Bassano del Grappa

We woke up at 6:30am this morning. I hadn’t had a bad nights sleep considering I wasn’t overkeen on our park up spot. But Ellie had loved it and once all the cars had gone by 11pm we were joined by a campervan that pulled up directly behind us and I felt a little better about being there overnight.
When we woke up it was grey skies and looked pretty miserable. The sun kept trying to poke through and the cliffs we could see out of the window turned a golden yellow in the sunlight. Then the black clouds came and that was the last of the sun we saw all day.
All we had planned for today was driving and hopefully finding a supermarket on route. We couldn’t check anything where we were because we didn’t really have any internet but I knew there was a Lidl near our park up spot for tonight if we didn’t find one on route.
At 9am sharp we left the marina and the rain was now coming down in buckets. I was a little worried about getting stuck at the marina because we had come down such a big hill but even though the water was gushing down Wanda gripped the road well and pulled us up. Once we reached the top my phone pinged with a weather alert for heavy persistent rain all day until tomorrow lunch time.
Our next official stop was going to be the mountains and a set of tunnels hand dug and just wide enough to get a mule through in 1917 but we weren’t going to make it all the way there today do I hand found us another free park up in the town of Marostica next the walls of it’s famous castle. It was 120 miles away and we’d already decided not to take any toll roads so it was going to take us 4 hours.
The journey was a nightmare in the fact that it rained all the way and the roads were like rivers. So far the Italians haven’t lived up to the hype of they’re all crazy drivers which was a blessing today but they do have there quirks. They love to drive right behind you and right on the white line in the middle of the road and it doesn’t matter if you’re already in a roundabout they will quite often just join it anyway. Also when pulling out from a junction it’s ok if there’s a couple of cars coming because they will wait but if there’s lots of cars they won’t wait and they’ll just pull out. It’s ok if you’re expecting it which I was well prepared for, but today I found the Italians flaw. They can’t drive in the rain.
It didn’t matter how good the road surface was or how far we could see ahead of us the Italians just wouldn’t go over 45mph. Even when we came to a duel carriageway they sat behind Lorries where they couldn’t see a thing because of the spray and still wouldn’t overtake. We just sailed by them all doing 55mph.
Eventually at around 70 miles into the journey we came across a huge retail park that had a Lidl, Aldi and a Eurospar amongst others. There were also lots of other stores including my favourite, a decathlon.
We decided to change it up a bit and did today’s shop in the Eurospar which was bigger than Lidl and had a better food selection but not so much fresh food.
After that we popped into Lidl and got a fresh pizza slice each from the bakery. We also brought pistachio ice cream.
Then I was allowed to go into decathlon. I wanted to look for extra merino wool socks for cycling but unfortunately they didn’t have what I was looking for and the prices seemed high. I did look at the other cycle clothing but shopping for cycling gear whilst with Ellie is like clothes shopping with a toddler so I just gave up.
Back outside the rain was really helling it down and we are our pizza slices while waiting for it to calm down. 20 minutes later it was still throwing it down so we just continued.
It took another one and half hours to do 32 miles and finally get to the free aire in Marostica and it looked to be a great spot.
We are parked right next to the ramparts of the old walled city and lower castle. The aire has been freshly made and is tarmac with space for 7 motorhomes with a dump station for grey water and supposedly black water and free fresh water. I say supposedly because when we pulled in I emptied our toilet and blocked the drain because it’s tiny so I don’t think that was where I was meant to empty it. Then we tipped off the grey water and backed in.
It was now 3:30pm and the rain was coming down so hard we couldn’t see across the rest of the car park. The field next to us was rapidly flooding but I wasn’t worried because the drains were pretty good and we could hear the water flooding down.
In Wanda we could hardly hear ourselves think the rain was so hard so we plugged ourselves into our phones and drank tea whilst waiting for it to stop. Eventually at 7pm the rain finally let up and slowed down. It’s meant to pick up again overnight but we are glad we have a nice spot to sit it out.
Marostica is an old medieval city and tomorrow if the rain lets off we are going to go and explore. Apparently there is a town square nearby that is made up of squares like a chess board and every 2 years they have human chess games where the knights are dressed as knights on real horses and the kings are queens are dressed up. It dates back to the 14th century where the winner would be awarded the oldest daughter of the monarch and the loser the youngest.
By 9pm the rain had pretty much stopped but a VW campervan had pulled up next to us with a canvas pop top and we can hear everything going on inside. I actually thought they were outside still.
After I had my first shower in 3 days which felt really good we settled in for the night finally being able to put the to on and hear it because the rain had stopped. Hopefully tomorrow will be a better day.Baca selengkapnya