15 April 2024 – Technical Difficulties

Miles driven today = 38

Total Miles to date = 4,059

While we were heading towards Verona a couple of days ago Lisa mentioned she could hear a ticking noise coming from somewhere on the outside of the van.  I did check the tyres when we stopped to see if there were any stones lodged in the treads and spotted nothing untoward but this morning as I pulled into the campsite’s service area I noticed one of the rear tyres was looking decidedly deflated and when I checked again, sure enough, I found this bolt buried deep into the tyre.

Modern motorhomes don’t generally come with any sort of a spare wheel.  It’s something I have given thought about investing in but not done anything about to date. But it turns out we were very lucky on several fronts; i) the tyre didn’t completely deflate or blow when we were driving, ii) the guy on reception spoke really good English and could put us in touch with various repair facilities, and iii) another one of the staff there had a compressor so we tried reinflating the tyre first.  However there was an audible hiss so the only safe option was to get a mobile repair man out.  A couple of hours later a chap turned up and very quickly the tyre was repaired and we were back on the road by midday and only €70 worse off.

Thankfully today’s journey was only due to be a relatively short one anyway as we headed towards Lake Garda.  The campsite we picked out is on the Western shore but first we fancied having a look at Sirmione which sits on a finger of land jutting out into the lake from the South.  There’s a castle there and several other points of interest which we thought might make the short detour worthwhile.  I’d picked out a lovely big car park which appeared to have spaces reserved for motorhomes but as we approached the barrier the attendant signaled we should do an about turn and frantically waved us away.  

So that was pretty much all we saw of Sirmione and we continued along the surprisingly urbanised shoreline to our home for the next 2 nights at Sereno Camping near Moniga del Garda.  It’s a lovely quiet spot right on the shore, it’s only €17 a night on the ACSI card and the bar is open all day.  What is there not to like?

Once we were all set up we had another issue to resolve.  Our fridge has got itself heavily iced up over the last couple of weeks and as a result, even working at full power, it just isn’t getting down to the required temperature and we’ve had a couple of instances of curdled milk in our morning cuppa, which simply will not do!  The heat we have experienced over the last couple of days in Verona hasn’t helped but something had to be done, so with a pan of warm water and a plastic spatula we successfully cleared all the ice from the fins at the back and, fingers crossed, it now appears to be back on track to keeping things at a steady 2-3 degrees.

With the contents of the fridge all re-stowed we took ourselves off down the steep steps to the stony beach.  You can’t really walk very far in either direction but there are a couple of pontoons which would be great for diving if the water were a little warmer.   From those we could see lots of what I am pretty certain are chub spawning in the shallow water at the lake’s edge.  We also saw several pairs of grebe doing their head bobbing courtship dances.

The views across the lake weren’t quite what we had hoped for with really poor visibility for much of the day.

But the sun did break through and burn away a lot of the mist later in the afternoon.  That’s our previously aborted destination of Sirmione sitting out there at the end of its spit of land.

We have been used to having hordes of cats circling the van in expectation every time we have got the Cadac barbecue out so the arrival of this pair made a pleasant change and they have been doing a circuit of the few vans who are here hoping to pick up the odd stray crust.  Our friends the Scops Owls are here too with their rusty seesaw call.  I’ll miss them as we head further north.

16 April 2024 - Lake Garda