Home sweet home

We've been back home now a couple of weeks and boy is it nice to be home. Living in the motorhome for such a long time gets to you after a while and it's great to have some creature comforts (and to not have to empty the toilet every 3 or 4 days!).

Scotland was great and the weather was mostly dry. The first port of call was Loch Lomond staying a various lakeside towns and villages. We did plenty of walking and even got the canoe out at Balmaha. Loch Lomond has very clean, fresh water.



Then it was off to Loch Long, a salt water loch which means it's tidal. We stayed on a caravan site right on the shore for a few days. This is where I caught my first fish! Out I went in the canoe with my cheap £18 rod and real and a spinner and spent a few hours relaxing on the loch. I ended up catching 4 mackerel (but I threw them all back). Here is a photo of lock long taken on a walk from the visitor center. You can just see the caravan site in the bottom right corner.



We set off for Glen Coe and Fort William next but found a lovely riverside spot to stay overnight on the way. One of the best things for us about Scotland was being able to take the dog with us (we really did miss her in Europe). Here she is recovering after a hard morning of swimming in the river.


And you just cannot drive through Glen Coe with with stopping to take a photo!


While in Fort William, we got chatting to a very friendly Scottish man who talked us into visiting the Isle of Sky. So off we went. But OMG was it wet and talk about midges! We drove around visiting various villages but eventually we'd had enough of the rain and set off back to the mainland. Don't get me wrong, Skye is beautiful and I'd like to go back some day, but I wouldn't want to live there, not even if I could afford a place like this:


Somewhere I would recommend visiting if travelling round Scotland is Pitlochry. There is a very nice caravan site just on the edge of the town and it really is a lovely place to spend a few days. Plenty of walks and scenery and a nice little town to roam around.





So, what's next? Well, we won't be travelling round in a motorhome again for a while because we have already sold it! But we really are missing Europe and would love to go back so it seems we may have got the travel bug, we just need to figure out how to afford to do it again...

Soon be off again

Temporary repairs are now complete on the motorhome (making it fully water tight) and we'll be off the end of this week. First stop is the Yorkshire Dales for the 'around Malham' walk and then on up to Scotland. Stay tuned...

What's next?

The damage to the motorhome turns out to be very minor (the fibre glass roof hasn't suffered very much at all and can be repaired rather than replaced) and is only going to cost about £2000 to repair and we're going through the usual process of corresponding with Norwich Union to sort it out. They are being very good though and hopefully we'll get the go ahead in the next couple of days. Then, book it into Brownhills Motorhomes in Newark for the work to be done.

If it doesn't take too long to get it fixed, the plan is to spend the last month of our holiday heading north into Scotland (with a bit of walking in the Yorkshire Dales on the way). I'd like to take Jude up Ben Nevis (but I might end up doing that on my own!), and spend some time at Fort William and the Highlands.

Let's hope the midges don't get us....

A lot's happened since Slovenia

Well after spending nearly 3 weeks in the rain in Slovenia, we decided it was time to cut our losses and move on back into Italy; Lake Garda was calling (along with the sunshine). Being a bit of a drive from Bovec we decided to stock up on provisions before setting off and drove round to the nearest food shop, which turned out to be closed, and it had started raining again. Not to be deterred we remembered a similar shop in Bovec center so drove there only to collide with a balcony overhanging the road just where we wanted to turn into the carpark! Disaster had struck and we no longer had a water tight roof to the van. What's more, the owner of the house was non too pleased and couldn't speak a word of English but made it clear he had called to police and was not letting us move until they arrived. Luckily the policeman could speak English and we managed to calm the owner down and exchange insurance details (though it looked to me like we weren't the first to go head to head with his balcony!). Take a look and the lump of concrete sitting on top of the balcony in this photo - that didn't get there from me hitting it with the van:

Now we had a problem as the insurance company advised us that if the motorhome was still driveable that we should get it repaired back in the UK but that meant waiting for another 2 months with the possibility of water doing even more damage if it got in. So a roll of plastic tape later we had makeshift repairs complete and we heading back home (via the lakes in northern Italy of course).

First stop was lake Garda. We stayed in Garda itself and suffered the opposite extreme of weather, 37 degrees in the shade and unbearable humidity, for about a week before we couldn't take it anymore. Lake Garda and the towns around it are lovely though. Here are a few shots:

And you can't really visit lake Garda without a trip to Verona, so on the hottest day of the year so far we visited probably the hottest city in Northern Italy and stood in the Arena, the hottest place in the city! Yes we are mad, but it was worth it. Verona is lovely and we visited during opera season and the arena was being kitted out ready:

And of course we visited Juliet's house so Jude could stand on the balcony:

Then it was a quick stop at lake Como before heading off on the long drive home to get the van repaired. We took a day trip out on the lake to visit some of the small villages. This was taken from the boat en-route to Menaggio, can you see the dog?

No? Look again, it is lying down and has big floppy ears with a church on the tip of it's nose.

So, after going through the Mont Blanc tunnel and a total of 150.00€ for the toll roads in Italy and France later we arrived back at Calais and managed to get an earlier ferry crossing back to blighty. Being home is a mixed feeling, it's nice to be out of the van and have home comforts again (and baked beans!), but I'm already missing Italy and France!

Out and about in Julian Alps

One afternoon a few days ago, while Jude was relaxing at the campsite in Bled, I decided to go for a walk up Galetovec. It didn't look too far on the map but it was quite high up, 1265 meters! Therein lay the problem, an ascent of 765 meters (bled is already at 500 meters) over a short distance means one hell of a steep climb. I got back 5 hours later and could hardly walk! But the views from the top were worth it:


In the photo below you can see Bled lake in the distance, which is where I started from. After this walk I realised I'm not quite ready for Triglav yet (which is over 2800 meters):


Another day was spent cycling up the Vrta valley to the foot of the northern face of Triglav (just to have a look). On the way you get to see this waterfall. The drop you can see is 52 meters. You might just be able to make out the person standing on the right, behind the waterfall under the over hanging rock about midway down:


And this was the view of Triglav when we got to the top of the valley. To be truthfull, we didn't cycle all of the way, it got a bit steep so we went back and got the scooter out of the van and went up on that, which struggled a bit with the two of us on it on the 1 in 4 sections of the gravel road!


Yesterday we drove to Bovec which meant going over the Vrsic pass. The highest point on the road is 1611 meters and you won't believe to way the road twists unless you see it. In a 4.2 tonne motorhome which isn't far off 8 meters long it was a bit scary in places. We eventually go to the top and made it down safely to Bovec, but just look at the view from the highest point on the road:


So we are still in Bovec today but it hasn't stopped raining since yesterday evening. When we parked up the spot we chose was nice and dry but we woke up to find we were in the middle of a small lake. At least the site has wifi and the weather forecast for tomorrow is sunshine! We won't hold our breath for that though!