Farewell Italy. Crossing the Piccolo San Bernardo Pass
13/06/18 It was time to leave Italy. We had spent the night at the sosta in La Thuile where heavy showers stopped us from getting out and exploring the area…. Read more »
Category: Italy
Gran Paradiso Part 3: Our Final Valley
11/06/18 – 12/06/18 At the bottom of the Valsavarenche, just above the village of Introd which proudly proclaims it is a ‘Friend of Popes’, another valley splits off. This is… Read more »
Gran Paradiso Part 2: Ibex on the Slopes of the Big One
07/06/18 – 10/06/18 These blog posts may get a bit samey…visit a valley in the Aosta region, cycle a bit, walk a bit, see some marmots etc etc. if they… Read more »
Gran Paradiso Part 1: Cogne and Lillaz
03/06/18 – 06/06/18 South of the Aosta Valley is an offshoot of the Alps, Italy’s first national park. It is named after its highest peak – Gran Paradiso – the… Read more »
An Avalanche in the Aosta Valley
While we were in Cervinia we sat and watched as the spring sun thawed the snow and created avalanches. The sound as the snow starts to move is awesome in… Read more »
Matterhorn and Marmots in Cervinia
31/05/18 – 02/06/18 Breuil-Cervinia sits at the head of the Valtournenche. It’s a resort town, mostly purpose built to support the skiing industry, and we were quite shocked to see… Read more »
Valle d’Aosta. Perfect Peace in Torgnon
28/05/18 – 30/05/18 We had finally arrived in the Valle d’Aosta, the most westerly of Italy’s alpine regions which has borders with Switzerland and France. In fact French is an… Read more »
The Great Glass Elevator to the Alps
27/05/18 We left the large sosta in Celle Ligure on the Sunday morning, along with many other Italian vans who had been weekending there. Before we departed Paul did his… Read more »
Living the Lido Life
25/05/18 – 26/05/18 When we sat and planned our route north to the alps we decided that we would have one final day by the beach – after all the… Read more »
The Mountain with a Hole
24/05/18 Monte Forato had caught my eye while we were driving south through Italy and we’d immediately put it on our to-do list. There was too much snow on the… Read more »
A Whistle Stop Tour of Florence
23/05/18 Florence is on many people’s ‘must do’ lists for Italy. It hadn’t made it to the top of our list on the way south, when we visited Pisa and… Read more »
Back in Tuscany
22/05/18 After the Monte Sibillini we were planning to head for the Apuan Alps, a small offshoot of the Apennines that sits behind the coast of northern Tuscany. It was… Read more »
Bertie’s Broken Brakes
21/05/18 Today was spent nursing Bertie back to health. A few days previously we had noticed Bertie’s brake warning light flickering intermittently on the dashboard. Today, as we drove back… Read more »
Avoiding the Zona Rossi of the Sibillini
19/05/18 – 20/05/18 In search of a sosta we left the beautiful Piano Grande (I keep wanting to call it the Grand Piano, but that’s something else entirely), driving the… Read more »
Monte Vettore and the Piano Grande
17/05/18 – 18/05/18 We were continuing our homeward journey northwards and the next stop would be the Sibillini national park. This area was hard hit by multiple earthquakes in 2016… Read more »
An Unexpected Stop in Civitella del Tronto
16/05/18 North of the Gran Sasso mountains is the Monti della Laga area. The two mountainous areas form one national park but are very different in nature. The sharp limestone… Read more »
A Final Jaunt in the Gran Sasso
14/05/18 – 15/05/18 Yesterday we had walked up to Prati di Tivo, today we drove up. The large car park which had been full of ‘macchine’ was now nearly empty… Read more »
Classics and Chamois
12/05/18 – 13/05/18 As we travelled around the ridge of the Gran Sasso we started to see more evidence of earthquake damage, this was to become a feature of the… Read more »
Preparing for the Giro d’Italia at Campo Imperatore
11/05/18 Although we’d deliberately decided to stay lower down the mountains, the lure of the snowy heights proved too much and we decided we had to go up to Campo… Read more »
In the Shadow of the Gran Sasso at Fonte Cerreto
09/05/18 – 10/05/18 We made our way from L’Aquila up through the foothills of the Gran Sasso national park, climbing up on the major road (A24) that chugged almost imperceptibly… Read more »