Italien

Our tent has a baggy rear end and that is not a euphemism. After settling down for the night, the back of the tent flapped violently as the wind rushed through from the door. It forced me to sleep back to front, but Jackie persevered.

We slept well until around 6am, but didn’t get up for at least another couple of hours. It was a beautiful sunny morning, but we noticed that most of the campsite was packing up to leave. There was a mass exodus around us. We wondered if it was something that we said, until we saw on the weather app that it was forecast as windy from midday today and all day tomorrow.

Oh my god, are we going to have another Dorset storm camping experience where our tent tried to fly away like a kite with us clinging on to it for dear life. On that occasion we ended up shoving everything sodden wet into the car and driving to the Bambridge’s where Angela kindly allowed us to dry out and made repairs to our ripped tent.

After coffee and croissants, we ventured down to our campsite beach and along the rocks to Cala Sapone, a small cove of a sandy beach, which Jackie fell in love with immediately. It was our idea of a perfect beach, calm turquoise sea and sheltered from the wind. We even had a small cormorant swimming and diving in the shallow water oblivious to the paddlers. We prayed that the forecasted winds wouldn’t ruin everything.

Before midday, Jackie returned to camp to get some liquid refreshment, her mat and my sunglasses. She returned with 1.5 litres of white wine and her mat, but no sunglasses. She informed me that the tent was already shaking from side to side and we discussed renting a little hut on the campsite if our tent flew away or disintegrated.

After our lunch of wine and a few crisps, we both had a lovely siesta on the mat. The wind had got up slightly and Jackie started panicking that we would return to a shredded tent. Reluctantly I returned to camp with Jackie to find that our tent stood erect and proud. With relief, we treated ourselves to a swim in the very nice swimming pool and sunbathed until dry.

After showering, we set about cooking dinner. Jackie was in charge and she had me as her sous chef, or more accurately ‘bitch’, running around from pillar to post. In the end I’m sure she was taking the piss and I wouldn’t have been surprised if she had asked me to get things like a tin of tartan paint or a left handed screwdriver.

WE made a delicious dinner of sausages, mashed potatoes, peas, fried onions and a jus. I don’t how we managed to cook it all so perfectly on just the single gas hob and electric plate and serve it all up together still piping hot!!

We had an unrestricted view of the sunset from our pitch, then retired to bed at just gone 9pm. It was less windy than the previous evening and I was able to sleep the right way round!

Song of the Day - Something That I Said by The Ruts.Læs mere