After much discussion we made an executive decision not to go to any of the tourist places in Italy, rather to allow the sat nav to direct us, avoiding motorways and A roads. We put in Brindisi as our final destination, a total of 751 miles and were told we should arrive at 11.45, we made the natural assumption that this would be 14 hours of driving and decided that we would stop when R was tired of driving.
I really should have recorded the whole journey. We started out at about 9.30 from France on a D road, it was absolutely spectacular I actually ran out of hyperbole and found myself sitting very quietly just looking out of the window. The roads were clinging to the sides of the mountains and we zipped along like little goats, me clinging to the hand hold above my head with my foot on an imaginary brake. Every turn was more beautiful than the last, our way was blocked by goats and a rather handsome goatherd (for a goatherd that is) with an excellent Parisian accent! After several hours of travelling we had still only gone 50 miles owing to finding out that the road was blocked by workmen only when we found them.
We pressed on, determined to reach Italy by nightfall, gaily singing the self preservation song as we teetered on the edge of the road unfettered by a safety barrier. We finally reached Italy, after dark with no place to stay, roads made of broken glass and advice from the forum that overnighting in a lay-by in Italy was not a good idea. Luckily we found a campsite and without a word of Italian managed to get a pitch for the night.
We had travelled 150 miles in 12 hours, while very picturesque, I think tomorrow we will go back on the motorway.