The Italian Job - 7th Aug

We were up early and packed up ready to go by 8.15. The price of camping in Switzerland is shocking - £30 for one night! We had to visit the Co-op en-route to buy breakfast and lunch for the days journey. Again we had lovely views only marred by the huge amounts of tunnels we had to travel through. Those that know me well will know my hatred of tunnels of any sort. The swiss are like moles – they stick in a tunnel wherever they can! The worst by far was the Gottard tunnel at 17 km.

I was having palpitations by the time we reached the Italian motorways. They drive like absolute loonies! This coupled with the fact that I look, and feel, like a scarecrow due to all the window opening and shutting when the aircon gives up.

After a very long drive ( 9+ hours) we asked the crap nav to direct us to the nearest campsite. Twice it sent us to the middle of nowhere before we finally arrived at Sun Beach camp. When we asked for a tent site, they had a bit of a conflab and finally asked a guy on a bike to lead us to our pitch. The track between cabins, campers and caravans got narrower and narrower. We nearly took out a ladies washing as we neared our site. The site was obviously for people that spent a lot of time there during the summer. Most of the caravans had awnings on their awnings, full size fridges outside and a multitude of bikes and scooters. Each pit was covered by a large piece of green net strung from poles to keep the sun off the caravans/campers. It wasn't a bad size pitch and we soon had the place looking like home. Sadly, our electrics let us down again so no cold beer for us!

As it was late we decided to have dinner followed by a fairly early night. The campsite had a snack bar type fast food bar and a fish restaurant. We chose the restaurant and were not disappointed. Chris and I shared a seafood spaghetti which was one of the best pasta dishes I have ever tasted. It had clams, muscles, prawns and baby squid in a tomato sauce – yum!