It was my turn for the early morning dog walk today. I don’t often undertake this chore, but a walk along the Italian riviera as the sun rises makes it almost worth getting out of bed at an unearthly hour.
Having reviewed our options for our next stop, there did not seem many possibilities for 120 miles or so along the coast. We are heading for anywhere near La Spezia to enable us to walk the Cinque Terre, about which, more in a later blog. Since 120 miles would take six hours on the coast road, we ideally needed to stop half way, but I could find nowhere which would enable us to empty our toilet easily, and this was a necessity!!
It is time to enlighten you regarding some of the mechanics of life in Basil. Basil carries an impressive 100+ litres of water in his capacious belly, which is enough to keep us going with showers, cooking, washing up etc. for about 6 days. He also has a receptacle large enough to collect all the waste water. For cooking and running the refrigerator and freezer, when we are not connected to mains electricity we carry 22kg of LPG (gas). This is set up with a filling point so we can just top up with gas at any garage which caters for LPG cars. For electricity we have two 95 Ah batteries which are topped up either from mains electricity when we are on a campsite, the engine when we are driving or otherwise from a solar panel on the roof. The solar panel is sufficient in nearly all conditions to provide us with all the electricity we need for our light, water pump and running our various electrical gadgets.
The biggest weak point is the toilet. Without going into unnecessary detail the toilet only lasts 2 to 3 days before it needs emptying. We carry a second spare toilet cassette with us, so we could, if need be, go for 4 to 6 days, and we will probably need to when we get to more remote parts of Europe. But today we decided to find an emptying point.
The conclusion of our deliberations was that we would head for a campsite 120 miles away, but we would use the toll road along the coast which would halve our travelling time. Which is what we did.
Travelling on the motorway in this part of Italy is to marvel at Italian engineering. The Italian coast in the North West is where the Apennines meet the sea. A series of mountainous ridges sweeps down from the Italian interior until they reach the Mediterranean. The obvious problem facing the engineers was how to build a relatively straight and level road in this terrain. The answer, as elsewhere in Italy, is an endless series of tunnels and viaducts, cutting through mountains and soaring over ravines. We have travelled on this road before and it is a modern marvel. Hundreds of tunnels and viaducts, sometimes a mile or more in length, all built in the 1960s and so flat that Basil rarely needed to leave 6th gear. Towns are no problem either, they have simply built viaducts over the top of them!
Our trip lasted just over 3 hours at a cost of €20. We thought that not a bad exchange.
Our campsite, Camping Valdeiva (44.224675, 9.551369), is located a few kilometers inland from Deiva Marina, in a pretty valley, next to a river. There was only one other motorhome on site when we arrived, another Brit who we have not yet met. The receptionist spoke excellent English and has said she can run us down to the station to catch a train for the start of the Cinque Terre walk, whenever we want. Best of all wifi is free, so I think I have sorted out the comments section. Someone try it please.
Spot Basil
While I was fiddling with the blog Sarah rolled her sleeves up in her usual practical fashion and gave Basil a good clean.
Sarah hard at work
The result
We are going to rest up here until we get a dry day to walk the Cinque Terre. It has been sunshine and showers today, but we are still in t-shirts. Tomorrow is forecast to be rainy, so it might be Sunday or Monday before we get out for our much anticipated walk. I hope it’s worth it.