We had four sublime days beach side camping with our lovely Italian host looking after us throughout our stay – we even ended up sitting with him and his large family to watch Italy’s painful defeat in the football…for the next 24 hours every time he saw us he would just repeat ‘Italia kaput….Italia Kaput!’ The beach was lovely and full of tradesmen trying to make us realise we really did need braids I our hair and a new watch – most amazing were the guys walking with clothes rails up and down the beach stacked with clothes.

The campsite was slightly strange in that everyone else who was there were based in what seemed to be permanent holiday/weekend homes. They all had large plots with a caravan or large tent covered with a permanent cover – and all most of them even had sheds with kitchens and bathrooms in them all surrounded with living room furniture and large plasma tvs. We have come to realise that Italians LOVE their television and each camping plot nearly always had the tvs blaring – normally some strange dating show or shrill kids tv songs. It was, however, lovely to be the only non Italians for a few days – there was also the added bonus of fresh fruit, veg, buffalo mozzarella, fish etc that arrived from local farms each morning……and the locally made wine at £1 a delicious bottle.

The camper has been gaining a little bit of well deserved respect along the way, finally! We had a lovely Dutch couple come and take photos and ask us about her, then we spotted two old VWs along the costal roads and we had a mutual horn toot and wave – rather excitedly from us. Most people are in big, white and modern motor homes with things we are not remotely jealous about like: standing room, mosquito nets, air conditioning etc etc – they tend to look at us like we are bonkers…as they continue to tip fresh ice into their newly blended cocktails……we just hold up our slightly grubby glasses as we sit in our broken camping chairs and cheers them – 99% of the time we wouldn’t have it any other way. She is going well – we have to stop after each 30-50 mile stint to let the engine cool – especially when it is 30deg by 9am – but apart from one tiny reminder yesterday to keep us on our toes (she cut out 0.4 miles from our destination tired of the heat and a bit of a big hill) she has been running beautifully.

And so, we moved on from the beach and prepare for the next country – Croatia. We travelled cross country heading for a ferry from Bari – we stopped at a little hotel (the only accommodation for miles around) in a town called Candela and ended up in a beautiful town house with 12ft high ceilings and Victorian tiled floors in each room (I wanted to live there forever). We made it to Bari the next day and hoped to get the ferry that night. Alas, no such luck. You can’t buy tickets in advance and the office was closed – apparently they were not running the ferry until the following day. After being advised not to leave our camper unattended in Bari (yet another Italian town showing real signs of the recession) we made our way out of town to a another little hotel. The total lack of campsites in this area creating a large dent in our budget! Anyway we are now wasting a few hours in the hotel before getting back on the road and back to the port where we are told the ticket office will open at six. We, hopefully, will get into Dubrovnik at 7am tomorrow.

Having amassed an enormous amount of washing over the last two weeks we are now both wishing that we had an Italian grandmother along for the ride. Each of the plots at the beach campsite had a grandmother who spend her days doing one of the following; staring at passers by, peeling a wide variety of vegetables, keeping guard, shouting and tutting at their family members and doing all the family’s washing…one with in depth knowledge of VWs would be a bonus!