Towards La Manche

February 02, 2023

After a lovely day in this stylish Italian town it’s time to head for the hills. We’ve wandered the elegant streets, explored one of the largest collections of Egyptian artefacts in the world and sampled good local food and wine. Our generous hosts have provided lovely hospitality and good conversation and I’ve made friends with their small menagerie of animals.

We have a long drive ahead and will need a couple of nights along the way, before we get to ‘La Manche’. Aimile needs some attention too. Chris and our host, Aimon have made a neat cover for the radiator to stop too much cold air getting into the engine. Although it’s sunny, the temperature is hovering around zero. We’re watching the weather forecasts, hoping we don’t have to use the snow shoes.

It's soon cloudy, but as we drive higher into the mountains, we get some tantalising glimpses of brilliant sunshine lighting pretty alpine villages. There’s snow at the side of the roads as we start climbing. Aimile purrs valiantly onwards. Italian coffee is the best and there are plenty of opportunities for us to refuel. Aimile needs regular refilling, he only has a twenty litre fuel tank. We’re moving steadily towards France. It would be fun to drive through one of the passes – but at this time of year, not very sensible, so we’ve planned a tunnel route. And the most direct one. We’ll deviate on the way back, but for now, we need to get to the UK in time for Chris to celebrate his birthday with his family – having lingered a day in Italy, and with a cruising speed of around ninety kilometres an hour, we don’t have a lot of time.

Traffic is light and it’s an easy drive. Deviating a little to find some new windscreen wipers. We seem to have lost one along the road, we make good time and find somewhere to stay soon after dark. I’m dreaming of a French beer; Chris wants a local wine. It’s a motel, cheap and cheerful, with very friendly staff and there’s a bar and restaurant attached. A light draft beer goes down really well – Chris enjoys a glass of red. But we decide we might need some of the local white to complement the meal – both are very good. The busy waiter is happy to talk us through the regional wines and explain to us where we can buy some the next morning. Alas, his directions are not clear enough and Google maps diverts us around the countryside! We need to press on, so we give up the search. Soon we’re purring along on a good road, paying regular tolls. There are a few lorries and Chris has discovered that if we find one going at a comfortable speed and tuck in neatly behind it, it pulls us comfortable along in its wake and gives us an easy ride with great fuel economy.

Once we’ve left the mountains, it’s not an interesting drive. Large fields are mostly fallow in deep winter. Snow is forecast – it’s following us from the mountains and we hope to beat it. The scenery is grey and it’s almost raining. There’s not much to punctuate a long, hard day of driving and we need to be across the channel the next day, if Chris is going to get to his family in time. It’s a relief to find a cosy place to stay, just after dark, even though we haven’t driven as far as we had hoped.