Adventures With Harvey

Trulli Unique

“How can the headline be spelled wrong?” I hear my learned audience cry!

Because it’s actually spelled correctly – yes, Trulli are a particular type of house which is unique to the Puglia region of Southern Italy. They’re funny looking little dwellings with conical stone roofs making you think they may be inhabited by a gnome or an elf. For those of you who don’t know, Puglia is the region of Italy that is the ‘heel of the boot’ and in many places you’ll see these little Trulli houses as you drive about the countryside. The most famous town for Trulli is Alberobello where there are several hundred of them, well justifying the town’s UNESCO World Heritage Status.

This edition will be a little different as we attempt to provide some insights into life on the road with the Travelling Woodies. Since our last blog we have visited some very special places however for many of them, the photos tell the story. I’ll be sure to provide locations in each caption so you can treat this edition as a photo diary however for now, this is Adventures with Harvey coming to you with a slightly different flavour.

We decided our first night on the mainland would be in Reggio Calabria but how do we choose where to stay each night? With the use of our favourite app which is called Park4Night which it is an indispensable tool for we motorhomers. You can search any town or region and on the map, a variety of symbols will appear, each denoting a different type of parking spot. E.g. Black circle with a tent is a camp ground, red with a motorhome is a paying motorhome area often with optional electricity and showers/toilets, these typically cost between €8-25 per night. Green dot with a motorhome is rare but best, these are free dedicated motorhome areas provided by the city and will almost always have waste and water services available. Then you have a blue circle with a P which is a carpark that some other motorhomer has found and registered with the site and usually at least one of these will be suitable. The app provides a good description of each site, how many spaces, if there is a cost, what services are available etc and also users get to leave reviews giving 1-5 stars and provide a comment. All of which means you can easily figure out whether a place is safe, quiet, free, and often info about access to public transport and other useful info. If you really hit the jackpot you’ll find a free carpark right by the ocean which we have been fortunate enough to do every so often. We find a free spot 5-6 nights per week on average, paying is only necessary if there is nowhere free or perhaps in cities with a high crime rate in which case a paying area will always be more secure than a random carpark. The app also tells you where to find a laundromat which we use about every 10-14 days, as well as dedicated dump stations and water faucets.

Happily we found a free spot in Reggio Calabria which was an enormous carpark on the waterfront near the port which was used by truckies to park up for a few hours or overnight. Like almost all of southern Italy it was filthy with piles of garbage everywhere however we had a peaceful night there (once the couple of carloads of youngsters had cleared out around 10pm). Our view was back across the water to Sicily and, if we’d had some binoculars, we would have been able to see the carpark on the other side where we spent our last night on the island. The highlight of Reggio Calabria was a couple of life-sized Greek bronze statues in the archaeological museum, these pieces having been discovered in 1972 by a local chemist snorkelling and date back to the 5^th century BC. No-one knows who these fine naked specimens are, and the museum keeps them in an atmosphere controlled room (3 minutes in an air-gap was needed prior to entry). Anita, being a fan of earl grey tea, also went to the bergamot museum which was a celebration of all things related to said citrus fruit.

Several people have asked how Harvey goes with negotiating the skinny little European roads. The answer is surprisingly well most of the time however Italy has been the most difficult country so far mainly due to the poor quality and maintenance of the roads. Many streets in and around the centre of small European towns weren’t designed with Harveys in mind and for this reason, we try and avoid CBD areas. If you have a medieval hilltop town for example, there will usually be a Park4Night outside the town and you’re able to walk or cycle up to do your exploring. The same applies with larger towns and cities, we usually park somewhere on the outskirts and cycle in or use public transport. Before setting off each driving day we peruse the route using Google maps to make sure there’s nothing particularly nasty looking and also to select the most suitable route. We always take toll roads if they’re available because they’re usually shorter and flatter, always much easier on Harvey, and we think you save at least as much on LPG and other wear & tear as you pay on the tolls. Google satellite view is also very useful, especially if we’re planning some supermarket shopping – you can zoom in on the carpark and see if it’s suitable for a Harvey or not (obviously underground or rooftop carparks are a no-go).

However occasionally things go wrong as they did on our way to Tropea, this town being a good example of one to park on the outskirts, however the approach to our selected parking area took us around the edge of town and included 3-4 tight hairpin bends. Harvey can deal with hairpins most of the time, it just takes a 3 to 7 point turn and some excellent assistance from our lovely navigator who gets out to help and also directs traffic as required. However at Tropea things went wrong when one of the hairpins was also particularly steep and, with Harvey’s large bum (overhang over the rear axle) he actually got stuck. Yep, his left front bumper was up against the barrier and his right rear had scraped on the road and the old chap was caste… and there was a decent queue of traffic forming. In the end we were able to put him into reverse, give it some wellie, and scrape our way backwards for a short distance, realign the turn and we were away… but it was slightly traumatic for all concerned (particularly poor Harvey).

Your author’s favourite thing about Tropea (apart from the stunning views) was 2 unexploded bombs from WWII, both of which hit the church in town but failed to explode. They are now on permanent exhibition and are something you don’t see inside a church every day! The Travelling Woodies spent a couple of delightful hours on the beach in the afternoon, your author had his first swim in the Med, and we befriended a young Belgian couple, Jasper and Nathalie, who later joined us for a refreshment at a local seaside bar as we watched the sun go down and exchanged travel stories.

Please be sure to look out for the next blog as your author has a most interesting story to tell. It’s a bit like a story within a story and it starts at Taranto so, I’ll save my report of that town for the next edition when all will be revealed.

You’ve heard us say that one of the most memorable aspects of this trip has been the people that we’ve met and befriended and top of that list are Jacqueline and Hendrik. We first met them in January in Marbella, Spain. Then our paths crossed just north of Napoli and we spent a few days exploring that area together (you may remember they were with us at the strawberry farm). They headed in a different direction to us after that and were in Puglia for a week or so while we were in Sicily. They are shortly heading north to take up a summer job in France so there was only one night where our travels intersected again and that was in Polignano a Mare. Hendrik is a big supporter of the Dutch football team Feyenoord and they were playing a game that evening, which if they won, meant they were champions of the league. So Hendrik and I settled in with a refreshment or two to watch the game on the laptop while Anita and Jacqueline hung out in Frankie, their motorhome. Feyenoord won the game which was very exciting and we spent a lovely evening thereafter with our young friends – go well guys, it’s been a blast travelling Europe with you. Harvey and Frankie (their motorhome) are certainly going to miss each other ☹

One of Anita’s challenges on this trip has been hair maintenance. Fortunately my choice of hairstyle needs little attention but Anita, having tried a similar haircut a few years ago, prefers to keep hers slightly longer 😊. Apparently good hairdressers tend to be booked up well in advance and so finding somewhere that can fit you in, and then communicating the technical details of what you want done to someone who doesn’t speak English has been somewhat challenging for those of us with hair. Google Translate is helpful but such terms as “light ash blonde” and “fine foils” tend to get a little confusing for everyone and have led to mixed results. In Polignano a Mare however, Anita found some helpful folk to assist and so she visited the hair salon while your author cycled to the town of Monopoli which was around 10km down the road. Next morning it was a pedicure for those in the pink corner so now we’re all set for the summer when jandals will be the predominant footwear!

One of the reasons we selected Harvey in the first place was his large water and waste tanks. To conserve water we shower every second day which means we can last up to a week between fills and empties, however sometimes some additional tank maintenance is needed and we’ve actually been a little slack at that. I know we’re amongst friends here so let me be a little forthright… lately Harvey was beginning to stink! At the end of a travelling day, especially if the roads had been bumpy, the old guy was smelling like the inside of an out house! Our stop at Cisternino was one of those lovely green symbols on Park4Night and when we arrived, the carpark turned out to be the size of a football field and we were pretty much the only ones there. What excellent timing! That afternoon we got to work giving all the tanks a jolly good flush out and by the time we were done everything was nice and clean and, more importantly, fresh smelling. Next morning we again made use of the water and lack of other motorhomes and gave Harvey and the bikes a good clean. Usually washing motorhomes is forbidden at such places, and the amount of time we spent on the cleaning and tank flushing also would normally have led to a long queue and some very grumpy fellow campers. It was excellent to take the opportunity and get Harvey’s maintenance up to date in time for the busy summer ahead including 2 lots of visitors which we’re extremely excited about!!!

One of our very big expenses on this trip is LPG and Harvey certainly is quite a thirsty chap! The lovely Anita has developed a superpower and that is finding cheap gas using an app called myLPG.eu. Also included is how much the gas costs, users are also able to update the app so you know how recently the price was verified. Harvey takes around 210 litres from empty and the range of prices we’ve paid on this trip varies from €0.64 to €1.20/litre, however thankfully Italy is one of the cheapest countries and we’ve been able to spend no more than €0.66 here although those cheap ones still need to be sniffed out, most of the stations here are selling it between €0.75 to €0.85/litre. There can be a huge variation between countries which we guess must come down to taxation rates so, in the few days before crossing a border, Anita gets on the app and finds out which country has the cheaper gas, that way we can buy either before or after crossing the border, whichever is more cost effective. In addition to the main tank, there is a separate built in LPG cylinder which runs all the on-board systems: cooker, fridge (when not plugged into shore power), hot water and the furnace when it’s cold. That second cylinder lasts more than a month in summer and 2-3 weeks in winter when we’re using the furnace more.

We eat most meals in Harvey or take lunch in our backpack. Groceries are our second biggest expense after LPG, and shopping for supplies had been one of the pleasures for Anita on this trip. She likes nothing more than to research and sample local specialties. The Woodies love shopping at markets so will do this wherever possible and there are plenty of shops in these little tourist towns that will sell you a packet or jar of the local delicacy. But the supermarkets are also a delight, just the variety of foods available and the fun of experimenting with unknown flavours. Even for your author, trying the regional tastes and specialties has been a wonderful highlight, and even more so for the foodie sitting next to me.

Ostuni was our next hilltop medieval town – both we Woodies are in our happy place exploring tiny cobbled alleyways, where around every corner pots of brightly coloured petunias or cascading bougainvillea contrast with the white-washed buildings, and tourist tat is peddled by little old ladies while handsome Italian men zip by on Vespas.

We loved our stop in Lecce which is where we realised that tourist season is about to begin! Travelling in the off-season means you don’t always have the best weather however the good thing is the lack of other tourists. However in Lecce hoards of them seemed to appear from nowhere – bus load after bus load of mainly older Italian travellers following their guide around with their earpieces turned up full volume. At this time there seem to be very few American or Asian travellers however we expect to see them appearing in droves once the summer arrives. We have about another 2 weeks of relatively peace because by the time we hit Rome in June it will probably be total chaos. Which we’ll also love!!!

Our final stop this edition is at the beautiful seaside town of Otranto which has a memorial to a very sad (relatively) recent event. In 1997 a boat load of Albanian refugees collided with an Italian coastguard resulting in the loss of at least 84 lives. The ship on which they were travelling has been turned into a giant sculpture on the waterfront by a local artist and is a permanent reminder that sometimes the desperation of people fleeing adversity can lead to tragedy.

So on that sombre note Adventures with Harvey will bid you farewell for another edition – thanks again for keeping us company and don’t forget to look out for the next instalment which will contain a historical story with a very personal meaning for your Europe correspondent.

With much love as always.

Dave & Anita