It’s interesting reading through the first blog entry after we got Nettle — particularly, the comparatively low cost of fuel (we pay $25 AUD per 100kms now, as opposed to $20 then), and our wildly optimistic assumptions about using laptops on our leisure battery!

We’ve come a really long way, and learned heaps about living in a motorhome. With the various minor hiccups we’ve encountered along the way, I feel like I’m getting familiar with many of Nettle’s different systems and feel increasingly confident about DIY-ism. The originally dreaded task of emptying the cassette is now effortless, and something I do without thinking now. We (or rather, I) also learned very quickly at the beginning about how to remain calm in the face of navigation hiccups — put aside the anxiety and just go with it!

Speaking of navigation hiccups and driving anxiety, I have to say, I’ve also become a dramatically better large-vehicle driver. After some insanely tiny tiny Italian streets, we’re rather calm about tight spaces now, and find ourselves chuckling about the “wussy” English drivers slowing to a crawl to pass us on laneways when I probably would’ve just happily barrelled through.

As we were discussing just the other day, it’s amazing how much Nettle’s just become our home. We were originally envisioning renting for a while, maybe over winter, to get a break from the tight living quarters — aside from rent-free house-sitting, now we wouldn’t dream of it! She’s our home, and what’s more, she’s homely! We love her dearly.

So, thanks for looking after us for a year, Nettle!

So, we set off from Bath to do the four-or-so hour drive back “home”, stopping via a hardware store where (we think) we successfully solved our bed-condensation issue, with a couple of cheap camping mats!

About half-way there, just before Plymouth, my iPhone’s GPS was behaving a bit oddly, as happens from time to time lately, so I rebooted it, and it never came back to life! As it’s our navigation system, I pulled over by the road, pulled out the laptop and tried to coax it back to life, with no success. As a last resort I pulled out my old iPhone, which I keep around for testing, and fired it up, to find its GPS wasn’t working any more! Eek!

Katherine was, in the meantime, rather calm about all this, and in the end her suggested approach — slumming it along with everyone else and following road signs — panned out. Who knew?

So we pulled up in now-familiar Threemilestone, Truro and got down to the rather lengthy business of catching up on our blog and photo-processing.

There was a happy ending to the iPhone hiccup too — I discovered Apple’s online service request facility, ordered a repair, and a box arrived the following day for me to post the sick iPhone off in; two days later, I had a brand new iPhone arrive at the door! Impressive customer service, there.

And now, back to programming!

We put on our wet weather gear, and headed out into the afternoon. Fairly quickly we were grateful that we’d left our bikes — the path we took climbed some rather significant slopes, so our ride would’ve been primarily bike-pushing. As it was, we ambled along the lane, bordered by fields with views out over the surrounding hills and valleys, took a turn along the public bridleway, met some curious Exmoor ponies along the way, and made our gradual way back to the nearby village and back along the main road home.

We loved the way the roots of this tree actually made up the boundary between fields:

We stayed one more night at the CL in Exmoor, then headed off down the little country lanes, towards Bath.

We’re headed up to Bath to visit some old friends of Katherine who are over from Australia for a few months of travel; we’ll see a couple of the sights with them while they’re here, and then get back to work!

Nettle remembered how to go splendidly, and we set off down the little country lane we’re so used to riding our bikes down while Noia the GPS navigator was getting her act together. The novelty was back (not that it ever truly disappears!) and it was great fun to be driving this enormous vehicle around. We drove up amongst gently rolling green hills with a patchwork of fields in many shades of green, and followed Noia’s directions towards our first destination: Tintagel (which we learned was “tin-TAA-gel”, not “TIN-tah-ghel”, and most certainly not “tin-taggle”), which was recommended to us by our good friends Tara and Tyler.

On our way there, we narrowly avoided getting stuck down an ever-narrowing road, but were luckily turned back by a friendly local, with assistance turning around from another local, who let us into her field to turn.

We made it there, parked in a sloping grassy field marked out as a car park, and wandered down a little pathway heading across some fields and signposted towards the cliffs and the castle, and requesting care as there were badger homes nearby that wanted protecting. There was a mother with her somewhat obnoxious-seeming ten-ish year old boy who was complaining loudly about something-or-other, and we shook our heads judgementally about “UK children”. Get off my lawn, you kids.

Tintagel is, as the informational signage at the site proudly proclaims, the legendary site of King Arthur’s birth. Legendary is the key word here of course — it’s only because a monk named Geoffrey of Monmouth decided to make Tintagel the birthplace of Arthur while reinventing the story that it’s considered as such! The power of the story…

A short documentary playing at the entrance explained the several different forms the King Arthur legend has taken throughout the years, and how it had been “reinvented” periodically to suit the era.

We walked through the churchyard of an old church and towards the cliffs, getting our first proper glimpse of the coastline, and gasped — it was beautiful, and completely reminiscent of the Causeway Coast in Ireland! Bright green fields descending to a smoothly-rounded coast edge, crinkled in parts, and a rocky edge meeting the startlingly blue sea. The vision was completed by dramatically swirling white clouds across the blue sky. The path led along the cliffs, sided by tall grasses dotted with colourful flowers in yellow and purple.

We drew alongside the outcrop of land that Tintagel castle once stood on, rising precipitously from the blue water with jagged, rocky cliffs, and squatting roundly like a bar of soap. A bridge connected it to the mainland, with a zig-zagging path that led up and around the low ruins. After approaching the start of the bridge and noticing the hefty admission price, we balked and did an about-face, choosing to wander the surrounding coastline instead of going for a close-up look at the ruins. It was all very beautiful and what we now think of as “Ireland-esque”.

Bellies rumbling, we took the hedge-lined path teeming with butterflies towards the village, for a couple of pasties and tea/scones in (of course) King Arthur’s Bistro, beside King Arthur’s Bookshop and King Arthur’s Car Park. That guy has it all.

Hunger nicely satiated, we ambled up the street past some very charming rickety old stone cottages and the old post office, roof bulging and dipping whimsically along its length. Back to Nettle, grinning at the enthusiastic collie sprinting around the field, tongue lolling, we set off again towards Exmoor National Park.

After a brief stop-in at a supermarket to stock up on supplies (no flour-and-water pancakes for us, no!) we turned onto the lovely little country road that led to our destination through more patchwork fields, bordered by hedges full of those great purple flowers — the view out the window looked like a painting, perfectly aesthetically arranged. I jumped out and hung off Nettle’s roof to snap a few pictures, then we arrived at the CL that would be home for the next day while we did a little exploring of the national park.

This is a beautiful country!

Our one year digital nomad vagabonding anniversary came and went the day before yesterday unacknowledged. This time last year we awoke to our new tabula rasa life in a BnB in Camden, London having just flown in the day before. I think a little reflection is in order.

Then

On the 31st May last year I wrote this in my notebook:

“Come Sunday evening a melancholy befalls in the realisation that I have to go to work tomorrow and the next day and the next day and so on and so forth. Well, this is officially my last Sunday of mourning the weekend for hopefully a very long time, if not forever. This week is my last week of work before I take annual leave and then move to Europe with Mike to re-evaluate and re-invent out lives. I never again want to have a job that makes me mourn the end of the weekend. I either need to have a job I love or a job that takes up as little time as possible”.

A note to the people of seaac (my previous workplace), if you are reading this: I still love you and seaac! I thought I wanted to be a social worker since before I knew what a social worker was – in fact, I even talked to Steve, our beloved leader, about all of this in my exit interview. Turns out I’d prefer to be holed up in a little studio day and night drawing and painting strange but beautiful fictional characters and designing yummy collage papers and patterns! Who knew?

Now

I’m working on the marketing side of things for A Tasty Pixel, Mike’s software development business. I’ve learnt how to use Photoshop so I can design my own collage papers and surface pattern designs and have plans to learn how to use Illustrator as well. I’ve designed over 100 of them and even had a hand in designing Mike’s new website! Hopefully Mike’s next iPhone app will do well enough so that we can hire someone to do the marketing next time and I can focus on what I love. Until then, I don’t mind this type of work. At the end of the day I have complete autonomy and that counts for so much. What I would love to do is sell my collage papers, surface pattern designs, textures and brushes online as downloadable files. I’ve pretty much got it all worked out, now I just have to find the time to do it!

Then

A couple of weeks after arriving I wrote this in my notebook:

“The world is full of wonders and we’re going out to see them. This is probably the most amazing thing we’ll do in our lives and this is the beginning. It is all ahead of us. I’m really excited about spending TIME, precious, preciuos time on art. Learning, learning, learning. The thought of learning has always grabbed my imagination with all of its connotations of possibility and the unknown”.

I also remember updating my facebook status with something like this: “I have dallied for too long: Too many paintings left unpainted”.

Now

I’m still really excited about seeing the wonders we have yet to see. Scotland is our next super exciting destination. I dream about being in a remote Scottish countryside surrounded by dramatic mountains, achingly pretty lochs and at the mercy of fierce weather.

I would still like to spend more time on art. It’s funny, for the first time in my adult life I’m neither studying nor do I have a “job” but I am busier than I have ever been. Sometimes when I think about all the things I want to do and learn I feel overwhelmed. I think it’s a pretty good problem to have. Now that I’ve found my passion it’s gained its own momentum. It’s as if it was waiting, dormant, and as soon as a shaft of light fell upon it, everything that was already there, in waiting, unfurled and is growing bigger and bigger the more light it gets.

To round off, some things I know now that I wish I knew then:

1. Put some bamboo mats and towels under your mattress or you will be re-constructing your bed in 9 months because a dirty big patch of mould is growing there.
2. Driving the entire length of France on toll-ways will cost you a small fortune, which you could use instead to buy a small island or put towards your firstborn’s university fund.
3. One month in Ireland is NOT enough time – not even close – and indeed three months in one country is not enough (unless it’s Tunisia) – slow down!

Some things I never anticipated:

1. Learning how to use Photoshop – those familiar with the mutual animosity between myself and all things computers will appreciate the enormity of this
   
2. Starting a small business and being self-employed – not something I ever envisaged for myself but now I wouldn’t want it any other way. Also, knowing a great deal about running an online business – didn’t see that coming.
3. Having a blog and meeting kindred spirits online – I used to think blogs were rather self-indulgent, pointless things and I was even quite sheepish about telling people that I had one to begin with (ditto for twitter)
   

Some things I’ve learnt:

1. How to have an argument – Mike and I live together, travel together and now work together all in a 6×3 metre space! We need to be able to resolve arguments and we’ve gotten pretty good at it.
2. I can wear a pair of socks (light use) 5 – 10 times before they start to smell
3. I don’t think I ever would have dreamt of, let alone done, any of this – the business, the design, the blog – If I had’ve just stayed in Melbourne working 9-5 Monday-Friday with 4 weeks off a year. Not a chance. There’s something about drastically changing your entire life that opens up boundaries you didn’t even know were there and lets you begin to imagine that things can be different, very very different.
   

Michael:

My mother made this comment about our experience just recently, but it’s worth repeating because I find the fact of it really remarkable: That this thing we’re doing is totally multifaceted. The travel stuff is wonderful – one of my top priorities for my life – but equally valuable is the creative side which has been really rewarding (although not quite financially rewarding, yet – we’ll get there!).

The most awesome aspect of this is Katherine’s artistic journey, and I’m loving seeing her artistic side prospering. Plus, the glee she gets from art supplies is a thing to behold.

Personally speaking, I’m loving the indie software developer lifestyle to pieces. It’s a creative outlet that suits me perfectly, and I love designing software and putting the pieces together just so – which satisfies both my creative side, and my OCD side. My mother used to joke that me, working (tapping studiously away at a keyboard), was rather similar to me taking a break – party time (tapping studiously away at a keyboard). It’s pretty much that way still, and doing this job means I basically never work, and am in fact constantly playing. Doesn’t get much better than that.

Actually, the one thing that does get better than that is having a beautiful, changing view out of the window that we can go and explore from time to time, at our leisure. When we started out, we didn’t have a clear idea of how the travel thing was all going to work, but we’ve sorted it out and found our pace. We love being in the country, fields, woods, mountains, and really enjoy hiking (although not for too long!). Cities have their appeal too, but our hearts lie in the wide open horizons, or the deep green (or preferably, orange and yellow!) of woods.

One thing I never anticipated was the people we’ve met along the way. I certainly hoped that we would make connections with people as we went, but given that we’re not exactly gregarious (I almost wrote ‘egregious’) people by nature, I wasn’t sure how successful we’d be. Don’t get me wrong, we like a good pub, maybe once a year. For a few minutes.

However, we’ve met some really interesting people and made some wonderful friends, always in unexpected ways: On the side of a volcano, in the back-alleys of an ancient Tunisian marketplace, in the car park of a little Italian town, and through my involvement with writing WordPress and iPhone software. A great adventure still to come will be spending some time living in Padua (and learning Italian!) and getting to know our wonderful new-found friends there, who I originally met via my product Loopy.

The online side of this mobile social life has been fascinating – we still have quite a number of people we’ve met online to catch up with some time: Users of software I’ve written, other bloggers, and other people who’ve come across us online (or vice versa). We’ve made some great friends who are currently cycling across Europe (actually, they’ve just bought a little red car and are heading towards, and then across, Siberia), who we discovered while doing a bit of travel research in Tunisia, and we dearly hope to meet them in person one day – then kidnap them and keep them all to ourselves, in our enclave of ‘favourite people’ that we will one day build. nothing

The last thing that I find surprising, in spite of my ever-overly-optimistic self, is just how feasible this thing has been. Okay, we had some fantastic help to begin with – some great, long house-sitting appointments that meant we went almost a whole year rent-free – but apart from the initial, mostly recoverable outlay (Nettle), we’ve generally been living on less that it would’ve cost us to live in Australia – particularly with the horrendous housing situation there lately. My blithely optimistic anticipation of this whole thing has been actually pretty spot-on. We can do this for a lot more time yet, even if this indie software thing doesn’t take off.

So, in more ways than one, becoming ‘vagabonds’ (‘technobonds’?) has been a real enabler for us to pursue the things we really want to do with our lives, travel aside. It’s taken us away from the distracting, (albeit dubious) attraction of a steady income and jobs about which we’re ambivalent, freeing us up for the more important things, while actually lowering our living expenses to make our ‘buffer’ last longer.

That’s pretty cool.

Things I am glad I now know:

1. What Katherine says is right. (Katherine’s note: this is a work in progress)
2. Taking a wrong turn or getting lost never matters – relax, go with it.
3. It’s probably not a good idea to wild-camp in a big city, and especially not a port. Just…don’t.
4. It doesn’t matter how much you don’t like marketing/PR stuff, or how much you’re too engrossed in developing a product: Do it!
5. Don’t look too closely at how your motorhome’s put together, especially the raised bed (or as I like to call it, flimsy-sleeping-platform-of-death).
6. If you run out of food, you can make pancakes with flour and water! (Although they’re not so good if you’re out of water too)

Here’s to another year of technomadding!

England! Ah, England.

Our first stop, via an unsuccessful initial attempt to book into a site for a few days, was the local big Tesco Extra supermarket. Words simply can’t express our excitement at the range of things we found in that cornucopia of plenty — one of the benefits of being in a multicultural society: There were bagels and muffins, chai tea, the great curry powder we’d missed, cider, coconut milk and Thai curry paste, peanut butter (even Vegemite, to our delight!), and most exciting of all, cheddar cheese. Good times.

Stocked up and excited about the meals to come, we found ourselves an available CL site (basically a field with the bare basic facilities for campers) in a tiny little village delightfully named “Wootton”. Our drive there involved wending our way along a little country lane past a vast bright yellow canola field, through cool, shady woods, past fields of deep green grass and sheep, with views over the gentle hills in all hues of green. What a beautiful country.

The CL (how we’ve missed these!) was a grassy field, beside a paddock of sheep and little adorable frolicking lambs. We parked with a view out our main window over the lambs — “lamb view”, many times better than TV or sea view — and watched them chase each other around, running and springing, as the ewes patiently abided the lambs’ aggressive lunges at their undercarriage for milk.

Our stay began at about a week or two, then rapidly lengthened to almost a month. While pondering our finances, and running some numbers, we initially thought that our finances were going to last only another 8 months! With that fearsome possibility, we decided it was as good a time as ever to stop travelling for a while, and focus on developing some products and getting a more steady income stream established. Then, I realised I’d not incorporated current earnings from app sales, after which it became clear we had enough money to last us three years. Certainly not breaking even and saving money yet, but that’s quite a substantial difference!

Despite that realisation, however, we’d become rather attached to the idea of stopping for a while and having a break from travelling. We get an equal amount of joy from creating as we do from travelling, and the thought of devoting all of our time to it was quite appealing.

The decision carried ramifications for our previously planned schedule — three months in the UK, then back to Europe — so, we did a little re-thinking of our plans. In theory, at least, time isn’t a particularly important factor; as far as we know, even when our 2 year UK visa expires, we still have the Schengen visa available for 3 months out of every 6, and the remaining three months can hopefully be spent in the UK on a tourist visa, or perhaps even in an eastern-European country. So, we fairly relaxedly decided to postpone our prior plans and spend a bit longer in the UK.

We set up shop in Wootton, working at our laptops from about 10 or 11 in the morning to around midnight. I was steadily redesigning the interface for my new app, developing a beautiful vintage appearance with Katherine’s guidance. Along the way, we realised just how much work the non-programming aspects of the project really are — the social networking, research, assorted PR and marketing activities. The likelihood of taking the time to do it properly, and ever actually releasing a product seemed slim, so along the way, Katherine decided to lend a hand, devoting the time she’d been spending on setting up her art business to helping me get Cartographer released. I was really touched by the faith that she put in my work and the generosity in giving up that valuable time. I love that girl!

Aside from “working”, we had a bunch of errands to complete. Our bed, badly prone to condensation, had developed a veritable forest of black mould which had rotted away some of the base — we were sleeping in the “guest bedroom” in the meantime. So, over the course of about two or three weeks, we found a carpenter who was happy to cut a new piece of plywood to size, sourced an appropriately sized piece of ply (not an easy task, given that the standard sheet size was too small!), dismantled the bed and delivered the new plywood and the old base as a template, found an upholsterer and sourced some vinyl to replace the covering, transported the newly cut base to the upholsterer and painstakingly reassembled the beautiful new creation. A vast amount of work, but we’re very pleased with the result — and are taking new measures to make sure we never have to do that again! One side-effect of the process was that it took us a long time to trust that the bed wouldn’t collapse under us, after seeing how it was constructed — just 25-or-so screws around the outside. The edges of the base don’t even rest on the frame — they’re screwed onto it from underneath! Ignorance was bliss, there!

Along the way we also took Nettle in to have her wheel alignment fixed up (which ultimately made no difference to her gentle rightward drift — she just likes to go right, is all), fix our leaky tire, and spent a truly vast amount of money on some entirely insignificant minutiae (very, very slightly wobbly headlight, and something about a fog light on the wrong side) getting Nettle’s MOT (the annual registration/checkup) done for the year. Whew. Oh, and I finally got a haircut!

We paid a visit to the rather charming town of Canterbury, and spent a while wandering its streets shopping (his and hers: I got my first hands-on with an iPad, which I was rather besotted by, and Katherine found some much-needed shoes). I got some cool pictures of the Cathedral and the Christ Church gate, and the Old Weavers’ House, dated 1500 AD!

So, we wrote code, designed interfaces and got the marketing ball rolling. The lambs played and napped out the window; we attempted to assist every now and then when one of them got a head stuck in the fence. At around the same time every day, they’d all start making a huge racket (we called it “baa o’clock”), and sure enough, a minute later a car would pull up and the farmer would bring some pellets, wrestle a sheep or two to give it an immunisation, and bring a little black-faced lamb out for its daily bottle, which it would attack with glee. The local pheasant, who we named Monsieur Squark-and-Flap after his routine and his rather uppity bearing, would roam around and, well, squark and flap. Grey squirrels and rabbits were our other entertainment while the work continued.

It’s a good life.

• Sterling Power Products: What is the best battery to use for an auxiliary charging system? Very well-argued discussion on leisure batteries, cutting through the marketing-speak
• GPS POI Data Directory – Free POI Files – GPS POI Data Many, many quality POI databases for a wide variety of things, including camping and LPG filling stations. Requires a small ($10 or thereabouts) registration fee to download.
• Touring and Tenting -> Download Manager -> Mapping Aids -> italian sosta’s poi’s for sat nav’s A very good POI database for Italian sostas
• Links and Downloads Manager – MFC Google Earth Campsite Finder – My Favourite Campsite Camping POI databases for UK/Europe
• PoiGPS – Punti di Interesse per Navigatori Satellitari – Downloads Site with many Italian POI databases, including aree attrezzate, camping and camper service facilities.

The nearby hillsides became, if not less precipitous, more grassy, with little brown huts sprinkled liberally around. We wound our way down a couple of switchbacks in the road and through a beautiful pass lined with pine trees, nearby rocky peaks wreathed in cloud. The road wound along the hillside above a deep valley, a bright blue river snaking through it. We stopped briefly at a supermarket we came across to stock up on supplies.

The road continued to wind through the mountains, affording us some rather spectacular views of misty/snowy peaks. At one point, the road passed by a shallow and crystal-clear lake of brilliant blue. The mountains gradually decreased in size, and very suddenly we were on a motorway, and Noia the navigator was displaying the welcome screen for Germany!

Motorway driving is rarely anything but tedium, and today was no different; we drove until we’d had enough, and on a hunch I pointed Noia towards a green patch on the map that displayed a parking symbol within. Sure enough, we’d found a very pretty forest, interspersed with green fields, and a little parking area for walkers. We pulled up, and took the opportunity to take a walk in the intensely green woods — the stuff of fairy-tales.

For the next day, we’d identified part of a driving tour of the Mosel Valey that sounded promising, to the west and very near to our route. We headed that way, towards the Rhone-side town of Bingen am Rhein, arriving relatively late in the day.

After the success of the last night’s camp, I targeted Noia at a road in a large green patch beside the town, little realising at the time that the road in question was barely a footpath through the woods. So, we turned down this little road that got smaller and smaller, to our consternation, and had a slightly worrisome yet relatively pleasant drive through the woods, feeling a little sheepish as we drove past walkers on the track above. (Katherine: Mike handled this with remarkable poise)

We came out beside a little pub, and decided to pull up in the nearby car-park (also the car park for walkers) for the night. With Katherine’s high hopes for a schnitzel, we visited the pub, but found the restaurant closed. Still, we found a seat in the dimly-lit lounge, various animal heads hanging grotesquely from the walls — all seemed very “German pub”-esque — and had a few beers (Veltins, which the barman recommended and which we enjoyed immensely).

Rather desperate to fill up with water, the next morning we set out along the Rhone hoping to spot a caravan park or similar that we could drop into. Sure enough, Katherine spotted one a little distance down the road, and we negotiated our way under the railway line that ran alongside the river, along the narrow little lane, bordered by bright green rows of vines beside the river, and pulled in. The woman in charge was very friendly and happy for us to use the facilities; she was bustling about on various errands as we filled up, and kept making rather endearing “I’m run off my feet” huffy sighs with lots of exclamations in German, to which I grinned and nodded sympathetically.

While Katherine was filling the tank, she heard a hissing, and realised that the front left tyre was leaking air from the valve — just like what happened to us in Arezzo! Uh-oh. I poked at the valve until the hissing stopped, and we deemed it drivable, for now, as the pressure seemed to be relatively normal still. Hoping to find a tyre service facility like last time, we drove for a little while keeping our eyes open, but the one possibility was shut, whereupon we realised it was Sunday. I checked and topped-up the tire pressure at a petrol station, and we hit the motorway, hoping that it would last us until we could get it fixed.

When we decided to pick a town randomly to visit for lunch, the steering felt suddenly very odd, and sure enough, the tyre was down again. We pulled into a petrol station and decided it was time to put the spare tyre on. It’d been a while and my memory was fuzzy (I work with computers, not cars!), but Nettle’s manual, albeit in German, seemed to have all I needed. Out came the jack, and I wrestled the slipping handle until the wheel was sufficiently off the ground, and started on the wheel nuts (probably should’ve done that the other way around, but oh, well). I remembered something about European threads being the opposite to ours — probably the same phenomenon that makes water swirl the opposite way down drains, I guess — and the manual confirmed that clockwise was the way to undo them, so I laboured away, trying everything I could think of to loosen them. No luck, and I was scratching my head wondering what to do next, when a friendly German voice behind us announced the arrival of our saviours for the day. He was a mechanic, amazingly, and his wife spoke English, so we were in excellent hands — apparently, as she told Katherine, he rescues people like this quite frequently. Our benefactors took command, and I held my foot on the brake while he undid the nuts — anti-clockwise, of course — by jumping on the spanner’s handle. Within a couple of minutes, the new wheel was on, and we were good to go. We thanked them profusely. How lucky we are. (Katherine: We had a giggle at Mike’s masculinity taking a bit of a hit, especially given the super buffness of the mechanic in question. He still gets man points for getting the wheel off the ground though. I had an “I’ve watched too much Dexter moment” when I quietly wondered to myself if this guy has a “dark passenger” which he satiates by going around playing the good samaritan but actually sabotaging vehicles and sending their startled drivers to an untimely – and untraceable – death). We went and had a couple of schnitzels at a nearby pub. We were amused in the pub to see a race on the TV, and then realised that it was happening just around the corner, at the Nürburgring. Cool! We felt unreasonably chuffed at having had beer and chicken schnitzel in Germany. Our German experience is complete – at least this time around. (Katherine again: obviously our tire didn’t fall off sending us to an untimely startled death. Sorry for my uncharitable thoughts good Samaritan German guy).

So, with a fair bit of time lost, we decided to just hit the autobahn again, and skip the driving tour this time — how exciting, the prospect of having a “next time”! We crossed over the border into the Netherlands, to our surprise, as we don’t tend to do much map-gazing lately — navigation is more Noia’s realm now, as she’s been so great, we trust her to get us where we want to go. Within a few hours, we passed into Belgium. Belgium!

We headed into the city of Hasselt, where a friend, Kris, lives, who I’d met a year or so before through a WordPress theme I wrote. We’d arranged to pay a visit, so we found a park at a spot Kris had recommended, in the car park of a sports oval already populated with a few campers, reassuringly, and set out on foot to find him.

About twenty minutes later, we set out on foot the right way, as I sheepishly realised I’d directed us in precisely the wrong direction… twice. We walked along a busy, noisy road (Ah yes… This is why we’re not big city fans!), then towards the quieter town’s centre. We made our way under the train station and found Kris’s street on the other side, with lots of imposing brick houses lining the road. We greeted Kris (I experimented on him with some Dutch — “goede middag”), and he invited us in for a moment before we all ventured out into the evening. Kris took us on a walk around the inner streets of the town, and showed us a few of the sights (greeted a few very punk-band-esque friends of his that we encountered along the way), then we dropped in on the local Irish pub briefly — quite funny hearing Irish accents here. We asked for a recommendation from the bartender for a Belgium beer to try and ended up with an interesting beverage that tasted a bit like honey… and beer. We wandered through Hasselt (via the best veggie burger I think I’ve ever had), through the city’s impressive park, while we talked companionably. I was amazed with the depth of Kris’s knowledge of his town, and the amount of awareness and involvement he has in its community and local politics — a local council member in the making, there.

We decided to spend the night in Hasselt, and spent the next morning with a couple of errands — laundry, a little shopping; Katherine was excited to find a well-stocked art supplies shop and basically moved in for a while.

Then we hit the road again, and headed onwards; we left Belgium and entered France, finally ending up in Dunkerque. We stayed the night at the huge and rather fancy municipal caravan park, in preparation for our departure on the ferry the next day, to Dover. Quite fun to be speaking French again.

So with some wistful thoughts, and looking forward to coming back to spend some time getting to know Andrea, Silvia and their friends better, we set off northward. As, it turned out, into something resembling the apocalypse. Dark, intimidating clouds loomed in front of us as we approached, with some excitement, the first foothills of the Dolomites (the Italian Alps). The sky reminded us of the skyscape one sees in tornado movies, writhing menacingly as they curled off the mountains.

It added a fantastic ambiance to the scene as we followed the road into a narrow river valley between two steep-sided mountains, and dusk closed in around us. Then, the rain started, and it meant business: We slowed to a crawl as the downpour reduced visibility to almost zero – “I… guess the road’s out there somewhere”. The hail threatened to crack the windscreen, it came down so hard. Wow!

It eventually abated and we sped up again, heading out into a suddenly lighter day, like winding back the clock a few hours. We got an SMS from Andrea – “What the…Are you ok?”; “I’ve just seen the end of the world from my bike, that was exciting and wet”. We just hope he only saw it, rather than actually experienced it on a bike — that sounds not so dissimilar to drowning!

We drove on through the mountains, following the autostrada, while Katherine read out a heartwarming email we’d just received from Andrea, which mirrored our own excitement and gratefulness at having met. Warm fuzzies well established, we grinned out at the beautiful world around us and marvelled at our blessings.

We drove past vast fields of vines, and found a convenient lay-by off a relatively quiet road to park for the night, beside a wide, slow river and overlooked by a high rocky cliff topped with dense green forest, a little steam hurling itself into the air above us.

The next day we set out on foot to explore this exciting new world, and followed the river while we admired the rocky mountains surrounding us, every remotely-horizontal surface festooned with rich green plant life. It was sunny and warm and we were feeling good!

We drove onward and upwards as the scenery changed further. Lots of bright green fields of vines and increasingly amazing mountains, topped with snow (I’ll never get tired of snow-capped mountains. That’s the stuff, right there.). Very quickly, we noticed that the road signs all had Germanic names, and soon after we were amazed to notice the marked difference in architecture. Suddenly the roofs of houses and other buildings were sharply angled, and the village churches had pointy, colourful steeples. Roofs were no longer orange-coloured, but a deep brown, and much more deep wooden hues were apparent.

We were in another country! But, a glance at the map showed us we were wrong — it was going to be two more days of driving before we were out of Italy. We mused to ourselves that whoever had been tasked to draw the country boundaries had probably been bumped or slipped, and the border skewed south accidentally. They probably just hoped no-one would notice. We noticed, imaginary map guy! I was baffled further when Nettle’s lunchtime came (she’s a thirsty girl sometimes!) and I filled up at a petrol station, and the attendant spoke German! Okay, that’s fine — I threw in a “Danke!” for good measure.

A long but enjoyable drive led us eventually into a little town climbing the side of a hill — not entirely deliberately, but one of Noia’s more quirky routes – she likes it scenic. (Noia is our anthropomorphised Navigon GPS navigator app, short for “paranoia” and named for her inordinately cautious disposition; “beware” every time I go a fraction over the speed limit, or when she thinks the limit is less than it really is; “In 500 metres, take the second exit from the roundabout; beware”, “beware: traffic control”). It got a tad narrow, but we made it through with no drama, and discovered to our delight a car park on the other side that seemed a reasonable place to stop for the day — we were certainly ready for it. There was even a great view of the surrounding hillside.

We wandered back on foot the way we’d come, with the hopes of visiting a little supermarket we’d passed. It turned out to be closed, but we walked around the town anyway, intrigued by its…Austrian-ness!

Back at Nettle, we were investigating the most level and out-of-the-way place to stop for the night, when we discovered a sign prohibiting overnight parking! Oh, how we wished we could’ve un-seen that sign, but the cat was out of the bag, and our hopes of settling in for the evening were temporarily dashed. Lesson learned: Don’t look around too much!

So, dusk rapidly approaching, we set off again, following the road that zig-zagged up a long, gentle sloping mountainside dotted with wind turbines and delightful little brooks lined with flowers. Before long, Katherine spotted a park labelled “Camper”, to our delight, and I executed a speedy across-road 6 point turn, and we pulled in — it was a roadside café car park, kind enough to offer a place for campers to stop for the night. We made sure the café folks were happy with us being there (and scored a couple of pairs of warm woolen slippers, which totally look like bear feet), and happily stopped for the night, with a view out over the long grassy downhill slope we’d climbed, and surrounding snowy and misty mountains.

Whilst crossing the lagoon on the train and watching the surreal city approach, I got laughed at for eagerly pulling out Google Earth on the iPhone for an additional birds-eye view and showing it to Katherine — “How cool does this look!” — evoking the response that it also looked pretty cool out the window (she said bemusedly that I was missing it because I had my head buried in my iPhone). Andrea laughed knowingly, saying that he does exactly the same thing. We emerged from the train station onto the bustling streets of Venice. Andrea and Silvia took us up and over Ponte degri Scalzi, the bridge crossing the main canal, and proceeded to lead us through a warren of tiny streets, frequently crossing picturesque little bridges over narrow canals lined with boats.

It was very difficult to visualise the city as the collection of little islands that it is — it seemed decidedly more like a solid landmass interspersed by canals! As Katherine answered when asked later that night what she thought of Venice, “I thought there’d be more water”. It was quite cool to think that we were crossing between islands when we passed over those little bridges though. Katherine later remarked on the unusual quantity of graffiti (something I blithely failed to notice), noting that perhaps tagging a place so astronomically famous is quite the ego trip!

A big trade in Venice was in exotic carnival masks — there were lots of little shops selling them, representing a variety of Commedia dell’arte characters. These had Katherine feeling inspired, especially when she spotted the unpainted plaster ones you can buy and decorate yourself.

As we walked, Andrea pointed out one of the university buildings nestled amongst the narrow streets and canals, and introduced us to a great Italian word that we haven’t really been able to find an English version of: Simpatico, which Andrea and Silvia described as meaning something like funny, friendly; basically a word describing someone who’s good company, of pleasant character and who puts one in the mood they’re in just by being with them. (Admittedly, if said about a woman however, it means she has a nice personality but isn’t much to look at, as in “she has a great personality, but…“). It seemed apt, being introduced to the word by those two simpatici.

Andrea was explaining the verb ‘andare’ to me (to go), and a guy passed us and made a friendly comment to Andrea in Italian — something about giving the Americans language lessons and “Americani non parlano Italiano”. We stopped to talk for a moment; he asked us where we were from (actually, Australia!), and our conversation moved from there. and it turned out that Ben was an American who’d just kinda settled in Venice for a few months and had landed some sort of architect internship there – not a bad gig! He looked entirely Italian, and his Italian seemed pretty solid, so I was surprised when he switched to English to talk to all four of us. He was a friendly sort, and brainstormed with us about what to show his visiting mother later that day, given that Andrea and Silvia were being tour guides for the day, as well. When we parted ways with Ben, Andrea turned to us and explained “he is simpatico”.

Andrea grabbed simpatico Ben’s contact details, and we pressed on to Piazza San Marco, one of the main tourist draws of Venice. It was funny, our first visit there with Andrea and Silvia with the pressing hoards of other visitors had us almost entirely unaware of the square’s charms — it was difficult to appreciate the basilica with most of it covered with scaffolding, and the press of people left little breathing-room to look around.

Poor Silvia was feeling pretty drained by this point — our plans to have locals show us around had inadvertently resulted in us dragging a pregnant woman around Venice — sorry Silvia! With Silvia desperately in need of sustenance and a rest we sat down by the water and talked for a while, then pressed on and stopped for lunch at a little pizza cafe way off the beaten track (which made it consequently quite tasty, and very cheap!).

Some more ambling around back-streets and we came across a gelato shop — Andrea and Silvia had two rounds, so I suppose that must be high praise indeed. They laughed at our restraint (only one helping, pah!). We discovered later that the gelateria was listed in our travel guide: Quite a validation for Lonely Planet recommendations right there!

We jumped back on the train and made our way to Andrea and Silvia’s, in Padova. All four of us napped on the journey back (after plodding our way around most of Venice!), although not before Andrea and Silvia had to endure the apparently maddeningly inane chatter of two Italian women in the seats near us; the one benefit to not speaking Italian! We hung around on the couch for a while, and I pulled up an impressive recording on YouTube of Andrea and Silvia’s old band, “K”, playing a gig to a huge crowd.

Paolo and Vivian (Vivienne? Forgive me if I’m wrong on the names, Paolovigo!) had kindly invited us around for dinner, so the four of us joined them at “the cube”, their very Nordic-styled, gleaming house, along with Zage and his partner, and Paolo’s brother Robert and his girlfriend Alice. We chatted with Alice for a while, who spoke excellent English, and then gathered around as Paola and Vivian served up some absolutely awesome home-made pizza. We were startled when out came the shredded horse-meat — really, guys?

At the end of a really enjoyable evening with our new simpatici friends, Andrea and Silvia drove us back to “Monsangeles” (an in-joke name for Monselice that they couldn’t actually remember the origins of!). On the way we introduced them to one more favourite Aussie band, Powderfinger, which went down very well. We said a warm farewell, and promised that we would be back to pester them again — for longer, next time, and hopefully in Italian! Andrea gave us some Italian comic books to practise with – that’s how he learnt English! We’ve got no excuse now.

We’re really excited to have met them — for sure, they’re ‘our people’ — and we can’t wait to be back.

With nice sky and sunny mountains in the background, with a black gaping void in the foreground, or, say:

With visible foreground but overblown sky and background.

We could use a graduated filter on the lens, but HDR gives us this, effortlessly:

The software we use, Photomatix Pro, gives us a huge range of possibilities for each image with a vast array of settings, so it really adds an extra level of creativity after taking the actual photo, beyond the simple post-processing that we used to do in iPhoto.

We’re very pleased!

The reality of it has been quite different though: Somehow we seem to have made more connections with people than when we were back in Australia! A combination of being more outdoorsey, and having more time to devote to social networking has introduced us to lots of fantastic new people, and some very strong new friendships.

I met Andrea through my iPhone app Loopy — he got in touch after giving it a go, and we got talking. He lives in Padua with his partner Silvia, and next on our itinerary was to go and visit them.

So, we left Poggibonsi and headed north up through Tuscany. This was one of our most beautiful drives so far, through stunning emerald-coloured countryside, all vines and olive trees, cute little terracotta-roofed villas and startlingly blue lakes. We passed straight through Florence (to our surprise — I hadn’t inspected our route in advance), passing right by the place we stayed last time we were in Tuscany. Of course, as is our way, we passed through right on peak-hour, so it was a slow plod through the city. We pushed on the other side, and wound our way up into the mountains.

We discovered the most beautiful wildcamp location (last photo above), but we hadn’t really fulfilled our 3 hour driving quota for the day, and pressed on; we started keeping an eye out for a place to stop about half an hour later, and utterly failed for the following several hours. We felt a little despair when we turned onto an autostrada that reminded us both of the concrete forest that was Seoul, and eventually pulled over by the road and very successfully found ourselves a decent spot off the road 10 minutes away using Google Earth. What a great tool for wildcamping!

The next day we made it to Padova and moved into our new site for the week, in Monselice by the canal. The town was very pretty, and we were pleasantly surprised by our new surroundings, expecting a bit of a “suburban wasteland”, as we two snooty hills-dwellers put it.

After talking to various people, I’d formed an image in my head of Northern Italy as something of an endless suburb, but it was much greener and more relaxed than I’d pictured, to my relief. What’s more, we were thrilled to get our first glimpses of scarlet fields full of poppies!

We got in touch with Andrea and Silvia, and they came to pick us up and take us out to a restaurant with their friends. If it wasn’t clear already, when we met them it became clear pretty quickly that we were going to get along with them very well — these were definitely ‘our people’.

Having not worn or owned any makeup since the beginning of our travels, Katherine took the opportunity to get her girl on. Although not usually big on the hair and make-up thing, she rather enjoyed not looking like the un-groomed, polar-fleece wearing vagabond that she usually does – her words, not mine (I would, in fact, say she’s a damn fine looking vagabond, but she wouldn’t believe me).

The restaurant we headed to was one that had been recommended to Andrea and Silvia, and we were to be introduced to ‘bigoli’, one of the local specialties, a thick egg-based pasta. It’s called ‘bigui’ in the Venetian dialect, which had become a bit of an in-joke after Andrea and some friends had mentioned on Twitter that they were going to introduce us to it, and I misinterpreted it as a software development tool of some kind (‘ui’ as in User Interface).

We filed in and were soon joined by the others, two other couples and a third couple with their adorable little daughter. I was struck by how many of us were musicians and programmers! Always a good sign; there’s something about people who’ve been involved in music. We greatly enjoyed their company, and they were kind enough to do lots of translating for us when the bulk of the conversation turned Italian (we still regretted not putting more effort into learning more, though! We shall for next time).

There was much laughter and good company, and some great pasta with quite spectacular sauce, that we’re forever going to be trying to replicate (we think it was the best pasta we’ve ever tasted).

Then a car pulled up and a greeting in a very broad Australian accent announced the arrival of two expat Australians who had noticed our Aussie flag sticker on the back, which we put there to inform the French that we weren’t British and please don’t hate us.

We invited them in for a cuppa and did a round of introductions: They were Ray (Raylene) and Sam, and had lived here for twenty-three years. Ray was a Port Adelaide girl, and Sam was born in Lucca, a town not far from Poggibonsi, and had spent twenty years in Australia. They were very friendly and curious, and we very quickly made weekend plans!

Sam picked us up early on Saturday morning and drove us around the Chianti region. Along the way, we visited an old convent, inhabited by six Australian nuns who were sent here thirty years ago or thereabouts. Sam and Ray had originally heard about them and dropped in to say hello, and had been friends with them since. We met two of them, very friendly and Australian in an ‘old school’ way (they used the word ‘wog’ to describe a flu they’d had! — to us younger Australians, it’s solely a derogatory term to describe Italians and Greeks in Australia!). When they’d arrived at the convent, it was falling down, the roof just about to collapse, dirt floors — they’ve been fixing it up ever since. They laughed and described it as a challenging time, and I wasn’t surprised.

Sam took us back to their house — with some stilted conversation in the car on the way, with Sam’s amusing tendency to either not hear or ignore much of what we say! — and we enjoyed a several-course lunch with them. Katherine was particularly excited by an Australian-style roast for the main course, as she is a little deprived of this kind of cuisine, with us being vegetarians at home (and not having an oven!).

After lunch they drove us out to a charming fortress-village — Monteriggioni — which we wandered around for a time, talking. The surrounding countryside was beautiful and emerald-coloured.

On the way back, they stopped via a shop that makes and sells crystal — something the region’s known for — and while we wandered around talking with Ray, Sam bought us a gift from them, a little crystal olive-oil dish. How lovely!

The following day Sam and Ray picked us up very early and we drove north west for three hours towards a little town called Villa Collemandina. The drive there was beautiful, heading through (or at least nearby) the Garfagnana, a spectacular-looking region of green mountains and valleys I’d marked as a place I’d like to visit.

We drove alongside a bright blue river, along its valley with multi-hued mountains around us, and stopped by ‘Ponte Diablo’ in Borgo a Mozzano, a spectacular bridge over the Serchio river. Ray and Sam explained the legend: In return for bringing about the bridge’s completion, the devil demanded the first thing to cross the bridge. It was a pig, and a pissed-off devil got some rather petty revenge by making the bridge the odd shape it is. Fair enough.

We drove upwards into the mountains and arrived in Villa Collemandina: Sam and Ray had invited us there to join them at a restaurant they enjoyed, Ristorante Panoramico. The restaurant were celebrating Italy’s Liberation Day (liberation from Nazi Germany, that is) by holding a very inexpensive banquet. First we walked around the compact town’s little paths amongst the tightly-packed houses. A rather disturbing (but slightly amusing) old guy laughed at my hair and asked (translated by Ray) whether I was masculine or feminine! Guess I probably do need a haircut. Then he became overly friendly with Katherine, which was a little off! Eww.

The view from the town was great, as it was perched high on a mountain:

So, we filed into the restaurant and were treated to a feast — prosciutto, slices of local salami served interleaved with slices of kiwi-fruit, a wild mushroom risotto, and some rather more dangerous risotto containing mortal quantities of cheese. For the main course, big hunks of chicken, lamb, and many other different kinds of animal. This prompted Sam to proudly recount the Noah’s Ark of animalia he’s consumed in his life, including snails, sparrows (he described how he built a trap to catch them), wild boar piglets, deer, budgies (of all things!), and donkeys — and lungs & tripe, body parts he was particularly proud to have consumed.

We’ve been curious about gypsy (nomad) culture too, having heard some rather extreme things said — mostly the impression we’ve received that they’re thought of generally thieving and morally deficient — which seemed to us too extraordinary to be anything but widespread prejudice. So we sought Ray and Sam’s impressions, which didn’t differ greatly from what we’d previously heard. In fact, they told us that they’d heard recently in the news that a young girl had been sold from one group to another because she was considered a skilled thief, and thus valuable. It still all seems a little extreme to me — that, generally speaking, one whole culture can be so ‘corrupt’ — so I reserve judgement until I know more!

We were interested in their decision to move to Italy, and Sam explained that Ray’s family had been hostile towards Sam as an Italian, calling him Mafia, apparently, and had made their lives so unpleasant they decided to move. Good old Aussie racism, but fascinating to hear that the family were so caught up in their prejudice that they apparently drove their daughter away to another country!

We were equally fascinated to hear Sam talking about Southern Italians — unprompted, he loudly complained that there was “one law for them, another law for us”, with car registrations, TV licences… — very interesting to behold those sentiments, particularly in light of their exodus from Australia!

After lunch we sat outside in the sun and talked with Ray — as it turned out, we seem to share a lot of similar opinions and we enjoyed discussing the big issues (environmental collapse, overpopulation, asylum seekers and immigration and the popular attitudes to it…).

Back home, we exchanged contact details, and we told them to get in touch when they visit Australia again (if we’re there!), and we said farewell.

It was very interesting to meet some locals who also have an Australian perspective, and we really enjoyed meeting Sam and Ray!

Our unexpected detour resulted in some excitement as we were waved by another officer right into the town’s narrow, pedestrian-filled streets. We cruised slowly down a main street lined with cafés and boutiques; shoppers threw us surprised/bemused looks as we drove along, close enough to do some window shopping, maybe grab a cappuccino.

Things got a little tight as we drove through the piazza and down another little street past parked cars — this guy’s expression was classic:

Apart from some harmless scraping of our driver’s side step on a step as we passed, we escaped unscathed and drove on into the town of Arezzo. We found ourselves a sosta to stay in, and walked up the steps into the town via a park overlooking the surrounding countryside. We were in Arezzo primarily to visit the Duomo (partly to exercise our new-found HDR tools!), so that was our first stop, right beside the park.

It was an imposing old building, looming over the square, and its interior was lovely, and immense. We took lots of photos, Katherine’s shoulder acting as a tripod because it was so dark inside.

We ventured outside again and walked through the town’s little, steep cobbled streets. We were reminded by a sign that this was the town in which a lot of one of our favourite films, La Vita e Bella, was filmed — I can’t say I recognised anything in particular though.

We came across some stalls selling salami, cheese, and a variety of herbs and spices. It turns out we managed to stumble upon a food festival, and found lots of stalls dotted around the town, each with a different theme – here, meat and cheese, there gelato and chocolate, and in the main piazza more salami, bread, and a couple of makeshift restaurants. We mused afterwards on the homogeneity of the food and had it been a food festival in Australia there would have been Middle Eastern cuisine, Indian, African, European, Asian and of course the more traditional mother-land type fare.

So, we got ourselves some gelati (Katherine picked well with a strawberry and white chocolate blend and cinnamon chocolate), took them back to the park and sat on the grass in the sun watching the world go by as the cathedral bells rang. We laughed at a toddler who had already mastered the Italian tradition of wild hand-gestures while talking.

We stayed the night in Arezzo, and prepared to head off the next morning. Stopping at a service station to check the tyre pressures, I realised that the front-right tyre valve was leaking air, hissing wildly when I gently pushed the valve to one side. Uh-oh! The service station had a garage, so I poked my head around the corner and stuttered out in Italian that I had a problem with the tyre. The guy apologetically said they couldn’t help, but directed us around the corner to a tyre specialist. Miraculously, I actually understood the directions and could find the place he was referring to in Google Maps, but the guy there couldn’t help us either. He pointed us onwards to another garage, pointing it out to me on my iPhone’s map. We found the place, and I looked up and stumbled through an Italian translation of our problem. A helpful and very friendly mechanic from Bangladesh waved us in, jacked up Nettle, whipped off her tyre and replaced the valve within about five minutes, and five Euros later, cheerfully waved us onwards.

Sorted!

We set off from Perugia and took some steep and windy roads up through some more very pretty mountain landscape towards a little town called Preggio. We were headed there to meet up with Bruno, who I originally met when he asked a question about a WordPress plugin I wrote, Flickrpress. He recently noticed we were in the area, and kindly invited us up to his home (and agriturismo) in Preggio!

We found the cute little town and took the bumpy dirt track out to the house (Nettle: “Rrrmmmm! I got this!”), sitting atop a sunny ridge surrounded by blue mountains. Bruno waved us in and introduced us to his wife Elena, and give us a tour of the place, a lovely old farm-house exquisitely interior-decorated and filled with some very aesthetic artwork painted by Elena and her aunt — quite a talented family! Elena’s aunt, also called Elena, painted a large, extremely detailed, brightly coloured idealistic Umbrian countryside scene, which was absolutely spectacular. Bruno explained that Elena was in fact going blind when she painted it and had to be very close to the canvas to see what she was doing. During this story, both Katherine and I had missed whether the Elena Bruno was talking about was his wife or someone else. Katherine found it strangely unnerving talking to Elena at the beginning and not knowing whether or not she could see us.

Our eyes were caught by a piece of Australian Aboriginal artwork in the dining room, and Bruno drew our attention to the artist signature: It was painted by David Gulpilil, a famous Australian actor. Bruno explained that when they travelled to Australia, they’d come across an art gallery in Darwin and entered, passing an Aboriginal man sitting on the street looking like a beggar. Bruno and Elena perused the artwork there and noticed some was by David Gulpilil. When they expressed interest in the artist’s identity to the shopkeeper (they’d just seen a film with Gulpilil in it), the shopkeeper indicated that he was just outside the shop — he was the man they’d passed when they entered!

The four of us sat down to lunch, and Elena brought out bread made from their own spelt flour with cheese and prosciutto while Bruno presented copious amounts of very good local red wine. Then, a big bowl of their own home-made pasta with home-grown beetroot, which was creamy and spectacular. Finally, because in Italy there’s no point stopping eating until your stomach explodes, tasty frittata and a spicy salad of home-grown lettuces and various herbs that Elena had picked growing wild in the nearby fields.

Over lunch, Bruno and Elena told us about their lifestyle change, from living in Italy’s urban north and travelling in their camper (kindred spirits!) while they built rugged campers for a living, to this farm in Preggio — and the learning curve involved, as they now make olive oil, grow vegetables, keep bees and make wine! Elena’s even taking ballroom lessons in Perugia, which we thought was pretty cool.

Bruno noted that they have their own spring here and lots of water capacity, as they predict that water may well become an issue in the future — the little survivalists! Also, Bruno told us about Italy’s ‘feed in’ electricity scheme, which is providing for their retirement: They already have an extensive array of solar panels, and are going to invest a big bunch of money in more panels, which will earn them quite a decent income per year because the Italian government pays for energy you put back into the grid; the panels will pay themselves off in ten years or so! What a great scheme.

When I expressed interest in how Bruno came to be so tech saavy (he was right with me while we were talking WordPress), he explained that he was involved in Italy’s first domain registrar, Register.IT. He’d sold during the dot com boom, and did pretty well out of it — brilliant.

Then Bruno brought out a curious spirit called Amaro, which was quite pleasant (apparently it’s quite bitter further South, and I suspect it was the stuff we encountered in Forza D’agro’ made by naughty monks), which tipped us over into need-a-nap-land. So, we parted ways for the afternoon and Katherine and I drowsily watched an electrical storm happening around us from the couch in Nettle, then napped for a while. This is living!

They offered us the use of their washing machine and dryer, which we accepted with relish (of course, Katherine had just done some hand-washing that morning — she’s good at manifesting laundry opportunities that way) — Ahh, clean sheets.

We joined them again for dinner, which somehow Elena whipped up while we were lazing around. First was fresh, raw vegetables — carrots, some kind of leafy stalks that we didn’t recognise, fennel bulbs and cooked asparagus to be dipped in a dressing of our own construction, from olive oil (Elena and Bruno’s, of course), balsamic or white wine vinegar, salt and pepper. Fresh, simple and very satisfying! Then, Elena brought out an extremely tasty cheesy construction made from a vegetable that may have been rhubarb or silverbeet or a distant cousin, cooked with grilled cheese somehow. Next was a delicious simple risotto. Finally, with a rather worrisome introduction from Bruno — meat-based, not going to tell you what it is, for your own good, Bruno doesn’t like this dish but Elena does — Elena brought out a little casserole-like dish with some rather (as it turned out) innocuous-looking meat and vegetables. Well, innocuous once you get past the fact that I’m actually vegetarian, but for the purposes of proper culture-absorption relax my diet. It wasn’t till the next morning that we found out it was cow stomach! Yeech, I’m glad they didn’t tell us. It was chewy, tasty, and not like any other meat we’d had before (I thought it was a bit beefy, but I’m nominally vegetarian so what would I know).

I don’t know how Elena managed to do all that cooking, but it was a spectacular effort and we are so grateful for their hospitality!

While we were having dinner, Bruno and Elena first expressed an interest in the economic situation in Australia about which we were woefully incapable of enlightening them, aside from saying that living expenses are up and being joyful that we have escaped them to travel the world (nyaa, nyaa). Our conversation turned to the ongoing issue of Aboriginal welfare in Australia: They had seen the desolate towns in northern Australia, plagued by alcohol and drug problems and the like. I knew little about the complexities of the problem — how can I possibly comprehend how to restore pride and cultural integrity to a people whose culture we blithely destroyed, then excluded from our own culture, then grudgingly accepted as second-class citizens and more recently tried to assimilate into white Australian society with the aim of eradicating the Indigenous people once and for all? How do we now either integrate them into mainstream society or reverse the irreversible and restore their culture and way of life? — but we mused that a lot of money has been thrown at the problem in recent years — so, either it’s too little too late or the funding’s going to the wrong places. Of course, the latter is not inconceivable in a country that mindlessly logs its irreplaceable old growth forests for a quick buck, invests next to nothing in its education and research systems and plans to bottleneck its Internet traffic through a content filter to get rid of the Internet’s nasties (that can be effortlessly circumvented). A smart country, we are.

We noticed a photo on the cabinet in the dining room of a tropical-looking resort, and Bruno told us that it was Kenya — and the lodge was theirs! They’d visited and decided to buy some land and build a lodge there, together with a partner who moved to Kenya to supervise the building. He remarked on how widespread the corruption was there, and how they’d carefully done everything in strict accordance with the local bureaucracy but still had to resort to bribery to stop their paperwork from “staying at the bottom of the stack”.

We bid each other buona notte and headed for bed, parked in Bruno and Elena’s front yard.

We re-emerged in the morning for a late breakfast (oops — iPhone died in the night!) that our most gracious hosts provided, home-made bread, honey and jam with cereal and great coffee. Earlier that morning a framed painting had been delivered that we later saw was a beautifully-composed still life of pumpkins and other vegetables in peach and pastel orange hues that Elena had painted. That woman is amazing!

I attempted to fix our boiler’s issues by taking a vacuum cleaner to the outlet, thinking it may have been clogged, and did a few random things with Nettle while Bruno cast an expert eye over her. He shared some useful suggestions — solar panels, even a second alternator that can be attached onto the first one, and an approach we can take to diagnosing our leisure battery issues — and laughed at us and our indoor tendencies (we haven’t even opened our awning once).

So, we said farewell with profuse thanks for their kindness, Elena gave us some eggs from their chickens and Bruno generously presented us with some of their home-made pasta and two bottles of their olive oil, and continuing a tradition started by some friends, made us promise to send them pictures of spectacular places with the olive oil bottles in them. Will do.

We waved and drove up the bumpy driveway grinning and shaking our heads in wonder — I doubt we’ll ever meet a more lovely and interesting couple! Thanks Bruno and Elena!