23 February 2024 – Battening down the hatches

Miles driven today = 76

Total Miles to date = 1,661

There’s not a whole lot to report today really.  We didn’t have the quietest of nights in our sea front layby, but it could have been a lot worse.  Somebody parked nearby for a while with Eurotrash blaring a little after midnight and about an hour after that I could hear tyres screeching somewhere, but, despite the wind buffeting the van, we slept really well after that until the traffic noise started up again sometime after 6am.

I had a bit of a rethink on going to see the Roman ruins in Ostia Antica.  Priority One today was really just finding somewhere nice and quiet to stay tonight and besides, we will probably be doing more than enough in the way of exploring Roman sites over the next few days at Herculaneum and Pompeii.  So we headed inland a little way to Pomezia, where we picked up the dualled SS148 through the heavily industrialised area around Aprilia.

The roads were straight, the countryside was flat and the sky was iron grey so not the most exciting of journeys until we passed Terracina and could see hills through the gloom and waves crashing against the rocky coastline.

We called it a day a few kilometres short of Gaeta, pulling in at the Quorino Sosta.  We are surrounded by pine trees with the raging sea across the road and steep rocky cliffs behind us.  Apparently this place is popular with climbers but today we are all on our own here.  We texted the owners to make sure we were OK to stay and popped €20 in the honesty box, which includes hook up to enable us to do a bit of recharging after more than a week off-grid.

There’s a nice little café by the entrance so we had a spot of lunch in there before going for a quick wander on the beach.  

It’s pretty hairy out there, although we are nicely sheltered in the Sosta, so we decided that a chilled afternoon was probably just what the Doctor ordered.  The rain we were promised this afternoon hasn’t properly arrived yet, with the worst of it now due to come in overnight.  Hopefully it will have cleared enough in the morning to allow us to have a slightly more productive day tomorrow.

24 February 2024 - Herculaneum