Camping Bi-Village, near Pula, turned out to be a reasonable place to wait for Sarah’s back to start healing. I suppose that is the most important news: Sarah’s back is finally starting to make real progress. When we arrived at Pula she could not really move without pain. Now, a week later, she is still not pain free, but is moving much more easily and this morning even did the early morning dog walk – hurray.
I have spent the week, amongst other things, learning to do a few of Sarah’s tasks. Like most couples, I suppose, over the years we have fallen into a routine where each normally undertakes a specific set of jobs in Team Basil and this week I have had to learn to do them all. The laundry did not prove to be too difficult, under Sarah’s strict supervision, but the one I have really loathed has been getting up as some early hour to take the dogs for their first walk! This has never been an exclusively Sarah task, but she undertakes the vast bulk of dog walking duties, usually.
Having said that, I suspect that if I similarly injured my back, there would be one task which I would be kicked out of my sickbed to perform, whatever the circumstances. You’ve guessed it: emptying the toilet.
I can’t say there have been many highlights from our stay at Camping Bi-Village. I watched the Champions League final at one of their restaurants, sharing a table with one of the few Germans in the world who spoke less English than my meagre German. Our exchanges were brief and to the point. “Zehr Gut” I would say. Later he would explain “Very Bad”. Not very enlightening.
It was amusing during the final to see some bemused campers turning up to eat dinner, only to be surrounded by beer drinking football fans!
The interiors of the large, fairly open, toilet blocks on campsites are often ideal nest sites for Barn Swallows during the summer. Most owners seem to put up with Swallows swishing in and out of the washblock, but Camping Bi-Village had made a valiant attempt to deter them by criss crossing the rooms with almost see through fishing line, presumably thinking the Swallows would be unable to penetrate this haphazard, semi visible, mesh. Not a bit of it. The Swallows are such good aviators that they easily slipped between the gaps, presumably having no problem in seeing the lines. Once above the lines, apart from building their mud nests and rearing their young, they found the lines an ideal perch!
Our one slight irritation on site was a large Dutch family who were located 20 metres or so away from us and who had two dogs, neither of which would they keep on their leads. One was an extremely well trained German Shepherd, but the other was a highly excitable Jack Russel who, whenever a member of the family returned to their caravan, would run up and down, in front of Basil and other campers, barking. It was a good natured little dog, but all the running and barking frequent upset our little canine friends with the result that Mabel and Melek spent more time in the motorhome than usual, staring forlornly through the fly screen in the door.
Today we have moved north through Slovenia, to the town of Aquileia in Italy, just west of Trieste. The journey was uneventful, other than the concentration required to voyage through Slovenia without using the roads where an expensive vignette, or in our case because we are over 3.5t an electronic box, is required. Given proper instructions Basil did a great job, which is just as well since the fines are up to €800 for not having a vignette or a “Go Box” on a motorway or designated highway.
We were also surprised to be held up for 20 minutes at the Croatian/Slovenian border. The border guards only had one, and then eventually two, desks open which resulted in huge queues just to summarily cheque passports. This is an unusual phenomena passing between two EU countries. I just wonder whether this crossing point was particularly slow as a punishment for anyone refusing to buy a vignette and use Slovenia’s expensive motorways just for a 20 mile journey.
We have finally pitched up on a small campsite (45.775046, 13.372207) called, imaginatively, Aquileia Camping! It’s €20 on ACSI and despite being a lower standard than the monster camps we inhabited in Croatia, it is much more our cup of tea.
Originally I picked Acquileia as an overnight stop, because it had a good camper stop and it wasn’t far from the main motorway. But having Googled Acquileia I found, by pure luck, that it is a very interesting little place and so we have chosen to spend two nights so I or we will spend some of the day exploring the town, about which more tomorrow.