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| 08:43 - Left Camp, with the aim of visiting the Piaggio museum before continuing our journey to Genieva. |
| 09:44 - Reach Pentedera. As we entered the town from a different direction and the laptop showed a car park in the town centre, we decided to stop there and walk to the museum. |
| 10:05 - Reached Museo Piaggio and it was open! The Museum has won several awards due to it’s designed (built by the Piaggio factory it is part of). The Museum gives details of the Piaggio family, how the business had developed and details the diverse products manufactured. Out of all the products which Piaggio built, it was the Vespa which has the largest share of the museum hall, with models from all eras. Models on display ranged from the earliest prototypes to the latest super-scooters. Highlights included a Vespa painted on by Salvador Dali, a giant Vespa (about 8 foot high) and a Vespa which broke a land speed record. |
| 10:45 - Left Museum. |
| 11:15ish - Returned to the car. The next leg of the journey will take us around the Italian coast, up into France and then across the border into Geneva, Switzerland. |
| 11:58 - Another petrol stop. Another 22.64 litres pumped. |
| 13:32 - The good weather broke and it started to rain. The clouds in the distance (by the alps) looked ominous. Would Switzerland still have good weather or had autumn finally settled in? |
| 13:41 - Rain stopped, but the weather in the distance is still looking poor. |
| 14:16 - Toll booth, between Pisa and Arenzano - €14.40. |
| 14:30 - Pulled over for a rest. Brian was looking forward to getting off the Italian motorways and back to the saner roads in Switzerland and Germany. |
| 14:38 - Back on the road |
| 14:40 - Raining again. This time the rain was denser, but the Italians did not appear to notice and were still driving at normal speed for them. |
| 15:04 and 15:15 - The weather is affecting the Italian motorists. The first incident was a Van crash, were the vehicle had obviously spun in the wet. The second was a car crash, where someone had miss judged there braking distance. |
| 16:08 - Petrol stop. 18.64 litres |
| 16:20 - Rain getting worst. It is literally coming down in buckets loads. The route has climbed a little hills at the edge of the alps, so we have driven into the low lying rain clouds. Is the shape of the weather for the last few days of the trip? |
| 16:35 - Drop below the cloud layer. The rain has stopped and we are enthusiastically watching the distance breaks in the clouds. |
| 17:03 - We have reached the end of the last motorway we would travel in Italy. The toll is €20.90 for the trip from Arenzano. |
| 17:37 - To get to France, you need to get to reach the other side of Mont Blanc. This is done by travelling a long through the mountain using a French owned toll tunnel. As the entry into the tunnel was arranged as a border control (the tunnel end is in France) and they did not display any toll costs, I confused the chap in the booth by asking if he wanted to see our passports. After a blank look and a short silence, the French chap responded “no, just the money”. I felt more annoyed then embarrassed, as I then had to ask for the price, which the chap then press a button and the cost was then displayed on a LCD to the right of the booth window. The cost was a whopping €32.30 for the 8 mile of a straight, boring underground passage. |
| 17:40ish - Entered France for the second time this holiday. |
| 18:24 - Still on the E25 (the motorway from the tunnel) and another toll booth. This toll was €3.50 |
| 18:40 - Last French toll leading to the Swiss border. Another €1.70 in tolls. The French/Swiss border was the first one which we actually was stopped by the border guards. The young man asked for our passports, which we obviously was ready with. He asked what we were going to do in Switzerland, so we told him we were going to camp for a couple of days, before moving onto Germany. He then asked us for the paperwork for the car? We asked if he wanted the log book, insurance, etc, but he kept drawing a square with his hands and asking for “paperwork for the car”. We had a folder full of paperwork (ownership, insurances, licences, etc), but asking him what he required just seemed to confuse him. The border guard then asked us to pull over and went off to see his senior. Brian and I did not know what to think and given that it was getting dark, we were getting a bit anxious. After a short break the young man came back and asked if we were just visiting Switzerland, and after answering “yes”, he gave us a smile and told us we could cross the border. As Geneva is on the Swiss border we had to be careful trying to get to Satigny and not end-up going to the Airport or back into France. As with most camp, the last part of the journey involved trying to locate the camp. Oh yes, it started rain down again and quite hard. |
| 19:40 - Finally reached the camp and it was bucketing down. The camp entrance barriers were down, so we parked the car and ran through the rain to get to the reception/shop/bar. Unfortunately, this is the French section of Switzerland and everyone here speak French and almost no English. After a painful conversation we managed to book two nights, with power and on-site parking. The woman who ran the camp lead us (by car) to the part of the site where we could camp and provided access to the power unit. Brian told me afterwards that he over heard the some of the staff in the reception mutter about “Crazy Englishmen”, which I had missed. Had I heard this, I would have polite told them to get stuff and left for the nearest hotel. We quickly put up the tent up in the rain. A quick recon of the site found the toilets and showers. After a warming shower and a bowl of soap, we checked that the tent was dry inside and retired for the night. |
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