After a frustrating start to the morning when what should have been a quick five minute exit from the town due to a diversion and the craziest one way system-even worse than Northwich- took at least 20 minutes, as you can imagine Colin was his usual calm an collected self during this time! Once on route the landscape quickly changed back to acres of arable land some still with crops of maize ripening to gold, alongside vineyards as we followed the Prosecco wine ...

Well we found out today exactly what our little red flashing warning was telling us- no rear ABS. We discovered this by having to execute two emergency stops with 20 minutes of each other this morning as we left Florence, thankfully the front ABS does work! We have travelled north to Treviso which is a town which is built around canals and bridges almost a mini Venice. It is a medieval town but unfortunately most of it was destroyed during April 1944 but quite a...

Florence Day Two or as Colin said "Good morning Florence" Having made a late decision to come to Florence, we were unaware that in order to visit the main attractions, it is advisable to book your tickets in advance; as we had not done so we were unable to access any of the attractions but it doesn't matter as I fully intend to come back here for another visit. Yesterday whilst we sat in a square eating salads and grapes bought from the local Carrefour supermar...

Our journey to Florence was along the main autoroute which meant that we could make good time and arrived at our lodgings by mid afternoon. Along the route once again we saw amazing hilltop villages, castles, churches and what could have been a monastery, I think Colin got fed up with me 'oohing and aahing' over each new one I spotted! An hour outside of Florence we stopped seeing them as the landscape became flatter. After 2 hours travelling we pulled into a s...

Our journey through Italy brought us into a different landscape again. Gone were the arid brown plains, interspersed with the peach and fruit orchards, we were now passing olive groves and prickly pears, as we are up the miles these gave way to vineyards and then on to pass empty fields of harvested crops and then once more into the rolling hills and up onto the sweeping corners of the mountains. Along the route towering above the roads were mountain side villa...