Camping le Pianacce

Photo: The campsite is set in amongst those trees. Surprisingly there were few midges and mosquito's and the only little annoying things were crying babies. Also in photo the typical layout of Eurocamps tents. Not a lot of space between them, enabling you to get up close and intimate with your Dutch neighbours!

We chose to camp in Tuscany. We couldn't afford hotels and we thought that campsites might offer a bit more for the kids. We booked in one with Eurocamp. I like camping and although Eurocamp is more like 'glamping', nothing quite beats the smells, sounds and freedom living in a tent brings. Of course you have to get the right site and hours of searching through websites led us to http://www.campinglepianacce.it/ Camping Le Pianacce near Catagneto Carducci. I dreaded being stuck with a load of Brits and campsites where they spoon feed people someone's idea of entertainment. What we wanted was somewhere to be left alone, but space to opt in to the stuff going on site without having to be friends for life with some awful family from Gateshead who latch on to you simply because you are from the same shores as them.
We arrived early at the campsite. First impressions last and I was impressed with the neat terraces of pitches for the tents, set against the hillside. They were all enclosed by pine trees and a winding road that reached the great heights of the campsite with spectacular views. It was tidy, not over sized and family orientated. Miriam, the girl at reception let us in early so we made a bee line for the pool whilst we waited for our Eurocamp reps to roll up. It bought us time to check out the facilities. Lets face it, when you go on holiday you are looking for clean loos, good showers, space to wash up and places to eat and a shop. Throw in a few sports facilities and that's more or less what we had go. The only criticism was the tents were very close, and later in the week when babies in neighbouring tents woke up crying, or when people were snoring, it sounded very close. The terraces allow you to spy on the tents below, and as we sat out on the chairs each night, we did a lot of people watching in between games of Monopoly.

Tom & some other gap year type youngsters were our reps. We didn't really need them but I can imagine some holiday makers put on them an awful lot. We did however nick his table tennis stuff and helped ourselves to the many books and games freely available to the campers. There is a whole row of tents for the offices of these holiday companies. I had a snoop in the others to see what goodies they had, but kept getting caught so I had to pretend to be lost and came out empty handed.

Our tent was okay. For readers thinking of going to Eurocamps then here's what the budget tents involve.
- A double wire bed. Not bad but will do.
- A separate bedroom that has a curtain to split it. 3 wire beds and linen.
- A cooker and grill with a couple of shelves. Pots, plates, etc.
- Electricity
- Tables and chairs outside, with a few sun loungers.
I think other firms offered slightly more luxury's such as outdoor lamps and better kitchens, but at what price i do not know.

No loo, but the campsite loos are very clean, plentiful and never far. It also has a laundry so save yourself space in your suitcase and to some washing instead. A good washing up area where you can meet people as you do your dishes. Great showers and an outdoor wash area with shaving points.

So we moved in, set up home for 2 weeks and realised we were one of the few British families there. The rest were Germans, Dutch or Spanish. We were soon to learn how to deal with them in the hostile territory of the swimming pool.



Photo: Inside a tent wearing a quality souvenir from Florence

Tollgate Scandal

Photo: Stuart's attempt to pay the fine with a large pine cone failed.



The journey had been good so far, but I was still adjusting to the wrong side of the road and wrong position of my gear stick. A few crunches eventually found the one I was looking for. We then face our first hurdle...the toll gates. I had a choice of several to choose from, and naturally I went to the quietest one. Not a lot seemed to be happening here. Nobody was in the booth and there appeared to be a lack of payment boxes, so perhaps the deal was you pay at the other end. The gate opened so I headed through it and off we went. Several kilometers later we turned up at another. This time there was a part human being in the shape of an Italian woman sat in the booth. After an exchange of a few words, we established that I had come from Pisa and not Manchester. She then got out of her box and made a note of the reg and charged us 5 Euros, and then gave us the biggest receipt ever. Into the glove compartment it went, unaware of what it was.

3 days later Emma was reading it and discovered it was actually a fine. My first ever motoring offence was on foreign soil. But that woman had made no mention of it and politely smiled as she had handed it to me. What a cow! 51 Euro's...the cheek of it. Seemingly (much to the amusement of the campsite staff) we had driven through the Auto Pass gate...the one used by people who have purchased...err an auto pass. Bugger it, I was now being charged 51 Euros to pay for the privilege of driving on all of Tuscany's Autostrada, even though I was actually using around 40 miles of their pot hole ridden attempt of a motorway. Paying it was no fun as it meant a visit to the post office. I discovered that post office staff are universally miserable. Perhaps there is an employment agency specialising in people with no facial expression muscles and who are genetically linked to Alsatians. Anyway Mrs Jobswrothyio simply handed over a form that was in Italian and told Emma to fill it in. This meant getting it translated at the campsite, where by now the story of the stupid British people's toll fine was spreading like wildfire. The other thing about post offices around the world it they are full of pensioner's who queue. After a long stand we got the fine payed.

Photo: My least favourite place in Tuscany...the tolls





So my advice if going to Italy is avoid where you can the tolls. The other roads are slower but more scenic and have less bovine creatures employed to work on them

Planes, (No Trains) & Automobiles

Picture: On their first flight ever eating Jet2.com gruel

I beat the alarm set for 5 a.m. and fumbled around to get the last of my bits 'n' pieces together before heading off to Manchester Airport where we were going hand over our car to a complete stranger for 2 weeks. Having looked at many options for getting to the airport, including a lift off our Cath or the train we concluded that driving and parking the car would be our best. But then that opens a huge list of other options like where do you put it without it getting nicked! We discovered a company (one of many) who for under £50 would look after our car. On the way to the airport you simply ring them and they are there waiting for you when you arrive. I was hoping it would be a better job than those hoods who used to hang around the Apollo Theatre 'looking after your car' who basically charged you a fiver not to nick your car. I had visions of a Vauxhall Zafira being used in jewellery heists or ram raids on Viccy Wine whilst we were sunning it in Italy. Anyway, sure enough he was there and had a trustworthy look about him, so I handed over the keys after I had reset the mileometer to check they didn't drive to Plymouth and back. By this time we had got a trolley and Andrew had loaded it up with all our bags.
It's been a long time since me or Emma have flown, and this was the first time for the kids so really we looked as clueless as we were. Straight away we fell prey to the luggage tracking bloke who convinced us it was worth paying the £2 to stick a label on our bags that would be tracked (don't the airlines do that anyway?) Then we went in search of Jet-2.com's desk. Not many folk at it so we swiftly got to the front of the queue and all looked on nervously to check our bags were within the 22kg allowance. None of us were anywhere near, with at least 10kg to spare on some bags. I was tempted to put a couple of bricks in just to get my money's worth! Off the bags went, with the peace of mind that they were being tracked.
Into the departure lounge I took the precaution to have a dump on land rather than in the air. I didn't really fancy stinking the plane out so I 'dropped the little one's off in the swimming pool' on the safety of land. When I returned Andrew was very excited that he had just seen Ricky Hatton walk by. It was then a obligatory visit to WH SMiths to buy papers and sweets for the flight.
Airport lounges are great for people watching. You know that some of the morons sat amongst you will soon be stuck with you in a small space...but who would it be? Was it the nerdy socks and sandals man, the large stag party of white van men? No as their Magaluf '10 t-shirts gave it away. I also remember watching a Channel 5 documentary on how to survive air crashes, that said survivors are the ones who step on others to get out of a burning plane. I began to work out how easy it would be to climb over my fellow passengers. Then the pilot arrived...thank goodness. Before long we were boarding Jet 2's finest winged taxi. We were seated one row behind the exit, so I only had to clamber over the designer bloke sat in front of me to get off. We were all a bit nervous/excited and I was gasping sighs of relief that we had managed to get on the plane. All we had to do now was get off it and drive.
The flight went well. There are few highlights, but the views over the Alps were great and the experience of Jet 2 cuisine was entertaining. It was barely edible, but the kids fell for the novelty value of it. The beans were so over cooked in the microwave that they were stuck to the cardboard box they were served in.The designer bloke in front of us obviously wasn't that impressed and offered us his cooked breakfast. Suddenly stepping on him to escape would be a little bit harder now as I tucked into his rubbery scrambled eggs.
We arrived in Pisa and we were all slightly disappointed when the pilot reported it was 24 C outside. However his thermometer must have been playing up because as when we stepped on the runway we were hit with a wave of heat. We got our bags and went in search of Hertz to pick up our Ford Focus.
We decided to walk the 800m rather than use the free bus. It got us to the front of the queue again and we picked up our keys in no time at all. The lady then tried to sting us with an expensive super waver fee to protect you against any claims. We'd been warned about it so we took out a policy with another firm for £50 that protects you should you lose your expensive waver in the event of an accident. It was around £175 cheaper than Hertz own so check out companies on line. Here's a useful article to advise you on how to do it. Taking others advice I also checked the car over for scratches etc. There was at least 1 on each panel, and some fairly big dents too that the lovely Hertz woman had failed to mention, so I went through each one with her and checked them on her list. Then we had the conundrum of how to get 5 people and their bags in a Focus and contend with an annoying teenage daughter demanding I shut the door because I was letting the heat in. As we only had a 1 hour drive ahead of us we put one on the floor and Emma squashed in.
This was a first driving a left side drive motor. It was confusing so I decided to spin it around the car park for a while before getting trapped on the vortex of the Autostrada. Once your on you can't get off! It took a while to adjust to the left side thing, and there were a few near misses with the kerb. However, it was not the mad driving others had warned me about, and the journey was fairly uneventful and relaxing once we got going....that was until we met the toll gates.

Do you remember when...?

This blog is intended to help preserve my own and others memories. I can recall many holidays from my childhood and flicking through old slides reminds me of things stored away deep in my memory banks. So here are some notes of one of our best holidays abroad, jotted down to stir up other memories and to remind us of the details that make for a good break. It is mainly for my own benefit but also, I wanted to know about where I was going, and thankfully a small handful of bloggers gave their own accounts of the different places I ended up visiting or avoiding. So I am returning the favour to the blogging community and hopefully this might help somebody out there.