Rising early I got to see the clouds ascending, as if slinking off home after a big night out or a tough night shift.
My cunning plan unravelled when I discovered that the campsite, although great, was actually at the end of a mountainous cul-de-sac. Hannibal may have had other ideas but for me a retreat back through Ville Vielle was on the cards.
A gentle ride down empty lanes bar the occasional car, cyclists and wildlife, I stopped to allow an Alpine Marmot to saunter off the road and marvelled. I cursed my luck by fitting the 360 camera once again and nothing cinematic occurred until I removed it at a petrol station. There it captured my bemused frustration at the de-humanised petrol pumps.
The rain mostly held off as we climbed the Colle dell’ Angnello but the temperature dropped and patches of ice were hiding in the shadows, at 9,003 ft you get that kind of thing. Descending was hairy with deteriorated road surfaces and no safety barriers save at one point an electric cattle fence to send you on your way with a buzz, shocking! Only at the bottom, stopping at a lake and surveying the signs, did I realise that we’d crossed into Italy. “At last!” I hear you say, no more French stuff in this Italy blog.
There was still a very long way to go if we were to make it to Lago di Como today so we pressed on. Italian driving and quirky speed cameras were duly noted, for the most part the weather held off. That was until I made a wrong turn and ended up facing a toll booth with no option to turn back, I panicked and went through the ‘T’ motorcycle lane which did not issue me a ticket. Re-routing and getting off at the next exit ticketless I found myself distraught facing a machine with no ‘Help me I’m stupid’ button and a queue of traffic behind. I did the reasonable thing and panicked again, letting a car pass I snuck through the barrier behind them.
Italian tolls appear to have a direct link to the Almighty because the heavens opened with the violence of a vengeful God. The roads were immediately flooded and I was soaked. Stopping at a supermarket I sheltered with the trolleys until less than biblical service resumed. The re-routing led me through the northern outskirts of Milan on busy roads, not tolls thankfully. It all got a bit sketchy in the long, extremely long, tunnels near our destination, the sat-nav had pause for thought and I imagined the consequences of a breakdown in this subterranean world.
I arrived at Camping Spiaggia south of Mandello del Lario close to 6pm. It was still raining and the offered a ‘cabin’ for €35, I couldn’t refuse. Dripping I unloaded and put on dry clothes, my German neighbours greeted me and complimented the Guzzi, they’d toured the factory museum on Saturday (booking is online only and 48 hours in advance for the Friday and Saturday openings) I won’t, unfortunately get to go.
Checkout is at 10am so I got busy writing this nonsense (it had been a long day) then got distracted by my navigation device throwing errors and rebooting. I think that the deluge may have got to it (sad face emoji). I fiddled about with it, blowing away any moisture from the USB port, shaking to shift any drops, re-updating from the internet and re-pairing to my phone. The ‘repair’ appears to be holding for now, let’s hope so, I’d be lost without it.
Delayed I visited the beach then the Bar-Pizzeria, leaving my many devices to their own, attached to ‘shore power’. Pizza, birra and limonata for me then bed.
Le Mans man 