Snow-Flakes, Snow-Fights, Snow-Farts

6fartsinacart
Jan 11, 2017
3 min read

Thursday, 5 January 2017: After a blissful sleep, the morning starts with glorious sunshine and the girls decide to wash their hair. The 2 old farts go for a stroll and leave the kiddies to organise the cart. We follow the camper-stop guide to a free stop at Catanzaro Marina. We arrive there at 3pm and decide to go into town to look for a blogging opportunity which turns out to be unsuccessful. We return to our stop which, apart from being filthy, seems to be acceptable. We literally park on the beach and settle for the night. Unfortunately, to our dismay, 600m away a club starts up at 11pm and finishes about 3am. The young ones manage to sleep through undisturbed.

Friday, 6 January 2017: The lack of sleep and the sudden drop in temperature makes us head out earlier from our stop. Running low on water, we pray for a place to fill up, which the Lord provides a few kilometres further. On the distant mountains we see snow which would explain the freezing wind. During our lunch-stop we see our first snowflakes which turns into sleet. We arrive at our next stop, a re-creational area at Amendolara Marina, which our little brother has found us as there are no free camper-stops in the area. As the temperature has dropped tremendously, we brace ourselves for a cold night and put the lights out at about 9pm.

Saturday, 7 January 2017: After a bone-chilling night, Emile does some ice-skating on the frozen water puddles in the road. Even the heaviest fart (Dad) has a go, but can’t crack the ice. We start off aiming for Bari, but as we carry on, the landscape starts turning white. Approximately 30km from our departure it starts snowing. This almost causes havoc as us kids want to stop and get out to play in the snow. The traffic grinds almost to a halt as a result of the snow-laden roads. We decide to cut our journey short (by half) and take the turn-off to Chiatona, 8km before Taranto. Since we don’t have snow-chains for the wheels, we have no choice but to seek shelter and wait it out. This little town turns out to be a holiday destination and totally desolated through the winter. We kids get the opportunity to get out and build a proper life-size snowman. Dad goes for a walk to look for sheltered parking from the freezing wind and snow, and befriends Mohammed, a Gambian refugee. We park at 2pm and sit out the snow-storm/blizzard (according to us). Us 3 girls decide to combine our body-heat and share one bed (not recommended!).

Sunday, 8 January 2017: We rise at 9am and wait for Merzy to shed most of her snow blanket. Later the sun peeks out from behind the clouds. Dad, Emile and Chane go to the beach to have a snowball fight while we wait for the snow to melt. Our fear is that we come across black ice. Eventually 12 o’clock we assume that enough ice has melted and we head out of Chiatona. We continue our journey to Bari. This takes us to higher altitudes where the snow is considerably thicker and has not melted down totally. Once again, not having snow-chains, this causes us to drive at about 35km/hour. Once we reach Bari and our trip continues along the coast, the snow eases up slightly and we manage to progress to our next stop at Lucera.

Monday, 9 January 2017: After a democratic vote, we decide to head back for England by covering longer distances. Along the route we come across evidence of thick snowfall as well, but our journey carries on without any unexpected surprises. When passing through Pescara we are pleasantly surprised by the clean and tidy town compared to the rest of Italy. We manage to find Wi-Fi and update the blog before putting in the last stint to Roseto degli Abruzzi. This town has 2 camper-stops. At the first one we dump and fill up with water before going to the second which is closer to the sea. Since the gate is closed, we park outside and settle for the night.