You might laugh [please do] but when I came across this saying recently my literal mind skipped it’s metaphorical intention and took its meaning to the letter [I often do this]. My thoughts wandered to when we have walked an extra mile or so on a beach or in the hills or cycled just that bit further and felt smug as we left the crowds behind. The saying is spot on; going that extra mile often takes us to a quiet corner and to somewhere special that we can embrace as our own for a short time. By just taking a bit more effort I can enjoy an undisturbed experience of a location with the space and tranquillity to really see, smell and feel the place.
The quote attributed to Wayne Dyer, author and self-development guru, is, ‘It’s never crowded along the extra mile.’ After thinking about all those idyllic places we have found it eventually dawned on me that this quote isn’t to be read literally and instead encourages everyone to believe that by putting in the extra effort you can reach the top. My mind turned to those times when I have gone the extra mile on a task. Doing just the minimum required can be an easy option and I have times when I need to cruise through jobs because my mind is preoccupied with other stuff. But I feel much better about myself when I put the extra effort in and give my absolute best. And yet, the number of people who will reach the heights of the elite in any field is limited [or never crowded] and unfortunately not everyone can be outstanding otherwise outstanding becomes the average. For myself, I don’t expect to be award winning, I go the extra mile to compete against myself, stretching my performance and improving my skills.
I consider myself a slow writer; certainly each time I write a travel article or blog post I spend hours rigorously writing, editing and re-editing. I do this for two reasons; I am certainly terrified of the shame of making a mistake that makes it in to print [although they do and I have to deal with it] but I also want to produce work I can feel proud of. I constantly review, learn new techniques and apply these and I feel that my writing has improved over the years. I don’t go the extra mile for promotion or a higher salary, my editor is not pushing me to write differently, I am self-motivated to do better and throwing together a piece of writing with the minimum effort has never been an option. By going the extra mile I might not reach the top but I do maintain my self-respect.
The Blue Bus parked at Artajona in northern Spain – a perfect place for jousting!
The mishap came as a bit of a surprise. The road from Torla to Aínsa in Aragon is a secondary road but a good one and we were pottering along in the sunshine, enjoying the views over the Rio Ara and of the villages perched on hilltops. The road has a white line down the centre but the carriageways are on the narrow side and the light traffic was driving considerately giving enough space to oncoming traffic.
Coming towards us were two massive white motorhomes in convoy. The leading motorhome was taking up more than his fair share of the road and we moved over to the edge of the road to ensure everyone could pass by safely. We assumed the big guy would do the same but it seemed he too had been watching Game of Thrones and fancied a bit of wing mirror jousting with our Blue Bus. Bang! We both cursed him as our passenger side wing mirror was slammed inwards and the glass broke.
We know this isn’t a tragedy, it is really just one of those things that will happen to lots of people in campervans. Those big wing mirrors are a perfect target after all and this is the first time we have broken a wing mirror in our 13 years of having a ‘van. The idiot in the motorhome didn’t stop – to be honest there wasn’t really anywhere safe to stop – and we limped along for a couple of kilometres until we found a lay-by to pull in to. Shaken we gave each other a hug and investigated the damage. The glass of the main mirror was shattered but fortunately the small blind spot mirror at the bottom was still intact. The mirror no longer responded to being moved. Our only consolation was that the big white motorhome would most likely have the same damage to his wing mirror and we hoped his replacement mirror was even more expensive than ours.
Our Renault has no internal central mirror, so the wing mirrors are essential. We had a go at fixing a shaving mirror we carry in to the housing of the wing mirror to help the driver see behind but we couldn’t get this to work. We have since found that you can buy temporary ‘mirrors’ and may invest in one or two of these. After some thought and consideration we felt it was safe to drive using just the blind spot mirror for the remaining 25 kms to Aínsa. Although this mirror is small it functioned pretty well.
A call to our breakdown sorted out a garage that was expecting us and the mechanics there spent some time ensuring they were ordering the correct mirror for our Renault. The next day it took them 15 minutes to fit the new wing mirror and it cost us around £200! An expensive jousting session.
For anyone with a campervan, motorhome or a caravan there are two good reasons for visiting Sedan in northern France. Firstly for around €9 a night you can stay at the municipal campsite. This municipal site is easy to find and is pleasantly placed by the river Meuse, with moorings for boats alongside the site and an open aspect that helps it feel more rural than urban. We were greeted warmly by the member of staff who gave us a map of the town and told us enthusiastically about the castle and told us we could pitch where we liked on the grassy site. The ground is a little uneven but nothing the levelling blocks couldn’t deal with. The sanitary facilities were not the most up-to-date but were clean and the showers were good and hot and we don’t need much more than that and you can’t expect much more for the price.
Sedan is handily placed for us to reach our ferry at Zeebrugge but we arrived with enough time to visit the second reason to visit Sedan. It has what is claimed to be the largest medieval fortified castle in Europe.
It is about a 15 minutes’ walk to the castle from the campsite and it is as magnificent and immense as you could hope, with an impressive curtain wall around the castle and courtyard and lovely views over the town from the corner bastions and the ramparts. We explored the dark corners, alleys and stairwells that were designed to confuse the enemy and from the information boards learnt how the castle had grown over time. I was particularly fascinated by the view into the interior of a round tower that had been enlarged over the years and seeing the interactive scale model of the castle in 1870 during the Franco-Prussian First Battle of Sedan. The Second Battle of Sedan was in May 1940 during the German invasion of France.
After exploring the castle, we strolled around the town that has a history of cloth-making; some think that upholstery from Sedan gave the Sedan chair its name. We found narrow streets and charming shops, lovely botanical gardens and bridges over the river Meuse. Sedan also has an open and covered market on Wednesday and Saturday mornings.
The village of Casso sits high on the slopes of the valley
Northern Italy is pretty much all jaw-dropping beautiful. We had been driving through green alpine valleys, stopping often to stand and look in awe at the craggy mountains above and the ice-blue river we were following. Leaving the stunning River Cellina valley we followed the Torrente Cimoliana to the pretty village of Cimolais, all the time making a note to come this way again. We drove over the Passo di Sant’Osvaldo coming down to the village of Erto. Ahead I could see a scoured hillside, devoid of trees or vegetation, this certainly looked out of place. We stopped the ‘van to take it in, at first wondering if this was a quarry but quickly realising the mountainside was too steep for such activity. The scale of the ‘M-shaped’ scar on the hillside was hard to take in but we realised we were looking at a landslide. What we didn’t realise at that moment was how devastating the landslide had been. We had stumbled upon the Vajont Dam and the legacy of the disaster that occurred here on the night of 9 October 1963.
The Vajont Dam, a 265-meter high arch dam was in 1963 considered an amazing construction that created a large reservoir in the mountain valley. The dam was well built and still stands as it withstood the unprecedented destructive power of that night. On the 9 October 1963 a huge slice of the mountain slid in to the reservoir behind the dam. Around 260 million cubic metres of rock hit the water and this created a massive wave that breached the Vajont Dam, the displaced water rising high and pouring with unimaginable force in to the Piave valley below, gaining speed all the while.
We stopped below the Alpine village of Casso that clings to the mountainside. From here we could see the scar on the flank of Monte Toc and look down on the Vajont Dam that stands as a memorial to the thousands who lost their life. We walked below Monte Toc trying to take in the scale of this avoidable disaster. As the dam was planned and built many people warned about the geological instability of the area and the risk from the dam but corrupt and powerful institutions failed to listen.
We drove down the mountainside to the town of Longarone. This lovely town is below the dam and in 1963 it was flattened by the tsunami of water that poured over the dam. In the moving museum in the basement of the modern church there are photographs showing the aftermath and the names of people who died. It is estimated that around 2,000 people were killed that night and I thought about all those lives cut short.
Although I left feeling somber, I was glad we had stopped to learn about this disaster that has left its mark on this beautiful landscape.
For photographs of the reservoir and the destruction of the landslide take a look here. Today the Parco Naturale Dolomiti Friulane has been created to bring tourism back to this incredible and beautiful area.
In 1974 the good people of La Ville-aux-Dames near to the city of Tours in France decided [very appropriately] to give only women’s names to their streets and roads. I loved finding La Ville-aux-Dames [the town of women] but didn’t expect the town to have taken the female theme to such amazing heights. Even on the lovely campsite, Les Acacias in La Ville-aux-Dames all the chalets are named after women; you can stay in Edith Piaf, Maria Callas and others. Taking a stroll around the local area I found not only are the roads named after women, the local schools are too; as well as Avenue Jeanne d’Arc, Square Mary Queen of Scots and Rue Colette I found École élémentaire Marie Curie. Some names were less well known to me and had me checking them out; Gabrielle d’Estrées advised Henry IV and had three children by him and I learnt that Anna de Noailles wrote three novels and poetry.
The mural in the photograph above is on one of the local schools and has images of nine French women; Marie Curie, George Sands, Colette, Lucie Aubrac [history teacher and resistance member] and Berthe Monsit [impressionist painter] and others. I was delighted to think that all the children who attend this school will know who these women are and what they achieved, adding a bit of balance to the male-dominated history my own schooling involved. Just walking around the streets was an education.
The name is testimony to the abbey for nuns that was here and it is said the name La Ville-aux-Dames comes from the old name for the area, Villa Dominarum, the Latin for ladies town. Surrounded by excellent agricultural land the local people produced milk for Tours and the inhabitants became known as ‘Caillons’ after their curd cheese. In November La Ville-aux-Dames’ Marche des Caillons, a sponsored walk, attracts over 400 people. Today the inhabitants of La Ville-aux-Dames call themselves Gynepolitains from the Greek words for women and town.
The campsite proved to be fantastic for visiting the lovely city of Tours. On the confluence of the Rivers Loire and Cher we had no expectations of this city and so its beauty and charm was a surprise. We cycled the seven kilometres in to Tours along the Loire cycle route and chaining up the bikes pottered around fairly aimlessly. We knew of no ‘must see’ sight so we were free to just wander and admire with no pressure.
Starting at the cathedral we had coffee and cake in a lovely cafe and then followed lively streets to the old city. Here there are pretty squares surrounded by 15th century timber-framed houses with amazing narrow extensions on the back for staircases; these looked very Disney-esque and heath robinson.
In the big market hall we explored the lovely stalls and bought fresh vegetables and local cheese and yogurt for our evening meal. We ate at a cheap and cheerful burger and kebab cafe in a lively square and finished up with sweet peppermint tea. Walking back to our bikes by the River Loire I fell in love with the elegant fountain [below] in the Place Anatole in front of the library.
Is being a travel writer non-stop glamour, always in business class on the plane and being wined and dined at the launch of a new hotel? Well it isn’t like that for this campervan travel writer and I wouldn’t have it any other way. I only write about my travels because I enjoy sharing the wonderful places I have visited and want to inspire others. Each trip I make is a real trip that we have paid for ourselves and are trips that anyone with a ‘van could make. I am not interested in writing about luxury tours that I wouldn’t make if someone else wasn’t paying. I guess if you are a travel writer or editor invited on to press trips for the PR then your days might be glamour-packed but for the travel writer without a commission this is a long way from reality. First and foremost the trips we follow in our campervan are our holidays, the payment I get for writing about it is a bonus that comes after the event. Below might give you some idea about how much work it takes to create an article.
The work starts even before you pack a bag
Research – This can start months before we set off on a trip. I read travel books and articles, watch TV programmes and follow other travel bloggers and sometimes a story or a place grabs me and sparks off an idea for a trip that I will run with. Sitting at my laptop I research exciting places to visit in an area, stories that might interest readers, campsites and walking or cycling routes. I will also look at ideas for the best photographs of the area. This is generally internet research but I also read guide books and walking guides to learn from other people’s travels and find out about places we might enjoy visiting.
The weather – As I said these are real holidays and trips and so we get all sorts of weather but travel magazines want to see blue sky and sunshine. In the days leading up to a trip or THE important venue during the trip I check the weather forecast obsessively – a dull day means I have to be more creative with my photography and rain plays havoc with photographs and my camera. Magazines require good quality and colourful photographs that will inspire readers and my writing is nothing without good photographs to illustrate the words.
We arrive
Being there – This is the holiday, the easy [thanks to the planning] and certainly the most enjoyable part. We are there and visiting the place of interest or following the walk I have planned. At this point I am truly on holiday, as with no commission in my pocket I have no idea if an editor will buy my story. I am in the moment and appreciating and absorbing the colours, smells and feel of a place while also taking hundreds of photographs and cursing street furniture, signs and other visitors that get in the way. Of course I am still a writer and so I am always on the look [or listen] out for that extra something that will help make a place come alive for readers.
That evening
Sifting the photographs – I try and sort through my photographs while the day is still fresh in my head, deciding which are worth working on and which didn’t come out as I hoped. I am a writer not a photographer and make no claim of expertise in this area. By going through the photographs immediately I can check their quality and if they are all a disaster we might have chance to go back for a second try.
Edit the best of the photographs – Using Photoshop I try and do this on the same day, otherwise I end up with a backlog of hundreds of photographs to edit. This can take hours! Sometimes Mr BOTRA reads to me while I edit 🙂
Writing up notes about the things I have seen – I am a bit old fashioned here and always write my notes in long-hand in a journal at first, the pen and paper experience seems to help me to think. I will type up these notes either that day or later and use these notes as a framework for a story. I note down smells and sounds, as well as what we have seen and snippets of conversations that I liked, all this helps to bring the place back to me once I start writing. I also need to keep notes of the cost of campsites and entrance fees as these are often required by magazines.
Back-up photographs and notes – I am terrified of the photographs I have worked so hard to get going missing and so I am a bit obsessive about backing up. Photographs are left on the SD card and as well as the laptop are copied to a pen drive and a hard drive, just in case the camera and / or the laptop goes missing or gives up the ghost.
File away useful leaflets and information – I also keep leaflets from venues and for walks so that back home I can check the correct name and spelling and maybe opening times, rather than just rely on the internet.
More backing up – If wifi is available I will upload the best photographs to the web as well as the obsessive back-up procedure. Sometimes campsite wifi can be very slow.
Back at home
The writing and editing and writing and editing …. I don’t normally start writing my articles until I am home, although ideas will have been meandering around my brain during the trip and added to my notes. This is not a nine-to-five job for me and so I have the luxury to be able to be a slow writer and generally spend around two weeks on a 2,000 word article, constantly checking facts, seeking the right words to describe a place and adding the reference information.
Choosing photographs – From the hundreds of photographs I have taken this gradually has to be whittled down to the 30 photographs that I think would look best in a glossy magazine. This can be a painful as well as a time consuming process.
If you still want to have a go at being a travel writer I can highly recommend it and there is some useful guidance here.
In contrast
At the end of our trip around Croatia, Italy and France we had a few day in Brittany that won’t appear in any of my travel articles. We were meeting friends and socialising in the the lovely resorts of Batz-sur-Mer and Le Croisic and later in the pretty inland town of Corlay in Brittany. It was these few rest days that inspired me to write about the work involved in being a travel writer, as the down time I had made me realise how much free time I have when I’m not doing all of the above!
On our long foray to the European mainland we spent just over two months from April to June travelling around Europe in our campervan. I always monitor the spending of our trips. Sp how did the spending go? For various reasons this trip was certainly more expensive than our autumn trip to Spain and Portugal. Here is the breakdown in sterling:
Diesel – £610 (Croatia is quite a long way and we travelled over 4,200 miles)
Supermarket shopping – £956 (we did stock up on wine)
Cafes, restaurants & ice-creams – £467
Campsites – £983 (for 64 nights)
Tolls, bus & train fares & parking – £218
Entrance fees – £279 (including about £100 for the Krka National Park excursion)
TOTAL – £4,117 – average [without the ferry] £55 / day [this is £11 a day more than our autumn trip to Spain and Portugal]
We had travelled a long way to Croatia and to some extent this affected our spending. We paid almost €110 for the two of us an excursion in a minibus around Krka National Park. This tour [organised through Camp Marina] meant that we saw more than we would have and for us it was well worth it. We used some toll motorways in Croatia and bought vignettes for Austria and Slovenia.
Not surprisingly the cheapest country we stayed in was France with some nights of free camping and plenty of ACSI sites that are reasonably priced. Campsites are notoriously expensive in Italy but we stayed on some very good sostas to keep our costs down.
We had a fantastic trip and we both loved visiting Croatia but to stay within budget during our retirement a trip this costly isn’t something we can do every year.
The beautiful Valgrisenche in the Gran Paradiso National Park in Italy
is it just me or do places you have visited and loved suddenly pop in to your head at random times. I can be doing anything, totally unrelated to travelling, and a memory of a place will slip in to my head and I am once again there in that place. There are many places I have visited that stay with me and I am sure that all of them have shaped and changed me. The photograph above is the beautiful and remote Valgrisenche in the Gran Paradiso National Park in northern Italy. We stayed a week in Planaval, a small and stunningly beautiful village a little way up the valley in 2009. Valgrisenche is missed by many tourists and we followed the quiet valley road to its end a number of times. Passing the lake, there are a few farms dotted around the valley and more abandoned stone houses. After having hot chocolate in the tiny cafe by the car park we would walk along the trail to the refuge and the high mountains of the Alps, glaciers appearing as you turn a corner. There are marmots here and wild flowers, berries brighten up the autumn rowan trees. This was September and in the week we were here there were days so hot all we wanted to do was bathe our feet in the cool streams, other days the cloud came down and the fresh smell of rain made it feel like Scotland; this place has a wild and remote beauty.
Planaval itself is easily by-passed as you have to turn off the valley road to even see the village. We were there during a village celebration and we watched a promenade play around the narrow village streets that in the local dialect was mostly incomprehensible and we listened to melancholy music that echoed around the steep mountains. From Planaval we walked up steep tracks to look down on the village, finding bubbling mountain streams to quench our thirst from in Alpine meadows. A long snake slithered away on feeling the vibration from our walking poles.
The beauty of Valgrisenche is deep inside me and I am sure that even if I never return the sights, smells and sounds of this stunning place will never leave me.
Brescia in Lombardy in northern Italy might not be at the top of your list of Italian cities to visit but in my experience it won’t disappoint. You might have Rome, Venice and Florence on your wish list but over the years I have realised that less well known cities are always worth spending time in and that everywhere has something to offer and I particularly appreciate visiting cities that are not overwhelmed by other tourists.
From our campsite near Iseo it was easy and inexpensive [€6.60 each] to take the train to Brescia for the day. This proved to be an excellent and relaxing day out in a lovely city that has plenty to offer. We arrived without a map but this was no problem as Brescia handily has signposts to all the major attractions in the city. Our first stop was the monumental Piazza della Vittoria, a 1930s piazza that is striking and I rather liked its brutalist charm. The post office with tall striped columns dominates one end of the piazza and Brescia’s first skyscraper is here, a 40-metre high brick structure with decorative details.
Through a collonade is Piazza della Loggia, an attractive 15th century Renaissance piazza that contrasts sharply with Piazza della Vittoria. Piazza della Loggia has buildings and memorials to many important events in Brescia’s history. Below the clock is an emotional memorial to a bomb attack by fascists against an anti-fascist demo on 28 May 1974. Nearby there is a statue remembering those who died in the 19th century ten-day rebellion against Austrian rule. The piazza is dominated by the ornate palazzo, now the town hall. Opposite this is a 16th century clock tower whose clock is only of limited use for a time check as the dials of the clock show the phases of the moon and the signs of the zodiac. Two charming figures, ‘i macc de le ure’ or ‘Toneand Batista’ strike the hours on a bell. There are cafes around the piazza and it is a lovely place to stroll or sit and people watch.
We continued to Piazza Paulo VI which is packed with important and impressive buildings and symbolises the religious and civic power of Brescia. Most unusual is the old cathedral; this circular structure was built in the 11th century and was disappointingly closed when we were there. Next to this is the new cathedral, a more frothy building from the 17th century. We chose to sit in a lively cafe and have our lunch in this grand piazza.
We followed the signs for the Museo di Santa Giulia a unique and complex museum, housed in an 8th century Benedictine nunnery. The museum site comprises exhibits within buildings that are within buildings; the whole spanning many centuries and this can make it difficult to fathom at first but I found the self-guided tour with information in both Italian and English helped me to understand the context and history. On this vast site there are three churches including Santa Maria in Solario which has extravagant colourful frescoes. Also beautifully decorated is the nun’s choir where the Benedictine nuns of the Santa Giulia convent took part in services while hidden from view. There is a crypt and Renaissance cloisters too that visitors can explore. Dotted around the buildings are modern sculptures that I felt contributed to and enhanced my enjoyment of this museum. Underneath the monastery garden archaeologists found the remains of Roman villas and I followed the walkways over these buildings; the perspective from above gave a good sense of the layout of the villas and great views of the intricate mosaics.
As if all those buildings and art were not enough, the museum also includes displays of artifacts from Roman to Venetian periods of Brescia’s history; something for everyone’s interest but you would need days to look at everything. A big draw is the Roman bronze life-size winged victory statue from the 1st century. This impressive bronze of a woman draped in a cloth glimmers with layers of beautiful colours and appears to move and flow.
The whole of Santa Giulia is harmonious and interesting and exploring this amazing museum took so long we ran out of time for Brescia’s other sites. We will have to return to Brescia one day to see the castle, all the Roman remains, the Museo delle Mille Miglia … .
We finished our day in Brescia back at the elegant Piazza della Loggia. We sat relaxing with a beer in a cafe and listened to the clock strike the hour before catching the train back to Iseo.
We use our Portuguese dinosaur mugs every day in our campervan
For the first thirty-years of my life I was waiting for the internet to become available; I wasn’t clever enough to put my finger on just what it was I needed but when it arrived I knew the internet was going to become an indispensable part of my life. I know we all managed without it through the dark years but so many things would have been so much easier if it had come along just a bit earlier. I use the internet for many things but for me as a travel writer it is particularly useful for planning and writing about travelling and holidays. Here’s a list:
Campsites – Through the 1980s and 1990s we took our young son on backpacking holidays around Europe; trips that required a bit of planning. Months before our trip we would write to various tourist information offices requesting leaflets about the area. We might find some details about local campsites in these or in a Rough Guide but we would have little idea how good or bad the sites were until we arrived. I have lost track of the number of times we have trekked out of a town to a campsite only to find it is either full, unfit for human habitation or closed. While this can generate fun travellers tales after the event at the time it was always stressful as we sorted out overnight accommodation for a family of three.
Train timetables – A few kilos of the weight in our packed rucksacks was due to the hefty European timetables book. This is a marvellous publication that opens up all sorts of possibilities and I always loved browsing through it but it isn’t very portable. Just think if we could have checked train times on our phone! We always travelled to Europe by train and booking these trains required joining a long snaking queue at Manchester Piccadilly around eight-weeks before we travelled to select the complex combination of trains and couchettes we needed to get us to Italy, Spain, Germany or Czechoslovakia.
Local bus times – We might receive some general information about local buses in the brochures from the tourist information centres but, as we often had little idea where we were actually going or what there was to do in an area, we had to spend a chunk of our holiday time seeking out this information in person. Hanging around information centres was an aspect of our holidays that was always particularly boring for a small child. I remember booking our trains back from what was then Czechoslovakia; this involved firstly finding the right office and then hanging around for many hours with mostly little idea of what was going on as systems were checked and connections calculated.
Buying maps – Before the internet I either bought maps locally or had to take a trip all the way south to Stanfords in London to buy maps for foreign places (although you could ring and talk to the marvellous and knowledgeable staff, send a cheque and buy that way). Not having a map is not an option for me, I like to know where I am. I still get a thrill from being able to search online and buy maps from the comfort of my own home.
Top attractions – Today there are so many websites to check out what there is to see in a city, there is no danger of missing the top sites [I doubt anyone wanders around Milan failing to find the Teatro alla Scala anymore]. For those ‘must see’ attractions with long queues you can now book timed tickets in advance. We would miss this convenience now wouldn’t we?
Staying in contact – Trying to get to grips with the bureaucratic nightmare of an Italian post office takes any fun out of sending postcards; even finding the right queue for stamps to the UK is mystifying. When eventually we had purchased the correct stamps we would spend hours writing these postcards [trying to think of something different for each one] before sending them home; if we were lucky they might arrive before we did. Today friends and family can read my blog or we can send texts or emails as we travel.
Learning the lingo – We bought a cassette tape and book to learn Czech as this wasn’t a language our local library kept in stock, otherwise we borrowed language tapes for a few weeks at a time to try and get to grips with a language. Today I can learn as many languages as I want via Duolingo for free, how cool is that.
Back on the road again 