T’interweb time in Castelfranco Veneto

We’re here: N45.66944 E11.91684

The weather: hot and humid, we’ve had to splash water on Charlie – well didn’t strictly have to, but it was fun!

We’ve been a bit lazy today. It’s so warm it makes you not want to do much. By the time we finally surfaced, had showers, walked Charlie, ate breakfast and got ready to hit the road it was midday. The hottest part of the day, but at least driving along in Dave generates a gentle breeze to cool us. Maybe we should learn from the locals and not arrive somewhere, then head out to explore in the midday sun.

We made use of the service point in Treviso which has a cleaning system. The local kids were playing in the cool mist from it yesterday, so while there was no one around we had a few goes with it today.

We’ve reached a partial agreement on what to do about the broken door hinge. This resulted in a trip to Castelfranco Veneto on which satnav chose one of her more unusual routes – maybe she doesn’t know about the big red road running directly here from Treviso! We checked out a motorhome dealer who was, of course, closed like a lot of things are in Italy on a Sunday. But at least we know they have their priorities straight so you can still buy milk, cigarettes and condoms from dispensing machines in every town. We parked up in the local Sosta and will visit the dealer tomorrow morning to see what he can do to help. I suspect he won’t have one in stock, but if we can get a part number we can order one and pick it up further along our route. If not it’s back to Hymer in the UK, but I’m loathed to spend £50 on a little bit of metal and postage.

We have the Sosta to ourselves. I’m not really surprised as it’s €5 to park here, but right next to a large supermarket car park where a couple of other vans are holed up. But we have a nice shaded spot by a tree and can buy electricity for 8hrs for just a euro.

We’ve been making the most of our 3G SIM today as we’ll be in Slovenia soon where it won’t work. I’ve uploaded some more header photos – did you realise we took all the images that appear across the top? J’s been busy t’interwebbing – he can disappear for hours into the ether, and Charlie has been panting, snoring and scrabbling for food on the floor outside (there’s quite a bit of rubbish around here, heaven for Charlie).

J took Charlie for a walk into Castelfranco Veneto earlier and reports that the castle bit is ok, but the rest isn’t up to much – I think we’re getting too used to ornate balconies, faded murals and buildings that are hundreds of years old – time for a new country? After Venice though.

Today’s pics are some observations from our time in Italy

They love to recycle

Most towns have a graveyard on the outskirts which is like a town of its own

You can get cigarettes at any time – not sure how they check your age!

And of course, don’t forget the milk machines – we love them!!

Ju x