Day 18 – 9th of August

Today we started our journey to Rome stopping at one of the sites we had found in cool camping book for Europe, which was in Umbria. We were in no real rush to set off as the drive was only about 150km, which even at the slow speeds we were travelling could be covered pretty quickly.

We packed up the camper, which currently we can do pretty quickly after all the practise we have had. After doing our washing up and putting our empty beer cans in the recycling we were off. Stupidly we had not got fuel in the place we had seen before we got to the site so now we had the mission of finding fuel, which is always a major ball ache in a city. Rachel asked our sat nav, (which we have called Jane) to find the nearest station. Unfortunately the first place she directed us to did not exist. This was not a good start. We then asked her to direct us to another station. This lead her to leading us down what must have been the smallest street in Florence, which resulted in me curbing the alloy wheel which always serves to piss me off. After this I was pretty fed up so we decided to head for the motorway and if we could not find a station we would have to use the jerry can we had in case of emergency. Luckily it did not come to this and we found one a few km before the motorway.

The motorway drive flew by and we were soon at the exit for the campsite we had booked into via email the night before. According to the “Cool Camping” book that we had been using, this site was the 2^nd best in Europe which was some claim so we held high hopes for this one.

The site is situated just outside the little town of Civitella del Lago, which is at an altitude of over 500 meters which meant a pretty steep climb and 2^nd gear for most of the windy road which proved very popular with the trail of traffic behind us. Once we got to the site we were not disappointed. The views were beautiful and the site itself was very nice, set amongst olive trees with very clean facilities. Obviously being so out the way it was very quiet, which was nice after the 18-30 style site we had stayed at on Florence.

After setting up we decided to head to the little village to get some supplies for the evening. This was about a 15min walk. This was truly a tiny little Italian village (see photo). When we arrived it was about 4.15pm and the local shop did not open till 5pm so we decided to grab a quick coke. 

Lovely little Italian Village

Once the shop opened we were pleasantly surprised as it had all the basics as well as a butcher, which was all the invitation we need to have our first braai (bbq) of the trip. We decided to pig out and got steak, sausage, ribs and of course, some more beer. We then hot-footed it back to the site to get the braai fired up. 

We spent the evening chilling out with a few beers and the braai. We chatted to another older British couple who we traveling in a old Bay window camper, which was mint and must have cost a fortune. They too had broken down a couple times on the way which made us feel better.

After a few drinks and dinner it was off to bed. Tomorrow we would head to Rome. Wished we could have spent more time at this site but a break downs/delays meant we had to get a move on.