Tort's Travels

Italy - 2024

The work on the extension to our house in West Yorkshire is now 99% complete and our self-imposed restriction to domestic motorhome travel whilst it was ongoing is therefore also at an end. We have family visiting from overseas in May, June and September and we also have our usual batch of music festivals lined up for the Summer months. But before then we have a 3 months window of opportunity during which we are able to max out my 90 days Schengen limit and escape the soggy and icy clutches of the UK winter by heading South once more. This time we have our sights set on Italy.

I made a bit of a boo-boo on our previous trip around France, Spain and Portugal. When calculating our return date I simply counted forward 90 days from the date we entered France. It only occurred to me sometime later that I should have in fact counted our entry date as Day 1 rather than Day Zero and so I effectively overstayed my allowed entitlement by a day. Nothing was said at border control. Whether this was because I was travelling with Lisa and her Irish EU passport, or the official was just being lenient on account of my transgression being so minor, I'm really not sure. But I'm taking no chances this time and have plumbed our dates into one of the numerous available online calculating tools and I'm now confident that our arrival into France on 1st February will require us to be back out again on or before 30th April.

We have a vague agenda, which as always will be subject to change, but the rough plan is to travel predominantly non-toll roads down through France and then along the French and Italian Rivieras to visit Florence and Pisa. We will then possibly explore a bit of Tuscany before following the Western coastline of Italy southwards via Pompeii and The Amalfi Coast. Our initial pace will be determined by how cold the French section is. If it's freezing I'll put my foot down a bit in search of more temperate conditions, but if all goes to plan it will take us roughly a month to get all the way down to Italy's toenail, followed by 3 to 4 weeks exploring Sicily and a further month to get home again up the Eastern seaboard and, weather permitting, through the Alps.

I've done a bit of shopping in preparation for the trip. One thing we really should have had with us last time was a set of snow chains. We hope not to have to use them but they are an obligatory piece of kit in many places over the winter months and so I have splashed out on a set of Ideal-TR109 heavy duty chains, which should be man enough to get our 4 tonne beastie out of trouble, if ever the need were to arise.

I've also bought six new storage crates for the garage. We've managed to break most of the lids on the bargain store boxes we have previously used so I've gone for something which is a bit more heavy duty and properly stackable. They are deeper than their predecessors so I can get a fair bit more in them, although I have found that stacking them with our bikes in situ does involve a fair amount of tetris-like maneuvering between the handlebars.

We have invested in the Rough Guides to both France and Italy for lots of inspirational advice on places to visit en-route. We also have the 2024 ACSI books which will help us to seek out discounted campsites. The top rate has increased from €22 to €27 per night since we bought the 2022 version but this does generally include electric hook up and so will still represent a significant saving on Italian campsites which do appear to be alarmingly expensive in some areas.

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