Beastie’s like our personal traveling cocoon. (Some might think circus) We’re wrapped up and cotton wool protected. Safe and sound inside his big fat tum. Our time and space craft. Suspended in a free-form state of animation. Allows us a different type of freedom. We decide when to unhitch our invisible cords. Climb out. Go take a look at what’s going on in the visible world nearby. Then re-hitch when we’ve seen enough. Move on. Like spacemen visiting alien planets. Not always realising we’re the aliens.
There comes a point on every trip when we ask the question “Just where is home?” It usually occurs after we’ve been on the road for about four weeks. Is it there or is it here? The fact that we may stay in a different place each night not part of the equation. It’s so easy to adapt to a new set of routines. They become the norm. And norm the new home. As Paul Young famously sang in ’83 “Wherever I lay my hat, that’s my (our) home”.
Dealing with our own little day to day dramas, it’s easy to block out the rest of the ‘news’ of the world and it’s ongoing melodramas. Even when they could impinge or have an effect on us – if we were there. But we’re not. Ours is not that world. So we shrug. Ignore – most of the time. At best they become conversation starters. News of family and friends the exception. WhatsApp keeps us informed of WhatsUp.
We can tell we’re back in Italy. 172 kilometres traveled today. 37 roundabouts negotiated. (They don’t believe in T-junctions.) Add half as many speed cameras and it’s all slow going. Leaves us an hour or so to stretch our legs at journey’s end. Revine Lago, our half way house on the road to Torbole at the northern tip of Lake Garda, our home for tonight. Even though it’s in a pretty location, we wouldn’t dream of taking our hats off to it. Rustic, basic, and in need of drastic modernisation.
A carbon copy of yesterday finds us pitched up at Camping Europa – with direct access onto the shore of Lake Garda. The next few days forecast fine. We book three nights – then go and make the most of the remaining daylight.
