Freebagging at Numana, Italy

Zagan the motorhome is freebagging, overlooking the calm Adriatic in a closed restaurant’s beach-side parking at Numana (N43.50628, E3.62168). The sun’s rolled off over the hills behind us, but is still warmly lighting the sides of jumbled buildings on the cliff-side town above us just to the north. There are a few Italian motorhomes parked up with us along our adopted stretch of beach.

Zagan with Numana in the background and, weirdly, me typing this blog post

This morning the sun cranked itself up and over the hillside behind us at Portonovo, lighting up the solar panel and extracting us from the comfort of bed. We’d decided to move on, but after breakfast and a stone-skim on the beach, we changed our minds. The beach-side restaurant staff had appeared, and were placing white paper tablecloths, tempting us in. Almost. After a wee while spent cleaning and writing, we changed our minds again, and hit the yellow road south.

Indeed you may blink, wipe your eyes and look again, but that is Ju, and Ju is working.

VIGOR, the cleaning solution for MEN. I attempted to clean the hob, never entirely successful, so removed and resealed the kitchen sink silicon instead.

The yellow road south passed Monte Conero to our left, a beautiful little road, pure smooth tarmac, high and new barriers, and wonderful Tuscanesque views over rolling countryside to the west. We’re in the Parco Nationale del Monte Conero here, and it is a cracking little part of Italy, a great place to kill some time waiting for a ferry at Ancona, or if you’re wanting to rest up after a long crossing back from Greece or Turkey perhaps.

The plan was to head for Porto Recanati, but we didn’t make it. As soon as we came across Sirolo and found somewhere to park, we called a halt and climbed back up the hill to look out over the Adriatic, squinting to see if we could spot Croatia in the distance. The weather’s warm enough for a T shirt during the day, if you’re British that is, it’s puffer jackets and scarves for the locals still.

Sirolo

Riviera del Conero as seen from Sirolo

This part of the coast looks to be very popular from about 16 June to 16 September, if car parking charges are anything to go by. At the moment there are no ticket machines, it’s a free for all, but it’s not that busy here even on a bank holiday weekend. Looking at the map, there are few cities within easy striking distance of this coastline. Looking at the motorhome registration plates, they’re almost entirely Italian too, very few foreigners knocking about.

An Italian fisherman perpetually looking to sea for mates lost when a boat went down in 2010

Fresh pasta wagon!

Motorhomes! Our eyeballs are attuned to spying out freebagging domers from a country mile. We spotted these from Numana, the town next to Sirolo, and decamped here

In a dramatic role-reversal on arrival, I had an afternoon nap (OK, a siesta), while Ju went for a wander amidst a fairly well populated passeggiata, locals ambling along checking each other out and enjoying the late afternoon sunshine.

Passeggiata in Numana

Our time here in Italy’s coming to a close and, as it’s done every time we’ve crossed it, the place has served to delight and annoy the hell out of me at the same time. I could rant on about all the stuff which twists my melon, man, but I’ll spare you, since the stuff that annoys me is the flip side of all the stuff I love.

I’ll attempt to sum up a bubbling cauldron of Italian-fired feelings with a flippant observation: at our last parking spot there was a no-entry, dead end road at one end. Signs on both side of this tiny route into the woods to nowhere couldn’t have made it more clear: this road goes nowhere, DO NOT COME IN HERE. Italian after Italian drove straight in there, before re-appearing a minute later and trying another exit. These guys simply DO NOT see anything which tells them not to do something. IT IS INVISIBLE. For this, I love them, envy them and feel an ongoing frustration with them, since I’m simply unable to copy this envious feat.

Camel – the forebear of the JCB?

The sea’s calmed to a pale blue mirror behind me, and a ferry has imperceptibly sailed past south towards the edge of Europe. It’s turn-around point for us, if not here then maybe a little further south tomorrow. From Split we’ve decided to start heading north; the North Cape, the other edge of Europe is looking a long old way away on the map.

Our beach at Numana, Zagan is on the right

Today’s funky old door shot, check out that knocker. Ahem.

Cheers, Jay