Saturday 15th April
Team Basil is now ensconsed at Camping Internazionale de Castelfusano being lazy for a couple of days. We have a nice, quiet pitch and there are some minor tasks to catch up on.
Sarah did our second wash of the trip, although, as usual, doing battle with the campsite washing machine proved far from straight forward. She kept popping over to see how the washing was going and kept coming back, frustrated that it still hadn’t finished. Eventually, after four hours, the machine relinquished our clothes, by which time it was dark!
Before we left Blighty we had a new all singing, all dancing, Mifi installed. A Mifi device is a router which instead of downloading and uploading data via a telephone line or cable, does so via the mobile phone network. We installed an external 5g Ariel to ensure good connectivity. Our previous Mifi device was just informally used when we needed, but for much of the time it was off. This one is permanently connected to a 12v supply and of course, to the external arial. It is also fully 5g enabled.
Our other investment has been an Amazon Firestick which connects to the Mifi and enables us to watch British TV, Netflix etc. while we are travelling.
The Mifi has to have a SIM card installed so it can connect to the mobile network and we purchased, in Britain, a SIM from a company called Popit which provides us with 100gb of data each month. Everyone said 100gb a month would be plenty for our needs, but with two mobile phones, an iPad, a laptop, the Firestick and two kindles, this has proved not to be the case. We have not yet been away for three weeks and we have already used over 85gb. This is despite all efforts to set our devices to minimise data usage.
So, for the last few days I have been investigating purchasing an Italian SIM card and today I decided to go and buy one. I discovered that Italy’s biggest network, WinTre, had a shop in nearby Ostia and after asking how to get to there, I boarded a bus from just outside the campsite to travel 2km to the nearest Metro station and then completed the journey by train.
The process to buy a SIM turned out to be simple. The two women in the shop said they spoke only a little English, but, as is often the case, their English was pretty good. All I needed was my passport, because Italy, unlike the UK, has a registration system for all SIM cards, and my credit card. I was soon in possession of a 150gb per month WinTre SIM for €12.99 per month. My Popit SIM is £25 per month, which I will now cancel.
My return trip to the campsite was less straightforward. First my attempts to access the Metro station was thwarted when the barrier would not accept my ticket. A well dressed lady tried her travel card with no more luck. She then proceeded to show me how to climb over the barrier!
On arriving at the nearest Metro station to the campsite I found that it was 50 minutes to the next bus and so I decided to walk the two kilometres. Initially there was a pavement, but that petered out, leaving me dicing with Italian cars driving far too fast.
To give context to the next incident, for years many Italian roads, outside of towns, have prostitutes standing or sitting next the road. These days they appear to be poor refugees presumably trying to scratch a living. You know what’s coming next! As I walked back to the campsite I saw a woman standing at the side of the road at the head of a dusty track leading into some scrubland. As I approached she spoke to me in Italian and pointed up the track. I very quickly carried on, but I’m fairly sure that I had been propositioned!
Sunday 16th April
Today may have been our laziest/most relaxing of the trip to date.
Sarah took the opportunity of daylight to hang out the washing and then we took Skye to the beach. The beach has fairly fine sand but it is a dirty grey colour. I’m not sure whether this is because it is derived from volcanic rock or due to some kind of pollution. At this time of year it is also quite scruffy. Bits of rubbish are not uncommon but I presume that by the summer it will be all spruced up.
Although each beach, private mostly, is divided from its neighbour by an unsightly wall, often covered in street art/graffiti, at the waterline there is a gap so it is possible to easily walk from one beach to the next. In off season this is not a problem but whether it is permitted when all the private beaches are full of sunbathing Italians, I’m not sure. As previously mentioned, dogs are not permitted on most Italian beaches but we’ve been told that this not enforced in the off season and apparently it’s formally allowed on our beach until the end of April.
Skye had a great time chasing her ball, getting thoroughly covered in grey sand and then going into the sea where she seemed to be rinsing the sand off the ball. The thought of a mouth full of sand is not a pleasant one. After we had had enough (Skye certainly hadn’t) we hosed Skye down and team Basil sat down to relax for the afternoon.
Tomorrow we intend to move on.
