Tuesday, 24th July 2007
Happy birthday, Sarah!
We were on the road to Torre del Lago, which is where Puccini’s summer place is, and where they have an annual Puccini summer festival, for which we had tickets.
More tunnels, more high bridges, and more lovely scenery. And a flat tyre.
Yes, the Hornsby penchant for driving on only 3 round tyres struck again. I was actually unaware of it, and would have been for some time had an Italian couple not driven past us, waving their arms frantically.
Actually, this happened twice – the first time, we assumed they were informing us that we should have our dipped headlights on, a rule we were unaware of until this moment. The second time, we were 200m from a service area, so we stopped, and surveyed the wreckage. I tried pumping it up, which was working, but the valve had worked loose, and air escaped every time you moved the valve stem.
After last year’s episode, I now felt more confident of changing the wheel myself, and used the time-honoured method of jumping on the wheel nut spanner to undo the nuts. I changed the wheel while Annie had a lie down to contemplate what might have happened had we not been able to negotiate one of the tight bends on the narrow and winding mountain roads. Actually she had woken with a sore throat and headache this morning and had been having trouble staying upright in the passenger seat so she bravely slept through my heavy breathing and muttered expletives whilst doing the dirty, awkward and hot changeover.
Somewhat gingerly, we started off again, and covered the remaining 30km a little more sedately. We found a campsite, with spaces (arriving there at 3pm probably helped a little), and we parked up. I managed to get Annie to swallow two paracetamol (she hates taking any kind of meds) and she was almost fighting fit in half an hour. We went for a tiny explore and found a bar (across the road) and had a celebratory pizza and I had a couple of beers. Annie managed one small glass of wine and it was back to the van for an official night’s sleep. The pitches are small and the campsite is amazingly crowded, with a good mixture of French, Dutch, Italians and Brits but everyone seems very friendly.
