Day 26 - Tolls and Tunnels

Today is another moving on day. We’ve enjoyed a couple of nights at Camping Miralago, but it’s just a bit too chilly for us…: so it’s time to try and find warmer weather. We are moving on to Lake Maggiore, further west. Our new routine for moving day is to pack the van up and then take Marla off for a walk to stretch her legs before we head out. Just before we left, I spoke to our neighbours opposite, they have a black lab called Emmie and they were wondering how it works taking the Shuttle across the channel as they have some family near Bristol they want to visit. Emmie was very sweet to watch, she had a camping chair all to herself and quite offer was sat up with her family (see photo 😂). She’s 18 months and a tall dog - they were very surprised when I said that Marla is almost 4 (she’s 4 in December so I think we’ve moved away from being able to say 3.5 years old.
Anyway - back to today.
We set off at about 10:30, with a plan to stop at a supermarket a couple of hours away. The roads were slow going, very twisty and turny with lots of tunnels and mountain paths, so when we eventually arrived at the supermarket I was a bit hot, bothered and grumpy. We ate lunch and then Charlie headed off. It felt like he was gone for hours, he was probably about 45 mins but it was warm and I was stressing about which route to take for the final leg. Marla was getting a bit stressed out being on the move for so long, so I just wanted to get everything done with - so opted to take toll roads to get us to our camp site as quickly as possible. Well… we’ve certainly had an adventure! Our first toll road was exactly what I expected, we passed a gate where we had to take a ticket, we carried on driving and eventually got to a booth where we put the ticket in and we should be charged for what we used … that’s the theory. What happened in practice is that the machine kept coming up with an error about the ticket being unreadable (we think - it wasn’t in English!), then we heard a man’s voice in the machine. Then nothing ….. eventually we pressed the button for help and had a holding message that said we should stay in the car. Then a man came over, while on his phone, he didn’t say anything to us but just talking on his call. Eventually our toll flashed up and asked for payment, just as Charlie put his card to the machine I asked if it was saying €80.10 - turns out that’s exactly what it was charging us but it was too late and the fee was taken from Charlie’s account - a bit steep for a 24 minute drive! He then insisted googled how to challenge a wrong fee ….. we think we have been charged as if we got on where the toll road first started because it couldn’t figure out where we joined. Hopefully we’ll get our money back…. We carried on following the sat nav, knowing we had more tolls to come. They next was even more confusing as all of a sudden we approached a payment kiosk, I started to freak out because we hadn’t been through a ticket barrier. Thankfully there was a special lane just for tourists, and then it became clear that it didn’t matter where you got on the road, it was a flat fee - phew!
We came across the same again a few miles later, this time we had to pay at an automated cash kiosk, thankfully that was all plain sailing too!
Toll roads over, we started the final stretch to the camp site, although we’d been advised that vehicles over 2 meters can’t go through town but you need to over shoot and come back on yourself. Unfortunately both Garmin and Google Maps were very confused by this and wanted us to hop over the boarded into Switzerland before making our way to the site - thankfully the camp site had included pretty good instructions and we made it in relatively unscathed, although we did have a bit of an issue finding the right way into camp, and figuring out how to check in at reception when there was absolutely no where to stop. Anyhoo… we made it and it’s pretty and much warmer than we’ve had recently. Hopefully we will be brave and go into the lake one day …. I am sure Marla will be keen to have a paddle as soon as she can.
Dinner tonight was spinach and ricotta stuffed tortellini with a side of aubergine, covered with a smattering of Parmesan.
The rest of the evening was spent decompress and starting to think about where to stay after here as we don’t currently have anything booked.
The site here is busy but not noisy, it’s a little bit strange in some aspects. You can’t wear your shoes in the bathrooms, you have to leave them outside and put on a pair of communal sliders 🤢 there also doesn’t seem to be anywhere to dispose of a chemicals toilet - hopefully there is somewhere and we just haven’t found it yet.
That’s all for tonight, after a couple of beers and a glass of red wine, I’m very ready for my bed…..Read more