Three Go Adventuring Again

[DBK]

Were you okay for the Pont Avon?

No, it is still laid up but should sail this Thursday. We came over via Roscoff but hopefully we will go back via Santander but if there are still problems with it we will just adjust timescales. The drive from Roscoff to the Mediterranean was much more interesting than I expected!

 

[DBK]

Possibly more detail than required at this time of night but to complete my observations on the consumption of asparagus :

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/why-asparagus-makes-your-urine-smell-49961252/

 

[elamessa]

No, it is still laid up but should sail this Thursday. We came over via Roscoff but hopefully we will go back via Santander but if there are still problems with it we will just adjust timescales. The drive from Roscoff to the Mediterranean was much more interesting than I expected!

Depends if they can get fuel for it!!!!

 

[DBK]

Just a short hop of under forty kilometres today but it still took us nearly two hours. The reason was we took a very wriggly road to Roubion and campercontact aire #24944 which went via the Gorges de Daluis. Which is described here: http://www.dangerousroads.org/europe/france/4270-gorges-de-daluis.html
The entrance to the gorge looks innocent enough.

But as the website above calls it, this is a "balcony road":

The wall between the road and the abyss is barely a foot high and it is a very long way to the bottom.

One of the reasons the journey took so long is because we stopped at least half a dozen times at roadworks, whether it was repairs to crumbling edges to the road or in this case work to prevent stones falling from above.

The aire at Roubion is one of the best, if not the best I have seen. It is set in a little valley below the ski centre and above the village of Roubion itself.

There is a sort of track from the aire towards the village, actually it follows the line of the water and sewage services to the ski centre but it is quite negotiable! We will leave visiting the village until tomorrow but here are some views from the " track".

On the slightly downbeat side our fridge has packed up on gas, it seems to be the thermocouple. It will light but won't stay on. However, we have a good coolbox so we will use that for critical things like meat, milk and wine and stuff like salads and butter will stay in the broken refrigerator. Only another nine weeks to go and we will be fine on campsites with EHU. And finally, this aire needs an obscure male to male adaptor for the water. Our half inch Hozelock is too big!

So welcome to France, no diesel and no water!

(and no fridge either)

I just need to decide now on what road to take next, this one is very close to us but it goes in the wrong direction so we might leave it for another year. We saw signs for it with a 2.5m width restriction and 3.1m height limit. It does look interesting though...
http://www.dangerousroads.org/europe/france/310-gorge-du-cian-france.html

 

[scousebird]

Made me shudder just looking at the photos

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[Fenman]

Wow that looks awesome.
That's definitely going on the must visit list.
Love the website name: dangerous roads.

 

[DBK]

Forgot to post a map, the blue dot shows where we are:

 

[DBK]

Good news this morning, Mrs DBK managed to get the fridge working last night. Possibly because everything had cooled down or maybe just her magic touch!

We won't be turning it off again.

 

[DBK]

Very poor internet connection where we are now, a place called Jausiers not far from the Italian border which will cross tomorrow. So the pictures below are all reduced to around 100 Kb in size.

Today we went over the Col de la Bonette, which at 2,715m is quite high.

The road up.

The view from the Col itself of the loop road which circles round the little peak in the distance and then return to exactly the same place on the Col giving it the record, so they claim of the highest paved through route in Europe. The "through" bit is important as there is a much higher road in the Sierra Nevada but that is a dead end. However, given this loop road doesn't go anywhere and might be classed as a dead end I am not sure it is much of a claim as it was built for tourists I understand. Unfortunately, it was still blocked with snow so we just went over the Col, which is a proper road!

The beginning of the descent.

The view from just below the summit.

And an Alpine Marmot, of which there were quite a lot running about.

The temperature at the top was about 9C and there was no wind. We saw less than a dozen cars, a few more cyclists and motorcycles. The road is not difficult and could be done by any size of MH I think although those with a large overhang at the rear (on the MH!) would need to be careful of grounding on the inside of the lacets. Probably because of the melting snow and recent rain there were a lot of little and not so little stones on the road near the summit. These would have been puncture inducing for those on two wheels but not too bad for the MH.

All in all, a grand day out as Wallace might have put it.

 

[DBK]

Found a better connection so trying to upload bigger versions of the photos above.

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[DBK]

We left Jausiers this morning. It's not a bad air beside the river but there is some road noise. The service point is the other side of the river and this is where the CamperContact co-ords will take you, which is a bit disconcerting as there is nowhere to overnight there. Fortunately, if you have a sharp-eyed co-pilot they will have spotted the parked MHs on the other side.

Unfortunately, I couldn't get the card operated service point to work so we moved a few kilometres down the road where there is another CamperContact aire #11807 at Barcelonnette which had a similar card machine but this time with instructions in several languages, including English! The downside was it cost us €8 for which we got two jetons and a receipt to put in the window if we wanted to stay overnight. Which we didn't as the aire is beside some noisy sports pitches so we went back to the riverside aire at Jausiers where I took the photograph above just before we left this morning. The name of the distinctively shaped mountain in the background remains a mystery unless anyone can identify it.

Leaving Jausiers after a return trip to the Barcelonnette to spend our second jeton we left France for Italy by way of the Col de Larche (1948m) or Colle della Maddalena as the Italians called it. The picture below was taken just before we reached the col, the parked vehicle belongs to a man in the field collecting fungi of some sort.

Immediately after the summit the road descends through nearly twenty hairpin bends, which aren't shown on the Michelin atlas as they are so close together, but it was an impressive zig-zag drop into Italy, made more entertaining by huge trucks coming up the road which I soon learned gave no quarter!

Not long after this we went though a village which had lights to control the traffic through the narrow village centre. The lights were on the outside of the town on the west side, where we were coming from, but the matching lights on the other side were almost in the centre and there were other tight spots beyond that. When our light went green we passed easily through initially but immediately after the light controlling traffic coming in the other direction we hit a narrow spot and there was chaos for several minutes as huge lorries squeezed passed each other through the gaps, with us clutching to the coat tails of the truck in front of us.

We headed east towards Cuneo but before reaching it we turned due south, passing out of Italy back into France through the 3. 2 km long Tunnel de Tende. This is a light controlled single track tunnel with long queues either side but we waited no more than fifteen minutes before being given our green light to go through the narrow tunnel, which is stone lined having been opened in 1882. Work is underway to create a second tunnel and widen the original but that won't be completed for several years I suspect. What you can enjoy now are another impressive series of steep hairpins straight after you exit the tunnel.

Then it was back into Italy yet again for a short distance to tonight's stop. CamperContact sosta #20717 at Olliveta San Michele. This is built on abandoned olive terraces and is doing a good job of imitating an abandoned sosta too as the place is deserted. We shall see if anyone turns up to collect their €8 but either way this is a very pleasant and tranquil location, but the route up to it is steep and narrow and the entrance has a fearsome humpbacked bridge effect, which we got over with a couple of inches to spare underneath!

 

[Just smiffy]

We left Jausiers this morning. It's not a bad air beside the river but there is some road noise. The service point is the other side of the river and this is where the CamperContact co-ords will take you, which is a bit disconcerting as there is nowhere to overnight there. Fortunately, if you have a sharp-eyed co-pilot they will have spotted the parked MHs on the other side.

View attachment 108032

Unfortunately, I couldn't get the card operated service point to work so we moved a few kilometres down the road where there is another CamperContact aire #11807 at Barcelonnette which had a similar card machine but this time with instructions in several languages, including English! The downside was it cost us €8 for which we got two jetons and a receipt to put in the window if we wanted to stay overnight. Which we didn't as the aire is beside some noisy sports pitches so we went back to the riverside aire at Jausiers where I took the photograph above just before we left this morning. The name of the distinctively shaped mountain in the background remains a mystery unless anyone can identify it.

Leaving Jausiers after a return trip to the Barcelonnette to spend our second jeton we left France for Italy by way of the Col de Larche (1948m) or Colle della Maddalena as the Italians called it. The picture below was taken just before we reached the col, the parked vehicle belongs to a man in the field collecting fungi of some sort.

View attachment 108045

Immediately after the summit the road descends through nearly twenty hairpin bends, which aren't shown on the Michelin atlas as they are so close together, but it was an impressive zig-zag drop into Italy, made more entertaining by huge trucks coming up the road which I soon learned gave no quarter!

Not long after this we went though a village which had lights to control the traffic through the narrow village centre. The lights were on the outside of the town on the west side, where we were coming from, but the matching lights on the other side were almost in the centre and there were other tight spots beyond that. When our light went green we passed easily through initially but immediately after the light controlling traffic coming in the other direction we hit a narrow spot and there was chaos for several minutes as huge lorries squeezed passed each other through the gaps, with us clutching to the coat tails of the truck in front of us.

We headed east towards Cuneo but before reaching it we turned due south, passing out of Italy back into France through the 3. 2 km long Tunnel de Tende. This is a light controlled single track tunnel with long queues either side but we waited no more than fifteen minutes before being given our green light to go through the narrow tunnel, which is stone lined having been opened in 1882. Work is underway to create a second tunnel and widen the original but that won't be completed for several years I suspect. What you can enjoy now are another impressive series of steep hairpins straight after you exit the tunnel.

Then it was back into Italy yet again for a short distance to tonight's stop. CamperContact sosta #20717 at Olliveta San Michele. This is built on abandoned olive terraces and is doing a good job of imitating an abandoned sosta too as the place is deserted. We shall see if anyone turns up to collect their €8 but either way this is a very pleasant and tranquil location, but the route up to it is steep and narrow and the entrance has a fearsome humpbacked bridge effect, which we got over with a couple of inches to spare underneath!

View attachment 108044

I went along that road last September through barcelonnette, did you not walk around the town...? I found it a lovely place.... When you come down from the mountains into the low lands you'll see all the fruit farms on the right hand side in the valleys ..... Beautiful scenery....

 

[DBK]

I went along that road last September through barcelonnette, did you not walk around the town...? I found it a lovely place.... When you come down from the mountains into the low lands you'll see all the fruit farms on the right hand side in the valleys ..... Beautiful scenery....

Unfortunately, we didn't visit the town. The aire was very noisy as the sports fields were full of kids and we had a suspicion some of them might come and sit on the tables and chairs in the evening as a few were already doing so.

But you are right, amazing scenery.

 

[DBK]

It turned out to be a cheap night at Olivetta San Michele as we didn't see any sign of the owner all the time we were there. So with fingers and everything crossed we drove up the steep and narrow access ramp and sailed miraculously over the hump at the entrance with the fittings like steps and exhaust pipe intact.

The service point doubles as a black waste orifice so everything unwanted went down it. A one euro coin released the fresh water at a rather feeble pressure. A notice said we would get 50 to 80 litres for our coin but I doubt even the lower figure dribbled in, but it was enough to keep us going for the day.

Another notice said there was a charge of €2 for "discharge" and to put it through the letterbox if there was no one there. Someone cursed with literalism might take them at their word but I think they meant the money should go into the letterbox. Of course there wasn't anyone here, so we did drop our €2 into the slot, being an honest sort of bloke. Sort of in the sense I didn't stretch to posting €8 through the letterbox, which would have been the overnight charge had anyone been around to collect it. My excuse before St Peter will be the letterbox didn't give any change and I didn't have enough coins to post the full amount. A weak excuse, but it might save me from the fires

I must confess to a little pillaging from the place in addition to short changing them on the full fee but on one of the lower terraces of the olive grove I found some wild strawberries growing. Now in the UK these are not very sweet usually but these ones were the sweetest I have ever tasted!

And these foraged delights went very well with this morning's muesli, though I shouldn't have added the banana as it's strong flavour somewhat overpowered the strawberries, but they were still very tasty and all the more so for being free.

We are now at a campsite for the weekend and I am writing this surrounded by drying washing, which is the main reason for coming here, Saturday being the traditional washday for the DBKs when travelling.

We arrived after driving along the coast road, avoiding the toll road, and as a short course for being converted to the Italian driving style I can thoroughly recommend this route. Indeed, I even think I could pass an Italian driving test, so adapt have I become at pulling out in front of other vehicles at junctions and I am now completely unfazed by being undertaken by scooters while being closely tailgated at the same time by a Fiat 500 or similar. The Italians do have an attitude when it comes to mortal combat on the road, otherwise known as "normal driving for Italy".

The site is ACSI #2886 at Pietro Ligure and is fine except for the mean token operated showers which give you about thirty seconds of hot water!

It does have a bar where we sat outside yesterday evening, and you do need to sit down when the bill arrives, €7.50 for one large and one small beer.

Sites are good places for people watching and MH watching. Behind us there is a German Pössl van, the ones with the round windows at the back, which look to me as if they are made in the same mould as lavatory seats.

But I mustn't be rude about them, they are good vans and in Globecar form there might be one in the family soon as my brother, after a cold night in a tent in Scotland recently has been converted to the advantages of MHs and a Globecar is one of the ones on his shortlist.

Finally, last night had a little magic moment when I took Charlie for his last leg stretch before bed. There are fireflies here! Charlie saw them first, little twinkling lights flying around us like fairies with intermittently faulty torches.

I will try and photograph them tonight but there is quite a lot of ambient light here so it may not be successful. I've only ever seen them once before, in Provence when camping as a child. In fact I'm surprised to see them here as I thought they would have preferred somewhere darker, but they were mostly under trees so they can obviously find each other in what darkness there is. The lonely hearts pages here must have a lot of messages along the lines of "lonely light seeks other for brief encounter."

They are of course beetles not flies, but firebeetles lacks something poetically and alliteratively.

 

[jockaneezer]

We encountered fireflies for the first time on the Mosel last year. We'd had a bit to drink and were cycling back along the river when Val said "Hey, those flies have got head torches on !"

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[DBK]

A few days ago we went over the Col de Bonette, which at 2915m is about the highest through road in Europe. I recorded it with our cheapo dashcam and, courtesy of the camp bar WiFi, I have managed to upload a short clip of the col. The little loop they have built which claims the highest through road in Europe starts where the blue container is and ends where the motorcycles are. It was still blocked with snow.



The avi file from the dashcam was converted to mp4 using MediaConverter Pro and then edited and uploaded to Youtube using VivaVideo. The latter is free and the former £1.99. All done on my phone!

 

[DBK]

Sitting in the MH at the moment and it is raining outside! It was also raining slightly in the loo just now until I closed the skylight a bit.

After it got dark last night I went out on a firefly expedition. It was cooler than the previous evening, foretelling the impending change in the weather, but they were out flying as normal.

The exposure details on the shots below are 10s, f4 and 10,000 asa. The beetles flash briefly as they fly along and you can see this particularly in the second shot where there is a line of little sparks, marking the trail of at least one of them. That you can see the background so clearly is because of the high ambient light level. I thought this would make it difficult to photograph them but I think it improves the shot. If it was totally dark the images would be just a lot of dots on a black background.

The pressing questions now are where to go next and what to do about the coming public holiday on Thursday, Republic Day apparently. The campsite we are on now say they expect to be very busy but could find us a pitch if we want one, although we would have to move from where we are now. However, we will move on tomorrow and head south where the weather might just be a little better. The forecast is for a changeable week here but further south, Rome for example, has sunshine forecast. We don't intend to go that far south but I guess the nearer we are to Rome the better.

Tuscany beckons and I think we can easily reach the north of the region tomorrow. There are a couple of aires in the Garfagnana Valley which look suitable.

For the public holiday anywhere away from the sea or lakes might be in order. With Thursday a holiday I expect a lot of locals will take Friday off as well and make a long weekend of it. Places will be busy!

 

[Just smiffy]

Been waiting for these pictures... That first one looks so magical....

Excellent shots..

Thanks..

 

[pyro]

Amazing pictures. I don't know about any Alpine Marmosets, but it's a little 'otter back in Blighty today

Sorry, couldn't help it

 

[Rob and Val]

Stunning photos and a great narrative. Thank you!

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[DBK]

Piedra Ligure to Castel Nuovo Magra

After a warm night we headed off along the coast road, which really does hug the coast with several short tunnels as it cuts across headlands in the cliffs. Our aims were twofold, find a supermarket and an ATM and in both of these objectives we failed! We didn't see a single supermarket and though the satnav told me there were ATMs in the villages and little towns we passed through parking anywhere near them was non-existent. Finally, we joined the A10 autostrada just outside Savona after a mildly disconcerting moment when a front wheel suddenly skidded as we climbed up a little slope just before joining the main road. I'm not sure what it was, possibly spilt diesel or just a very slippery surface at that point from the rain.

Joining the autostrada, which is a toll road here, entailed collecting a ticket from an automated booth. There were no instructions visible, other than a cartoon hand pointing to a very large red button. Inexplicably the phrase “whatever you do don't press the button” came into my head at that point, but I pressed it anyway and won a strip of thin card, like an oversized bus ticket.

I had expected the autostrada to be a bit like a UK motorway and driving on it would be a lot less tense than the driving I had experienced on my first full day in Italy, but I cant say it was!

Trucks didn't stay particularly well in their lanes and the slip roads where traffic entered the autostrada were short to non-existent. There were also some remarkably tight bends all made more exciting than usual because the road surface was still damp in places.

We skirted around Genoa, seeing the evocative sign to the port, which could take us to Sicily - but not on this trip.

In addition to food and cash we also needed diesel and gas and from a website I discovered there was a motorway services just before we were were due to leave the autostrada but I stopped for diesel before then and put one hundred euros in - it would have taken more but the price for the fuel was significantly higher than I had seen off the autostrada. However, a nearly full tank was one less thing to worry about but we were less successful with the gas.

At the service point, which was manned, I was told the gas was for “traction” only but I could get gas for “cooking” in nearby Sarzana. At which point I remembered reading about this problem earlier in the year. It seems motorway services won't fill up vehicles with gas unless the vehicle is adapted to run on gas. I'm not sure what the problem is, possibly “cooking” gas is more highly taxed?

Fortuitously, the Sarzana turnoff was the one we wanted and after several minutes head scratching at the automated toll booth on leaving the autostrada, a problem solved by driving forward far enough for the camera on the booth to recognise it had a punter, at which point the otherwise entirely mute and lifeless payment machine sprang into live and devoured a twenty euro note before spitting out a couple of euros and a few cents in change. Off the second roundabout, as we entered the town blindly looking for the mystic source of “cooking” gas, we found a supermarket which had the added attraction of lots of parking.

While Mary went on inside I consulted the Oracle of Google and found a garage stocking lpg close by. I also found the item I had read about which recounted problems on motorways with a general consensus in the replies to this question that any garage not on a motorway would have no qualms about serving you.

Unfortunately, after I couldn't get the lpg pump to work, I learned the garage would serve me but not until three o’clock as the attendant had gone for his lunch.

As we weren't critical on gas we left and drove the short stretch to Agriturismo dei Peri near the hilltop village of Castelnuovo Magra, CamperContact 4514. This is a sort of small holding with olives and vines (the products of both they sell but we haven’t discovered how and where from yet) plus we can see geese and chickens behind the fence around the farmhouse.

We tried exploring the little vineyard after lunch but discovered a large compound in the middle filled with two large and noisy dogs. This was nowhere near the house so they are obviously there as intruder alerts. We hastily retreated, dragging Charlie with us as he was determined to meet the dogs so we turned left outside at the entrance and walked for a while until the threat of rain suggested a second withdrawal was also prudent. We had gone far enough though to decide walking to Castelnuovo Magra was quite feasible tomorrow morning, so we returned to the motorhome for the usual late afternoon mug of Earl Grey, which we drank while listening to the rain falling on the roof, the rain which we had felt coming earlier.

We are in the foothills of the Alpi Apuante which in turn are part of the Appenines, which form a sort of spine running down much of the length of Italy. The Alpi Apuante are also the source of Carrara Marble, a pale stone much sought after for buildings, monuments and sculpture. The Pantheon, Michelangelo’s David, Marble Arch and the statue of Robbie Burns in Dumfries were all made from it. The region was also a cradle of anarchism at the end of the Nineteenth Century, partly because the work in the quarries was so demanding and harsh virtually anyone would be employed there and no questions asked. As a result ex-convicts and fugitives, some from outside Italy came to work here and radical ideas grew, fuelled by the neglect the quarry owners showed to their employees.

My reason for coming to the region is this is where Eric Newby bought a house.

Newby’s first book, The Last Grain Race, recounted his voyage on the last sailing clipper to Australia just before the Second World War. During which conflict he served in the SBS before being captured following a raid on Sicily when they failed to rendezvous with a submarine and were picked up by a fishing boat instead. Love and War in the Apennines describes how he was sheltered by the local people after he was released from prison after the armistice between Italy and the Allied Forces in 1943. However, the Germans and Fascist sympathisers were still in control of the country and Newby was secretly, and at great risk to his helpers, taken up into the mountains, spending several months at one point living in a cave surrounded by snow.

The prison where he had been kept was an old orphanage in Fontenallato, near Parma, and here he met his future wife Wanda, who taught him Italian and whose links to the local people were largely responsible for Newby’s clandestine escape. Unfortunately, his liberty did not last long and he was eventually recaptured, betrayed by Fascist sympathisers because in the mountains it seemed no secret could be kept for long and the news a British officer was in hiding became almost common knowledge.

Newby went back after the war and he and Wanda were married in 1946.

Some twenty years later they bought a tumbledown house near the village of Fosdinovo, which is the other side of the valley from we are on now. Their experiences are recounted in A Small Place in Italy which is a book much more about the local people than it is about buying and renovating a house in Italy, and all the better for it!

If my enthusiasm for the works of Eric Newby are not yet apparent I will say more plainly - go and read them all and don't miss probably his best book and a work reliably included in almost anyone’s list of the ten best travel books ever written - A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush.

 

[DBK]

Predictive text and poor proof reading strike again! My "pantheon" above should of course be "parthenon", but in any case I am sure it is wrong. Carrara marble was known to the Romans but not I think the Greeks who had their own fine marble, Parian, from the island of Paros. Trust me to believe what I read on the Internet!

 

[DBK]

A Walk to to Castelnuovo Magra

Despite grey and threatening skies we walked to the local village of Castelnuovo Magra this morning, which was about a half hour walk, gently uphill all the way.

Castelnuovo Magra, which translates literally as "slim new castle" sits on a hilltop overlooking the valley of the River Magra, so I'm unsure if it is named after the river or the shape of its tower.
sangue di bue

MORE TO FOLLOW - PRESSED "POST" TOO EARLY!

 

[DBK]

Note distinct lack of sunshine!

While we walked we heard distant rumblings, but this was not the thunder forecast for later today, but could only have been blasting at the marble quarries. Writing which it suddenly occurred to me why are marbles called marbles? The answer, according to the all knowing and sometimes wrong internet (see previous post) is because some of the earliest discovered, dating back several thousand years, were made from marble. Modern ones are of course made from glass, largely using a process invented in Ohio in 1915, where a blob of glass runs down a pair of rollers, rotating and cooling and dropping off the end as a sphere. http://mentalfloss.com/article/29486/brief-history-marbles-including-all-marble-slang

The route up to the village is among terraces of olives, interspersed with a few fruit trees, cherries, plum and níspero or Loquat, which we first came across in Spain last year. These small orange coloured fruit, like mis-shapened peaches seem to be used mostly as an additive to other preserves, probably as they are high in pectin. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loquat

The towers of the castle were impressive when we got close, but there didn't seem to be any way into them.

Inside the village it was all very narrow and traffic free streets.

These buildings are mostly painted in the traditional pink/red known locally as sangue di bue or oxblood. Eric Newby observed in the sixties, when he came here to buy a house that they were all this colour but since then Mr Dulux has been busy and selling many different colours.

Some of the side streets were really very old.

Modern road surface I think.

Any wash cycle you want so long as it is cold. The village laundry.

The village church has a lot of marble, presumably the local Carrara.

On the way back I met one of the locals!

 

[Fenman]

Lack of sunshine but one hell of a view.
Looks a lovely place - could be uninhabited other than a donkey.
And in the old days using what looks like a lavoir would be made a whole lot better by that view.
Yet another to be marked on my map.
Grazie molto.

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[DBK]

Not sure what happened with the donkey picture above. I was playing with the photo editing knobs and obviously pressed the wrong one and introduced a wee mite of distortion!

Anyway, this picture hasn't been fiddled with much. The view from the site gates of Nuovocastel Magra.

And a shot of the sosta.

However, it is a somewhat rum place. The senora who runs it came to see us when we arrived, or rather I had to go and look for her but let's not quibble over nuances. Since then she has hidden behind her notice filled gate apart from rare and brief forays to speak loudly to sundry passing tradesmen.

They can't be faulted on the recycling, from the left: paper, food waste, glass, general rubbish and finally metals and plastic.

But what to make of this?

Do they mean this? Even grey waste should have something like Eleanor added to it? Perhaps they do, because another notice says the same.

Which may explain why a German MH just ran his grey waste out onto the ground before leaving today. All very weird.

 

[DBK]

"Eleanor"? Predictive text strikes two nights running. Should read:" Elsan".

 

[scousebird]

"Eleanor"? Predictive text strikes two nights running. Should read:" Elsan".

I thought "Eleanor" was a brand name

 

[DBK]

I thought "Eleanor" was a brand name

Goes well when added to Rigby, removes all stains.

 

[DBK]

One of the shots I took today I discarded because it looked a bit boring. It was the view looking down towards the river Magra plain, which flows from right to left in the picture below.

The hills in the far right are those backing the very popular and picturesque Cinque Terre villages.

However, the boring plain in the middle distance has an interesting history. Here is Eric Newby on the subject, describing his journey from the north:

Here we entered the Plain of Luni, the site of what had been Luna, an important Etruscan city and seaport which Livy described as being ‘the first city of Etruria’ and Strabo as having one of the finest and largest harbours in the world, much of its prosperity being because of the marble trade. But in the fourth century AD its decline began, brought on by the malaria which eventually rendered it more or less uninhabitable. It was subsequently sacked many times: by the Lombards, by the Normans in the ninth century and by the Arabs, who finally destroyed it and carried its inhabitants into captivity in 1016. Both city and seaport disappeared from history some time in the twelfth century, killed off by the malarial mosquitoes, and became an area largely populated by ghosts and goats. Now all that remained of it was an amphitheatre that once seated six thousand spectators and a theatre. It was Luna that gave its name to what is now the present region of Lunigiana, although originally it was much larger.

Don't tell Mrs DBK I've brought her to a malarial hot-spot. Not that we've seen any mozzies up here in the hills and we haven't seen a goat either, or an amphitheatre. We won't mention the ghosts.

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