On My Way Home ...
What goes up must come down ... After driving down to Greece and hiking the Peloponnese Mountains I drove all the way back! This time, we took the ferry to central Italy and docked in the port of Ancona at sunset.
After a wonderful camp in the Apennines, we discovered the delights of the UNESCO heritage town of Urbino, where I posed as a muse in Raphael's birth home.
I drew a picture of Urbino a few years ago and it was wonderful to walk around the walled town, looking out to the verdant Umbrian hills.
Onwards to Lake Como where we woke up to sunshine and campervan life, which I have come to love.
A boat trip across Lake Como enabled us to see several of the pretty towns, where I fell in love with the colour palette of ochre, forest green and terracotta pink above an aqua marine lake.
The same day I drove over the Maloja Pass, full of hairpin bends with a scary ascent, which took my breath away. Bertha, my camper van was a star and took us from Italy, over the Apls through Switzerland and deep into the Austrian Tyrol where I slept at the luxurious spa hotel: Hotel Post Lermoos, which happens to be one of my customers too!
We spent the morning walking through a carpet of alpine flowers laid on a green meadow, backed by snow capped mountains and oh to soon, headed on to the Black Forest, where we visited the fairy tale castle of Neuchwanstein. We drove through mile up on mile of dark green pine forest and stopped at the pretty, ancient town of Freiburg, where I happened upon one of my artworks in my the bookshop of my German licensee: Thalia!
Our final camp was deep in the Lorraine National Park and quite fittingly, we were alone in a glade surrounded by trees and went to sleep to the sound of a chorus of frogs, the perfect resting pace after such a long journey.
The final drive led us to Dieppe where we boarded the final ferry, home to Newhaven. Seeing the Seven Sisters as the sun set over the sea was the best welcome home I could have wished for. Back home, with Bertha rested and cleaned and back to the drawing board, my wanderlust satisfied for now, I have many wonderful memories of my European Road Trip and mountain hike and am looking forward to wherever the wind takes me next ... Happy Travels All x
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