TRAVEL ADVENTURE - THE TIBETAN BRIDGE

Last year I said that we would like to make the focus of this year's travel adventure the Tibetan Bridge in Claviere which lies just over the French Alps border into Italy. It looked relatively easy for people like us who can hardly be called mountain climbers. The highest summit we ever tackled before that was Mam Tor in Derbyshire so this was a huge if somewhat exciting challenge for both of us.

It was chucking it down with rain when we arrived but the staff knew we had driven all the way from England for this moment and so didn't send us away in bad weather as we expected. Instead they told us to have a look around for 10 minutes and then come back. They knew the weather and knew therefore that the rain would pass and ease and it did. When we returned we were fixed up into harnesses and given a brief instruction on what to do with the caribiners - or safety hooks as we called them. That was basically to be aware that one must always be attached as the second is unhooked and clipped onto the cable past the suspension rope attaching the bridge to the mountains each side of the gully that we walked through before unhooking and attaching the second. That was the scariest part as I sometimes had to stand on tip toes to reach it.

One of the guides who took us to the start of the bridge took our photo before we stepped onto it and I was a bit apprehensive. It was one of those "WTF have I got us into" moments especially as I stepped onto it and then found the thing swayed as we walked. My husband has a heavier step than me and I felt myself being tipped sideways with each step as he plodded confidently ahead. I shouted at him to stop and then we proceeded more carefully and in rhythm with each other which added a bit more stability as we weaved our way through to the end during the one hour and 15 minutes it takes to complete the route.

It began to rain again as we got about half way through and we were both soaked when we reached a safe spot to take a photo. The sense of achievement clearly shows on our faces. It was the most amazing thing we had ever done and we were lucky. The guide told us that because of the wet weather we had the bridge to ourselves as there was no one else there. Apparently, being so close to the cities of Turin and Milan, the bridge attracts as many as 500 people queuing to get on over the weekend. I wondered how much more it would have swung if we had to share it with others and I must admit I felt hugely privileged knowing that on this day, the bridge was all ours.

Camping was hard to find but the staff at the bridge told us we would find a site at Oulx which is about 15km from Claviere. The site was lovely. My husband said he had never seen camp site toilets and facilities so clean and I was impressed that it had an actual bathroom with a bath, sink, shower and bidet. A bath! Anyone who spends any time camping in tents on sites will know this is a very rare luxury and just what one needs after a day's soaking in the rain. Sadly the rain didn't really let up over the two days we were there. The clouds swirled and moved quickly around the mountains in the distance and my husband joked that it looked like God vaping. At least we got to cook a meal with our camping chip pan before the rain came, a new addition to our equipment this year.

The site had wooden sheds and caravans for visitors to stay in but we are very happy in our tent and pitched up opposite the above shack which had a pair of historic skis decorating the outside. Although wet during our time there, the sun shone as we packed up to leave and so it is easy to forget that in winter, these little towns are covered in snow and a playground for those more adventurous than us who take to the nearby slopes.

Usually our route to Italy is through the Mont Blanc Tunnel but this time we decided to find another route and travelled through the Alps. The roads were easy to drive along but the bends, turns and winds on the carriageway were somewhat of a challenge with huge drops without barriers hanging from the side of the road. We were something like 2,800 metres high when there was a place to stop the car to enable a short walk to the summit at Col Du Galibier. The air was very thin and we really felt the altitude but every second was worth it for the glorious view.

There were hundreds of sporting cyclists around but it didn't occur to us until later that we were right in the middle of the Tour De France. We joked when we got home that we had completed part of the route with our cycles - although they happened to be fixed to the back of the car as we drove through.

We took the same route back from Oulx but this time we stayed longer at Col Du Telegraphe to find the nearby Fort which my husband wanted to visit. It was a bit of a walk at the back of the Tour De France sign and when we arrived we couldn't have a look inside because there were some French people filming. We stood for a while and watched peasants attacking barons who then struck down a peasant and killed him when all of a sudden the directer shouted something which we think must have been CUT! and everyone looked at us. He asked us to move out of the shot, we were clearly in the way, and so we did as they filmed the scene again and we enjoyed the fantastic view beyond.

Once through the mountains we retraced our steps and stayed at the same camp sites we that we visited on our way to Italy. The weather picked up by the time we reached the first on the homeward journey, a camp site near Aix Les Bains described as the Alps Riviera and called Lac Du Bourget

The heat was intense and our second night there ended with the biggest thunderstorm I had ever seen. It was like nature's fireworks finale as an explosion of light in the dark sky shot forks of lightening around from its centre. We watched it through a small opening in the tent door until it gave way to lashings of heavy rain which was lighter but still wet as we packed up and moved on the next day back to our next stop at Poligny a small Comte town in the Jura region. While there, we visited the nearby Grotte Des Moisons and caught a train to Besancon because most of what we wanted to do in Poligny was done on our visit last year, except for the free wine tasting laid on at the camp site this year where we got to sample about 10 different wines all from the region. Sadly. I lost track of which were which after wine No 5 but a lovely Danish couple we met there bought a bottle or two but I think they were more connoisseurs than us. I am happy with a cheap bottle, or two, from the supermarket, and my husband doesn't drink wine at all, but they appeared to have a little more refined taste.

This year we took our cycles on our travels with us which allowed us to explore more of the areas we visited. Parking can be a nightmare and so can having to find the car before the parking time runs out. The French do wonderful cycle paths and we found where ever we stayed we could get from one town to another easily and avoid all traffic. Val De Vesle is a small village with little to do but it is a welcome stop for weary travellers en route through France. It is 22km from Reims which Google said was an hour and 10 minutes away by cycle. It took us three and a half hours going because there was so many beautiful stops to sit awhile and take in, including a visit to a Canadian WW1 cemetery we passed on the way. However, it still took us two hours to cycle back with no stops at all. Reims was lovely. We visited the Cathedral and stopped in the town to listen to a jazz band and singers who we assumed were rehearsing for a bigger event due to be held in the town that evening. I also had the most scrumptious Paris Brest cream bun at a small bakery cafe which made the ride worth it if we hadn't done another thing all day.

We left Val De Vesle and headed towards Rotterdam and we both thought how much better the weather was. Last year, rain followed us all the way through France and pelted down as we got towards the Dutch town but this year it was dry and although not hot, the sun made an appearance between large white clouds. However, literally as we drove through the city looking for the camp site we usually stay at, the heavens opened and chucked buckets on the car making visibility difficult. It was like driving through a swimming pool. The field on the camp site was as soggy as a shallow pond and we got soaked as we battled to put up the tent and keep it as dry as we could. This put a damper on our visit to one of our favourite cities although the weather cleared up and stayed mostly dry for the two days we were there. We did our usual thing - ate chips and ice cream from our favourite stands and popped into a coffee shop for a warm and welcome smoke. There was a theatrical puppet art display by three woman with what looked like aliens climbing up lamposts which demonstrated one of the ways Rotterdam is a weird and wonderful place unlike any other in Europe.

We would normally stay at least a week in the city but this time we got bored after two days but with still 10 days to go before we were booked on the Channel Tunnel home, we had time to kill. We stayed in Belgium for the first time ever and found a site at Middlekerke The site had a pub and what looked like a holiday static caravan estate. The pitch for tents was small and round the back of the pub next to a burger and chip kiosk with chickens just behind a fence that we fed crisps. It reminded us both of a pub beer garden. We liked it very much and the Leffe Fruit beer on sale at the bar.

The gorgeous sunset on our first night bode well for good weather the next day and it was glorious. We cycled along the beach towards some gun placements we had seen sticking out from huge sand dunes and found it was a museum about the Atlantic Wall Defence an important and strategic German post in WW2. We also came across several statues of Belgian cartoon characters along the beach such as Lambik

We were given an audio as a guide as we walked around the museum but mine was in French so i didn't understand much. I liked the models of German soldiers shown doing their jobs - repairing broken guns for recycling, the shop store room and the bunks of the troops compared to the home of the commandant which took over a fisherman's cottage. Even his faithful dog is preserved and shown serving his master by bringing him a clean pair of socks.

We didn't really want to go home early but we found ourselves heading back with still five days to go in hope we could get our ticket amended. The rain came down again at Middelkerke and got the better of us. Happily, for just an extra £30 we were on the chunnel train and heading home. The gloomy weather and rain seemed to follow us because we haven't seen much sun since. It's always sad when a trip comes to an end but this was another great adventure and leaves only the question - where shall we go next year? So far, we haven't a clue but one thing I know for sure is that I want to head south and find some heat. Maybe I'll persuade my husband to stop in Cecina Mare for a while which always has a special place in my heart and the sun shines as brightly as the people who live there.

MUSICAL TEELINE

Musical Teeline is a popular way of practising shorthand. I prefer those songs where lyrics are clear. To take account of both novices and the more advanced in speed, I have chosen two relatively slow songs - Amazing Grace by Judy Collins and Don't Explain by Billie Holliday. And just because it is a great song, it has graceful dancers in the video, and the lyrics come at you fast, the third choice is Sway by Dean Martin.

The shorthand is below each video for you to check your outlines. Remember that you can double up on some outlines if you find the first two songs too slow and you can hit pause to catch up if you struggle to keep up with any that you find too fast. Keep going with them until you can get each song down in one go. Then make sure you can transcribe your notes.

A NEW HOBBY

I am no artist and up until Christmas this year I had drawn only one sketch in my life which was done in art class about 1973 from a photograph taken of Penmaenmawr mountain after a holiday in Llanfairfechan, North Wales.

My skills may not have improved that much but thanks to my husband buying me a charcoal sketch set, I decided to have another go at drawing. The image above was my third attempt at capturing an image with a pencil. Copied from a black and white photo taken from the Italian Facebook page Cercami. The old photos posted up there showing history, poverty, humility and pride written in the faces and actions of the characters who didn't have much in their world but a life of hard work, landscapes, family and each other, make excellent practise pieces and interesting subject choices. It helps that there is no colour in the images because that is a harder challenge to face for a budding artist hobbyist like me.

The sketch, which I have called Homeward Bound, was also my first attempt at trying to draw a figure. You can see that I haven't quite managed to get the perspective right. My figure is smaller, fatter, and not quite placed correctly in the landscape, but as a first attempt, it isn't bad and with a little more work when I'm feeling more inspired, I think I could make it as realistic as it needs to be to satisfy my perfectionism. The landscape itself also needs a bit more shading but like writing, I've found my art work could always be improved and I am never quite content with the result. Space and time between written drafts always helps to clear the fog and help the mind see the bigger picture, while magnifying the smaller errors and imperfections. Perhaps that will work with a sketch too.

My second drawing in life was done from a photograph I had taken of Waddington Windmill on a snow day about five years ago. It was a lot easier because there was no vanishing point to work out and even though the original photograph is in colour, it was taken in the dusk, just before the sun went down fully, and has the feel of a monochrome picture because of the whiteness of the snow and the darkness of the landscape. I am relatively pleased with it although that perfectionist whispers in my ear that it feels more like the ruins of a old fort in Spain than a derelict windmill in the English countryside.

The image of Penmaenmawr mountain, viewed from Llanfairfechan Promenade, in that old art class shows that two sketches on, the skills needed for my hobby have improved a bit. The original photo it was drawn from has long since disappeared but last September, I went back for a visit and took another photo from almost the same spot. Perhaps I'll have another go at drawing the picture later in the year and add some colour, perhaps even just the rainbow that made a beautiful appearance that day. I'll also be taking my charcoal sketching set on my travels this summer and have a go at a landscape while sitting outside and looking at it.

By next Christmas, perhaps my husband will buy me a painting set, if I drop enough hints, and then I'll play about with colour and draw something like this challenging landscape scene of Manarola in the Cinque Terra, Italy. However, the sketching set will be put away for a while as real life and the intensity of real work follows now the long Christmas break is finally over.

REGGAE AND NOT REGGAE

I must have spent at least half of my life collecting and taping songs, singles, albums, and radio shows, and I have quite a collection going back almost 30 years. The problem is, of course, in this digital age, that old cassette tapes are not the best way of listening to great music and certainly useless in listening on the go. Even my old Walkman struggles these days to play them and you can tell by the way they make artists like Frankie Valli, for example, sound like a baritone and great guitarists like Gary Moore sound tone deaf and instead of hearing that guitar weep, it complains about being dragged through an old defunct machine.

Every LP I ever bought, or borrowed, was immediately taped and there was a time when I used to make up a compilation tape to give to someone who in return would make me up a tape with tracks that I might not have heard of before. Swapping tapes was a great way to discover "new" music or artists that I didn't know. To my shame, I must be the only person in the world to have Blackstar on cassette tape. My son loaned it to me and when I said I'd tape it, like many people he asked why when he offered to put it on a disc for me.

I realise that these days there are so many digital ways to play and save music that tapes are almost as obsolete as sending a letter carved in stone - or even sending a letter via snail mail - but not all modern CDs play on my old machine so I have no choice but to put them on my computer and then an MP3 player and that then causes problems when I want to play them without having to put earphones in. I do have a good pair of speakers my IT focused son bought for me but they don't quite have the gutsy, deep and booming sound of my Ghetto Blaster or old hifi stacking system. I don't have an iPod and wouldn't know what to do with one but I can't deny how easy it is to transfer a digital CD music to a USB.

My son was telling me that it would probably be impossible these days to transfer these old tapes onto anything digital but then he did a Google search and found a gadget that would do the job, so I bought it and have spent the last couple of days recording my tapes to a USB which I can then put onto a computer and transfer them to an MP3 and then put it back into the gadget, which is a bit like a digital Walkman, so that I can play them without earphones - but then it also plays the tapes so why should I bother?

The sound quality, clearly, is not as good and so I decided to transfer only those tapes that I don't have in duplicate on CD. I then began to think that it would save time if I could buy online the tracks or albums that I only have on tape and then download them or buy the CD. However, after finding that one of my favourites, Billie Holiday Greatest Hits is so overplayed and worn out that there is now some horrible high pitched squealing noise that is the only thing that can be heard, I realised that I have to buy it again and it took almost as long as recording the tape to find it and then set about ordering it. Even though there is an MP3 download available, for some reason, Amazon won't let me buy it.

It then occurred to me that to find and replace all of the tracks or albums that I only have on tape could take the other half of my life to collect again and cost a fortune in the process. In addition, some of the tapes I have got, especially those I acquired through tape swapping, have no information about artist or song title. One of those is a compilation tape called Reggae and Not Reggae. Most of the Not Reggae songs are identifiable but many on the Reggae side have been taped from tapes, that were themselves taped from tapes, from a friend who used to be with someone who had a DJ slot called Reggae Night at an old club in Lincoln called Lazers.

And then there are the 11 tapes I recorded from the old Rankin' Miss P Radio 1 shows of the 1980s and then edited down so that only the tracks were on tape and the velvety voice of the presenter introducing the songs was edited out. I'd never know what some of the more obscure tracks on there are called to be able to replace them and it would probably take more time in this world than I have got to just identify and find them all.

So, after some days now of considering this, I have decided that it is probably a good idea to transfer them to something digital but maybe the digital something needs to be better than the new gadget I have got. I have noticed new players on the market that look like my trusty old ghetto blaster that also have a USB port in them as well as a tape and CD player too. Perhaps this will be the solution to my problem of trying to update music recorded in what now feels like prehistoric times.

SARDINIA TRAVEL ADVENTURE

Last year we intended to go to Sardinia but after the car broke down, we had to think again as the cost of a new vehicle much depleted our budget. Instead we decided to venture only as far as the Switzerland border and follow the roads along the Rhine from Rotterdam to Basel via Germany.

So this year we determined we would get there even if, to be honest, we weren't sure that it would be possible because we wondered if we could afford the ferry - it gets more expensive at the height of the season - we worried the island would be so busy that camping without pre-booking would be hard to find, and the thought of the road trip ahead seemed daunting in itself. But we are adventurers so even though the thought of getting to Rotterdam and embedding ourselves there for four weeks instead of travelling further seemed the easy option, and tempting, it would also have been intensely boring and inevitably lead to regret that we didn't even try to get to the island that we both longed to see and experience.

We skipped Rotterdam on the way from Calais and followed much the same path to Italy as we did when we travelled around the boot and Sicily in 2014. However, this time we felt more confident about where we were heading and research in advance about where camp sites lay on route helped to avoid hours and hours of driving around looking for camp site signs to follow. We don't have smartphones and we don't have a satnav. We use paper maps and Google route maps, printed off before we leave, which served us well. We also managed to avoid many of the pay toll roads in France and ended up in a delightful country campsite in a village called Val De Vesle for our first stop and then the city of Dole for our last overnight stop in France.

There wasn't much to see in Val De Vesle apart from a church and a house and some lovely countryside. We had a walk around the village, and along the Vesle near the site, but we didn't stay long enough to consider hiking in the area. We stayed one night and moved on.

Dole is a pretty city and easy to get around. We followed a guided walking route led by brass cats embedded in tiles on the pavements which took us for a circular walk around the city and back to where we started near the camp site we stayed at which was next to a canal which had some delightful house boats along its banks.

We suffered a bit of a detour through and around Geneva on our way to the Mont Blanc Tunnel but soon found the right road.

We pitched up in Italy at Sarre in the Aosta Valley. The camp site manager remembered us from our trip there in 2014 which was nice. He often went around the site on his horse and looked more like a Ranch head than owner of a camp site. Our neighbours there had brought their two cats camping. I'd never seen that before but apparently, it is quite common. They did spend some time every day looking for them and making sure they didn't wander far but the cats seemed to enjoy themselves, stalking birds and popping over to say hi to other campers.

Aosta town was only a 4km walk along a track by a river. The heat was intense so we couldn't resist having a paddle in the fast flowing stream at a point where it seemed more stable. Some points were dangerous to enter and big warning notices were displayed at varying parts as we walked along.

I had hoped to move straight on the next day to Genoa and the ferry that would take us to Sardinia but we stalled here for a few days because it is one of my husband's favourite parts of Italy. We both love the narrow streets and the mountainous region that has a slightly French flavour to it. Last time I managed to pick up some Grappa which is very expensive to buy in the UK and this time I found something quite unique, to me anyway, Tobacco Mead.

As a tobacco connoisseur, I was intrigued and stood looking at the bottle on display when the lady in the shop came out and insisted that we try some. It was delicious, really moreish, so I had to buy it. A pretty pack of brown sugar came free with it but I still haven't worked out why. The mead is sweet enough without it. I Google translated the wording on the bottle when I got home and it appears that the tobacco mead is a speciality of the region that was outlawed during the early days of the unification of Italy when local dialects, customs and traditions were frowned upon in the move to make Italy one country, one people, one language, one land. The bottle pays tribute to those who kept this tradition alive when Tobacco Mead from Aosta was made contraband. It seems tobacco has been the target of political attacks from the very first day Christopher Columbus brought it back to Europe from the Americas.

It was another beautiful day when we left Sarre four days later. We took the pretty mountain roads for most of the journey and then crossed over to the motorway when we got a bit closer to Genoa. We followed signs for the port and ended up in the traffic heading for embarkation onto the boat but we didn't have tickets. A nice port worker who was directing traffic kindly allowed us to pull out of the line. He told us where to go to get tickets but only allowed one of us to leave the car. Afterwards, we had to head back to the main road and try and find a way into the port's main reception and shop. Our boat wasn't due to leave for a few hours. We boarded at 9pm for the sailing time of 10pm. It was a 10 hour overnight journey but we didn't have a cabin. That would have been 100 Euros more which seemed excessive when the one way tickets I got cost us 100 Euros. We thought we would work out how to get back once we got there. We both remembered the hell in trying to find the right dock and the right boat operator when we bought return tickets to and from Sicily a couple of years ago so we figured we would wait and see how things lay when we got to the Sardinian port of Olbia.

We realised when we boarded that many other passengers didn't have cabins either. There were adults, children, babies and even dogs, laid out on mattresses and in sleeping bags on every spare piece of floor and every seat in every bar. We could hardly find anywhere to sit let alone find somewhere to sleep. But we did find a small spot in the children's play area where there were already people settled down for the night.

My husband managed to grab a few hours but I couldn't sleep at all. I was too excited and maybe a bit too British to doss down. I walked from floor to floor, bar to bar, carefully stepping over bodies so not to disturb anyone's slumber and the 10 hours went a lot quicker than they should have done.

Blurry eyed passengers began to wake as we got closer to the island and the sun rose just before we got in at about 7.30am.

The port was much smaller than we encountered in Messina, Sicily, and seemed simple enough to to get to so we decided we would find a camp site somewhere near Palau which is where you can get a ferry over to La Maddelena but the camp site there was crowded and we couldn't take the car to the pitch. We moved on and the next site we saw was one called the Arcobaleno. We didn't know where we were exactly and so the owner showed us on the map. We were near Santa Teresa Gullura in an enchnating little place called Porto Pozzo. We had found a corner of paradise of earth and we would both have been happy to hang around here for as long as we could. The beach was superb and used mainly by campers, so it was never overcrowded, people were lovely and even if we didn't speak the same language, they always said hello, buonasera, buongiorno or even the more informal salve, as they walked past our tent. Those who did speak some English, always made time for a chat when ever we saw them at the sinks, the showers or the bar.

The owner spontaneously appeared with two glasses of Sardinian wine for us one evening as we sat near the office posting pictures to Facebook on the camp wifi. He gave us a bottle when we left as a gift and it was the most scrumptious wine we ever had. My husband doesn't drink, I'm a lightweight, and so this wine had to be shared to be fully appreciated in one sitting. We saved it until we got home and then took it to share with a friend, who also really enjoyed the tobacco mead too and a small bottle of local liquor made from Sardinian red berries that we bought as a present.

After we got settled, we needed to find an ATM. A local shop assistant told us that the nearest place to find one was at nearby San Pasquale a stunning hill top village a five minute drive away.

We had wanted to visit the La Maddelena but apparently, the beach with pink sand, which is what we really wanted to experience, is now closed to tourists after too many of them stole sand from the beach putting its unique colour under threat. We were so overwhelmed with the beauty of where we were that nothing could have topped it and anyway, there were pink bits of coral in the beach at our site so we decided instead to head off to the other place that also inspired our want to visit this island - La Grotta Di Nettuna.

We walked the 654 steps down to the cave and then took the 654 back up. It wasn't as difficult as we thought it might be. There are up and down bits and straight bits along the way, and plenty of vista spots to stop and get your breath back on a day when temperatures hit 36 degrees. One lady stopped and between panting breaths, pointed to a bracelet on my arm and said : "That is lovely." I had enough breath left to squawk out a thanks and a smile.

We had intended to take the steps down and then get the boat back but that would have involved then walking up a big hill back to where the car was parked so we didn't. At the top there was a bar where we both got ice lollies and ice cream and a delicious cup of tea. In fact, it was so nice, I had to have two cups.

The two and half hour drive back was like a white knuckle ride as we found ourselves in the pitch black negotiating twisty roads with mountain drops off the side. The journey was made longer by taking a wrong turning and then having to find the way back to the main road through two small villages which seemed lost in time and with no clear signs telling us which way we should be going. I had faith in the map on my lap and again it served us well, in addition to the small compass I have which always tells us which direction we need to be.

We spent the next day just chilling in the heat on the beach and in the sea and then later explored the site and the area around during a beautiful evening walk.

The next day we headed into Santa Teresa Gallura to find the Capo Testa and the magnificient rock formations unique to Sardinia.

It was another glorious day and there was plenty to explore. We spent time trying to find animal shapes in the rocks, and climbed many, and then later went for a walk in some woods nearby where we found an old bandit look-out point at the highest spot which tourists now visit to get the best panoramic view of the area.

Alas, our time in Sardinia did not last as long as we would have liked. On our fifth day it began to rain a little and so we decided this would be a good day to drive to Olbia and get our ferry tickets back to Genoa. That was a good move because rain began to lash it down for the rest of the day and stopped about an hour after we got back to clear the way for the blue skies to return.

We hoped to stay on the island at least until the end of July, or even into the first few days of August, but the price of the tickets at that time of the summer were at their highest. If we left when we wanted to that would have cost us, without a cabin, 350 Euros. However, if we left in two more days, then we would get tickets for about the same price as our outgoing trip. We had no choice but to take them and then set about planning what we would do on our last full day.

We both wanted to see the ancient olive trees which our guide book said lay at the end of a cul-de-sac at the north end of Lake Liscia. These are between 1000 years old and 4,500 years old.

Getting to the lake seemed easy enough. On the map it appeared to be a one hour drive south from Porto Pozzo but after several hours of driving we didn't find the trees, if we did end up overlooking the lake and wondering how we could get down to it to explore further. We drove all around, ended up back on the main road between Olbia and Porto Pozzo, and then diverted off again in a last ditch attempt to find these elusive wonders. But still we had no luck. We were both so deflated after a day's driving and getting nowhere - even if we did enjoy the breath-taking scenery around us - that when we happened upon the Nuraghi village neither of us felt inclined to take another long walk on a searing hot day. Instead, we stopped in the country when I spotted some ripe prickly pears.

I had never tried them and up to that point all the ones I had seen were green and not ripe. But these were bright orange, hanging down and begging to be picked. We only had some kitchen towel in the car so I grabbed a couple of doubled up sheets and picked three. That didn't protect my hands though as I had tiny invisible thorns stuck in me that made my hands sore for a couple of days. The prickly pears were delicious though and I'm pleased I managed to taste them. Next time, I'll make sure I have thick gloves in the car should I ever get the chance to pick them again.

Because I am a wimp who hates my bare feet on sand in the sea, because I worry what might be beneath it wanting to grab my toes, I bought an inflatable lilo so I could get in the water on it and then drop off it and swim without my feet touching the ground. It then occurred to me that I could take this onto the ferry and sleep on it. When the time came, however, I felt a bit embarrassed to take it aboard so we just grabbed our sleeping bags after we parked up and then found a spot where we would stay all night. This time I did get some broken sleep and I'd bought a book to keep me busy, The Girl In The Spider's Web which I found impossible to put down for the rest of the holiday.

As we pulled into the port at Genoa, there were two ships following us in and it was another glorious day.

We decided on a quick drive straight back to Sarre in the Aosta valley and so we took to the motorway for the whole journey which cost 23 Euros in tolls. We hung around there for a few more days before setting off back to France, through the Mont Blanc, and then on to Rotterdam.

We didn't stay in Dole on our way back but decided to check out a smaller site in Poligny. It should have been an easy straight route from Aosta but again we got scuppered by taking a wrong turning and ending up in Geneva with no clear way out. After a few hours of driving around in circles, going the wrong way, and finding ourselves driving back through Geneva again, we pulled off onto the motorway and hoped we were going the right way. We had no idea where we were at one point so we pulled into a service station to buy a new French map. Mine had become so completely worn out I couldn't read it anymore. The female assistant was marvellous. Not only did she tell us where we were, which wasn't on the map, she plotted our route, told us which way to go and before long we heading straight for Poligny. We had taken a zig zag approach to it. When we arrived, the sun was still hot and the skies a clear blue. That didn't last. The dark clouds began to gather after we had got pitched up and then the most dramatic lighting storm I had ever seen persisted through the night. A loud crack of thunder near the tent and sheet lighting that lit everything up woke me up. I sat a while just watching it. I wish I'd had my camera but I think I was too sleepy to think about getting it out.

The next day was dry and humid. There are lots of walks around the countryside in Poligny and we decided to walk up to the Croix Du Dan which we could see in the distance from our site. Once there, we left our name in the cross as others had done before us. There were other country walks that we rambled through too.

I could have stayed longer and on reflection, perhaps we should have done. Instead we moved on to our next stop. This time we choose a site in Chalon En Champagne but neither of us liked it much. It was on the edge of what looked like a council estate, and you had to pay for wifi, to use the games room, and smokers were definitely not made welcome. This is something that matters a lot to me. It also rained and we didn't have our tent sail on which meant next morning, we packed up in drizzle and arrived at Rotterdam with a wet tent which meant one damp night's sleep.

We both hoped to catch the festival in Rotterdam that we enjoyed so much last year but this time there was a small fee to enter. It wasn't yet open when we wandered along so we walked into town instead and found another festival, Afro-Caribbean, that was free so we hung around there for a while.

The weather in Rotterdam wasn't great but it helped to acclimatise us for when we got back home. We spent longer there than we wanted and because the weather was so bad at one point, we even considered coming home earlier. But then things improved. We spent a lot of time watching the fast moving Rotterdam skies and the shapes of the clouds.

Just before we set off on our camping trip, I bought a sail, which is a square piece of waterproof material that sits above the tent. This kept us dry when wet and offered shade when it was really hot. My husband didn't much see the point of it but reluctantly set it up not convinced of its worth. He changed his mind by the end of the holiday.

During a stormy night with gale force winds, a chunk of tree branch (which my husband said was more of a twig) fell on us in the night but we were saved by that sail which stopped it falling on us. It woke me up with a thwack as it came down. I thought we were being attacked, at first, but when I poked my head out of the tent, I saw what had happened and decided to leave it until morning. My husband slept soundly throughout the drama. For sure, if the sail hadn't been there, then at the very least our tent would have had the hole it that the branch caused to the sail.

After 8 long days in Holland, we made our way back to Calais and home. Usually, the weather at home is grey and cold when we return from our travels but this year it was day after day of sunny and warm weather which felt like an extension of summer.

We both know that next year we want to return to Sardinia to see all the things we missed, and there were plenty, and on our wish list next time we are in the Piedmont region, is to find the Tibetan Bridge in Claviere which is about a two hour drive from Aosta.

Summer is over and now my thoughts return to work. Sadly, I lose my year 3 students who go into the world of work well equipped with the sort of skills they need to get their dream job and I wish them well. I will have a new year one that I am looking forward to meeting for the first time and my new year 3 is full of students ready to face the shorthand challenge and gain their 100wpm industry standard as soon as possible on their return.

Feeling refreshed and invigorated from the summer of travel, I am raring to go and can't wait until term starts again.