spectacular views of the Lake from up there.  They’d also pepped up the usual historical fare with a few birds of prey, and some interesting statues.  These were made out of plaster of paris – in the spring volunteer models were draped with strips of bandage soaked in plaster (just like when they make a cast for a broken limb) and then had to sit still for an hour until the whole lot dried.  They then wriggled out, and ‘hey presto’ a ‘ghost’ statue is born.  There were loads of them in various positions around the site, and made great photo props and you can see!

Afterwards, we made our way back down the slippery slope to the car park and returned to the site.

Thursday we were up and out for 8 o’clock to drive to Bergamo Airport which is about 90 minutes away.  We found the shuttle parking eventually, and were bussed to the airport in plenty of time to clear security, have a coffee and board the flight.  Everything went very smoothly, and we arrived at Stanstead around two in the afternoon.  By three o’clock we were having a cup of tea in Rob’s front room, as the Stanstead Express that we caught stopped at Tottenham Hale which is just two stops from Finsbury Park on the Victoria line!  We had a great time catching up with him and all his news, and admiring the ‘nearly’ finished flat.  We also shopped for Marmite at the local Tesco as our jar had run out and we can’t find it in Italy. We then had dinner at his local Italian restaurant (at my request, so I could order us all Aperol Spritz in Italian – how sad!) and then after breakfast the next day set off to catch the midday train to Birmingham.

Our lovely friends Sue and Dave met us at the station, and took us back to their place. We spent the afternoon catching up and  chatting, even on FaceTime to Helen with Emily and Jacob in the background, and the evening drinking red wine and eating real British food – shepherd’s pie and vegetables.  Very enjoyable!  The following morning Dave drove us to Hogarths Hotel at Dorridge, near the NEC, to meet the rest of the gang and to watch Joe and Laura’s wedding.  We enjoyed even more eating and drinking and catching up, along with admiring Joe and Laura’s calmness as they exchanged vows, and then their exuberant and energetic dancing long into the night.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After another delicious ‘bacon’ breakfast (that’s three in a row since we arrived, but we haven’t had bacon since March!) we scrounged a lift back to Knaresborough with Karen and Geoff.  We then spent a lovely afternoon with my Mum and Dad before taking them out for a curry at Zolsha (s0mething else we’ve missed whilst we’ve been away!)

Monday we visited Debi at Mill House, where she was hosting Guide Camp (which also meant we couldn’t stay there so we had to stay with K & G!) had fish and chips with Mum and Dad, dinner with Karen and Geoff, and then on Tuesday we were picked up at 10 o’clock by GBS cars and driven to Manchester Airport. A huge thank you to all our hosts for accommodating, feeding and ferrying us around – we couldn’t have done this whistlestop weekend without you. It was fantastic to meet up with so many of our friends and family in a few days, but sadly time didn’t allow us to see you all.

Our flight back was just as uneventful as our journey out, apart from Customs deciding that Marmite was a liquid, and they wouldn’t let me take it through!  When did a solid spread become a liquid I wonder?

We met up with Ros at Bergamo – she’d come in by train from Milan – and drove her back to Sorico with us as she was staying a few days in the caravan!  She looked really well, if a little tired, and I’m not surprised considering the size of the rucksack she was carrying and the amount of travelling she had crammed into the previous 2 weeks. By the time we’d driven back, shopped, set the caravan up and made some food it was quite late so we made up Ros’s bed and made plans for a relaxing day tomorrow.

As we are expecting a ‘guest’ blog from Ros in the next few days we won’t go into too much detail about her visit other than to say it was fantastic having her to stay and to be able to show her a part of the world we love.

We had collected copies of a couple of our honeymoon photos when we were in Knaresborough to help us determine which hotel we had actually stayed at in Cadenabbia.  We think we have it worked out now, and the one we thought was indeed our hotel.  They’ve just removed the sun deck and swimming pool and replaced them with a bigger dining room.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We never tire of just looking round at the stunning scenery here – Lake Como is much smaller than Lake Garda, not too wide so you can see from one side to the other, and surrounded on all sides by enormous mountains which seem to rise straight up almost out of the lake. The lakeside is dotted with small towns and villages, and a few private villas, and for most of the perimeter the main road has been taken through the mountains via a series of tunnels. There are very few speedboats or jet skis on the lake, but excellent regular ferry services if you don’t want to drive. The ferries are well used by local businesses too, to get from one side of the lake to the other.

We had four extremely hot, humid, mosquito filled days and nights with Ros, where we all suffered from multiple bites.  We spent more on creams and repellents than on food in those few days!  The pool was a godsend, as it allowed us to cool down, and its location away from all the trees meant it was mosquito free too.

We waved Ros off on Saturday afternoon, as she boarded the train to Venice via Milan, for the last stage of her adventure, and we prepared for the next stage of ours.  Germany here we come!