The day starts well enough and we're in no particular hurry. We look at some maps and books and decide to head for the coast in the general direction of Ancona.

Anna, the owner, is in a fret this morning. One lot of grapes turned up 2 hours late last evening meaning they had to work through the night. While Ali tastes and buys some wine, Anna's mother takes a couple of bunches of grapes off the trailer and gives to Nick in the van. They are sweet and juicy, running with liquid as they are plucked from the bunch. Anna apologises for being to busy to show us around, 'Iffa you come again, you havva a meal with us'. We finally leave at 12:20.

We drive north around the lake but it is hazy and there are only glimpses from the road, which Land Rover could use as a test track, although the black Umbrian hills are impressive.

Perugia was a possible idea for a visit but we are making good progess, although we get a good view of the city from the peripheral road.

We have a few miles on dual carriageway with plenty of tunnels, then a few miles winding up through the hills before we join a new road under construction with 30kph speed limit.

We stop in a service station to look up a stopover tonight. Options are an FA, site or sosta. The only FA within 2 hours doesn't appeal but there are sostas and sites aplenty showing around Ancona and Fano. We select a site promising sea views and a restaurant, open until 1st October. €1.20 worth of autostrada and a few miles of back roads get us there. It's deserted, except for a woman who exits the restaurant and drives off without offering any help. We search another site half an hour away and ring them. They're open but we decide the price is a bit steep for off season.

Sostas; two come up. We drive to one location where Snoopy says turn right but it's a gated factory compound. We drive a few miles back up the autostrada to the other, a seafront 100+ space one. It's a typical off-season seaside town but attractive enough. We drive way past 'you have reached you destination' until we spot a fenced area that looks likely, but there's no apparent way in and there are a lot of caravans most of which are clearly permanent residents. By now the sun is getting low so we swallow our pride and head for the site at Fano that we could have been on over an hour ago. We arrive and pitch easily and sit quietly looking over a deserted beach on the Adriatic coast to calm ourselves down. It's the first bad day we've had in Mary*Lou so we just put it behind us and down to experience. If we drift around it's bound to happen now and then but the alternative is to devise a day-by-day itinerary from day one and we don't want that rigidity.

A frustrating day ends on a site called Tourette; it's enough to make us swear.

To add to our 'misery' trains run past the campsite through the night.