Sunday Lake Garda to Ventilimiglia

Got up early to start packing up. It had dried up , but was still windy and cloudy. Anyway we were ready to leave by 10.30, see how practice improves performance! The we hit traffic and did 6 miles in 40 mins. Our destination is a good bit further than we would normally expect to do, so any hold-ups could make things really difficult. Wind and cloud were forecast with 20% rain. All stress after our lovely break, that's probably why I didn't listen to Trixi ( Sat Nav) and missed our turning to Genoa off the Milan motorway. We ran into rain. The roof light was open as I still did not trust my makeshift cover. Anyway now was the time to test it, so I stopped under a motorway bridge and fixed it. If you've never tried stopping under a motorway bridge on a fast motorway in the rain I recommend you don't. It's not so much the side draught from the vehicles moving so fast as the near impossibility to accelerate fast enough to get back into the traffic stream where no one seems prepared to give way. The makeshift held, I discovered my mistake and we headed back for the right turning ( where is was not raining and had not rained).

Going through the mountains it did actually chuck it down for an hour so my efforts were rewarded in a funny sort of way. We headed for Ventimiglia near the Italian French border. It has been a long run 280 miles further than we would normally expect, but we got there at 5.30. It's a nice site clean and level, but rules, rules, rules!!

We had a meal in the restaurant and after a German and his wife invited themselves to come and sit with us Gerhardt I think his name was and his wife was Polish apparently. He was my age and a big lump, she had to be 20 years younger and attractive. Anyway he kept plying the wine and he and I did get a little drunk. Nicky being the sober girl she now is followed the conversation and as she said in the morning started to get ready to run when he mentioned the War!! Anyway it all went off very light hartedly. He said he didn't know his father, who had been killed on the Russian front when he was 3.