Thursday 16 May 2013

                              12th June 2012 


Debs:  After a good breakfast, which included our first cup of tea in 4 days, we got booted and suited ready to head for Valentino Rossi’s café in Tavullia. Unfortunately it began to rain, and when I say rain I mean serious cats and dogs stuff, and if that  wasn’t enough the thunder and lightening decided to join in too.. but undeterred, and after checking with Steve that he had ridden before in such conditions and wasn’t concerned, I climbed aboard and off we went.
However I wasn’t aware that after a few hundred yards the rain had got inside Steves’ visor, and so we missed a turn and ended up going down a 1 in 3 cobbled street!
Oh, did we mention that there were 3 of us on this trip? Steve, Debs and ‘Dolly sat-nav‘.. and there is always one that has to have a sulk and throw their toys out of the pram, well it wasn’t me or Steve -
 Moving very steadily through the rain and relying on Dolly we set off along the rain lashed narrow streets for Tavullia.
'TURN LEFT'  she said as we were actually alongside the junction we needed, we turned around and went left along a fairly steep and very narrow winding road for about a mile.
'TURN AROUND WHEN POSSIBLE'  she then said, Steve muttered but we stopped and with difficulty obeyed.
'TURN AROUND WHEN POSSIBLE'  she said again, Steve muttered a rude word about Dolly but again we stopped and turned.
Then suddenly she repeated a dozen times 'TURN LEFT..TURN LEFT..TURN LEFT' At this point I was aware of Steve rapidly losing his sense of humour and I was about to go into hysterical laughter, not a good idea, so had to bite my tongue!!

We set off again with only a vague idea of which direction to take when suddenly she announced once more that we needed to turn around.. this time I heard exactly what Steve called her as he switched her off!  Such was the downpour that it had got into our ‘waterproof’ sat-nav, the first time in 4 years..





Eventually we rode out of the rain and along some quiet back roads towards Tavullia passing by a beautiful walled village en route.
I couldn't resist taking a few snapshots.










It didn't take much of an effort to work out just where we were when we entered Tavullia and took Dolly into the warm dry café to cheer her up before the next leg of our journey.





VALENTINO ROSSI’S CAFÉ

Steve:  The sat-nav may have thrown a sulk, we were toasting in the wet weather gear and the road conditions had been foul, but it was worth it just to get to ‘The Doctors’ Headquarters. We dripped our way into the Official Fan Club building where Debs posed with a life-size(?) cardboard cut-out of Valentino, if it’s really life-size he’s a tall lad!

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His leathers, helmets and gloves were on display together with huge photos of his more dashing moments, I particularly enjoyed a great shot of him overtaking Casey Stoner at Leguna Seca in the middle of the corkscrew on the dirt.. even though Casey was wearing a black visor you can see the surprise in his body language!

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I know you can hardly tell the difference can you?

I’m now an official and fully paid-up Valentino Rossi Fan Club member, but I still have no idea where the hell I’m going to put the T-shirt and cap among our well packed luggage..

Excellent, inexpensive coffee and pastries from his café completed our visit.. Worth it in diamonds!




Debs: By the time we left the café the sun was out and the temperature had risen from 17 degrees to 25, so off came the waterproofs and the soggy gloves (which we had to wring out) and off we went in the direction of the Abruzzo National Park, a mere 4 hours away, and as we turned onto the motorway and we found ourselves riding alongside the Adriatic sea, some lovely views to make up for the earlier weather.

Steve: I appreciate that motorway riding is not the best way of viewing the countryside, but Italy has a lot of hills and mountains and the option to the 4 hour motorway ride was a 17 hour jolly through the mountains, and with the intermittent high winds and torrential rain I settled for boredom!
The weather was all over the show, and during the journey we must have put our waterproofs on and off another 4 times and witnessed temperature variations between a chilly 17 to a barmy 34 degrees. Another feature was a display of true Italian driving.. The speed limit on one stretch was 90km/hr, but I was doing 130 in a procession of vehicles (any slower and they would have run over me) when we came upon a series of bends through tunnels - no view, ‘no overtaking’ signs everywhere, and they’re jostling for position 12’ behind each other at 90mph and overtaking each other through blind bends and getting flashed by oncoming vehicles swerving to avoid them! Crazy.. I was happy to get to the overnight stay.

Debs: The “farm stay” is not quite as we were expecting. Our room is about a mile away from the rest of the accommodation and the main house. It appears they have all sorts of animals, butcher their own meat, make their own wine (4 Euro a litre) and arrange all sorts of activities. One suggestion was a display of goat cheese making, which meant being ready to go meet the shepherd at 5am (not today thank you!) or horse riding, which did sound like good fun but not for us, so we opted to do our own thing…..rest for the day.  Dinner that evening was offered at  a very reasonable rate so we joined the other 10 guests and had a really lovely evening swapping travel stories.

At about 11pm they all went off to their rooms and we set off in the pitch dark to find our way back up the hillside to our accommodation at the edge of the village. As we walked along the lanes we decided that we actually had the better deal, and spent ages looking up into an unpolluted night sky filled with so many stars that they all seemed to be jostling for space. We then noticed that the bushes and trees near us seemed to have their own stars, hundreds of tiny lights flashing wildly as the fire-flies performed their own starburst -  just an incredible sight.

A very busy day, so a cuppa and bed was in order please!

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