We don't exactly wake up, more a case of not closing our eyes after yet another Valentino Rossi wannabees blasts past at full throttle. It's 30C when we use the dump and start a fairly uninteresting drive between Como and Maggiori. Around Lake Maggiori is much more commercialised than Iseo and in our opinion less attractive. We pass through Arona, where there is a huge copper statue of San Carlo, whose fingers alone are 1.9m long. Apparently its construction methods were studied by the French engineers who gifted the statue of liberty to New York.

A few miles up a track we arrive at our Fatorre Amico, Molino del Sabbione at Paruzzaro, where the Owners remember N+G from their visit last year. We settle in then go for a walk around the lanes to the two nearby villages, Paruzzaro and Ollegio Castello. There are pretty wild flowers, butterflies and the ever present, but invisible, crickets and cicadas.

Back at the FA we look at some of the animals; kid goats, geese, ducks, chickens and a noisy cockerel, and a donkey that sounds like a rusty gate.

In the evening we go for a meal, which is a 'you get what we cook you' style menu. First is seven varieties of antipasta; salami, proscuttio, lardon, two types of bruchetta, roasted pepper and black rice with cheese.

Next comes risotto with blueberries [mirtili] grown on the farm. Now that lot needs something to tamp it down, so we get roast beef, which she describes a shin or flank, with roasted vegetables. The beef is also raised on the farm, so in case we're not sure of its quality, we get a skillet of strips of beef flame grilled with olive oil which literally melt in the mouth, as does the ice-cream that rounds it all off.

We chat to a young Belgian couple who arrived later this afternoon with two children in a motorhome which they said cost €2200 to rent for two weeks, and thought how lucky we were to be able to travel as we do.

Oh, yes.