Ka Diary
– The Italian Job Road Trip Special Report
|
I |
t’s
not often that we have had the opportunity to take Kermit somewhere special on a
long haul trip, but Lake Garda in Northern Italy is one such place. This is Kermit’s Diary during the road trip:
we had a great time.
Overall
Trip Statistics
|
Total
Road Distance Covered |
3,659 miles |
|
Total
Average Fuel Consumption |
49·2 mpg |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Road Distance Driven |
1,250 miles |
|
Time Travelling
(including ferries and stops) |
34 hours |
|
Time Driving
(excluding ferries and stops) |
25 hours |
|
Average Travelling
Speed |
36·5 mph |
|
Average Driving Speed |
49·6 mph |
|
Average Fuel
Consumption |
46·7 mpg |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Road Distance Driven |
858 miles |
|
Average Fuel
Consumption |
49·1 mpg |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Road Distance Driven |
1,562 miles |
|
Time Travelling
(including ferries and stops) |
40½ hours |
|
Time Driving
(excluding ferries and stops) |
32¼ hours |
|
Average Travelling
Speed |
38·6 mph |
|
Average Driving Speed |
48·3 mph |
|
Average Fuel
Consumption |
51·5 mpg |
It
was a bit of a voyage, then!
The
statistics for the drive to and from Italy include how many hours we spent driving
and how many we spent “travelling,” that is, on the road but not actually
driving. This includes the time spent
on the ferry, stopping for breaks, pictures, so on and so forth. As you can see, it makes a significant
difference to the average speed.
Throughout
most of the road trip – both to Italy
and on the way home – we adopted a
touring pace. Although this flattered
Kermit’s fuel consumption, the
reason for this was mainly because it was our honeymoon and we didn’t want to
be zooming about quite so much.
On
the way home, we used a different
route, which although slightly longer did give us the opportunity to see a bit
more of France. Our last night stop
before getting home was in Greater London, which impacted on our average speed and fuel consumption. Mind you we did bypass Paris for that very
reason!
Friday 1 April, 2005
York,
United Kingdom, to Dartford, United Kingdom
Today started a little earlier
than most Fridays, just before six o’clock.
After we get dressed we finished packing, then loaded Kermit with our
luggage. After just a small suitcase,
sports bag, Charlie’s laptop and some other little bits and pieces, the boot is
full. You can’t see it here but we
tilted the rear seat bench forwards to maximise boot space and this makes a
material difference to room back there.
We’d planned how much we’d be bringing with us with every intention of
travelling light.
Of
course, the best intentions don’t always go to plan, which is why there’s a
supermarket plastic bag containing a pair of shoes stuffed into any available
space in the back. Mind you that
illustrates a very important point: just where do you pack shoes, anyway?
Before
I go to work I check the engine fluid levels.
I’m not expecting any mechanical problems during the trip but it’s as
well to double check the oil, coolant and power steering fluid levels. I’d also planned to top up the windscreen
washer tank and there are two litres of already made up windscreen washer fluid
secreted in the boot.
I
check Kermit’s handling with the
luggage onboard on the way to work <cough> just to make sure that
everything is tied down of course.
Charlie
meets me at the office just after four o’clock and we head south. The motorway is reasonably quiet and we’re
making good progress, stopping for something to eat at six o’clock at one of
the OK Diners on the A1. It’s a good
time to stop and eat but I’m reminded of how much further we have to drive when
the waitress offers ice cream. So no
dessert and we press south once more, taking the A14, the M11 and finally the
M25.
These
dual carriageways and motorways provide me with the opportunity of using Kermit’s
comparatively new cruise control
system to regulate our pace. As the
traffic clears I set it at an indicated sixty five miles per hour, which gives
us adequate speed to overtake heavy goods
vehicles but it should also be reasonably economical too. Providing we keep moving we’ve plenty of
time, but it’s stops that make the biggest difference to our average speed.
Once
over the Dartford crossing we take the next exit and it’s a very short drive to
the Travelodge and the ASDA. We arrive
at the ASDA just after eight thirty, brim the tank (Kermy recorded just over
48 mpg over the trip) and we’re soon settling down for the night.
Saturday 2 April, 2005
Dartford,
United Kingdom to Varennes-Les-Macon, France
The morning arrived at
quarter past five, which felt awfully early as far as I was concerned. After a quick shower and a cuppa tea, we had
loaded up Kermy and were on our way.
Unfortunately,
the weather wasn’t wonderful with a damp, clinging mist bordering on fog. Even so, we had allowed ourselves plenty of
time to get to Dover Port.
We
arrived at Dover Port just after seven in the morning and were soon in the
queue to board the ferry. We took the
opportunity to walk about for a little bit and stretch our legs.
We
were second in the queue to board the Pride of Calais, a good sign. This gave me the opportunity to stick on the
headlamp converters that we bought a couple of weeks before the road trip.
If
you’re planning to drive to the continent in a Ka and you are investigating
getting some headlamp converters, the best advice I can give you is to get
those converters that cover “modern headlamp designs.” Some don’t – some converters rely on an
element of judgement. With Kermit’s Morettes I figured that this would be
the case anyway because modified headlamps are not usually covered. It wasn’t a problem given the headlamp design.
To
apply the headlamp converters, it is recommended that you attach the sticky pad
when the lamp is warm and has been cleaned.
With Kermy’s triple Morettes,
this isn’t a problem: a couple of minutes of illumination has them nicely hot.
Once
the converters were on I decided to double check that our GPS navigation system knew where we were going once we
arrived in France. To my absolute
horror the France map file had managed to corrupt itself. After a few minutes of gratuitous swearing,
much to the entertainment of everybody else in the queue, we retrieved
Charlie’s laptop from the boot and started to re-copy the map file to the
memory card... Just as we were waved on
to the Pride of Calais! To set
the scene, everything was pretty much thrown at Charlie so 
that I
could drive on to the ship (sorry darling).
All
of the above inside half an hour! We
were directed to the bow of the ship right behind the Range Rover in the
picture above.
When
you put any car on to a ferry, you should leave the car in gear (third is
ideal) and with the handbrake on.
If the car has an alarm, one should disable it for the duration of the
voyage. If it’s a rough crossing the
motion of the ferry will probably cause it to go off until it flattens the
battery. If you’re right at the front,
you’d have an awful lot of unhappy people behind you if you have to push start
the Ka off the ship!
On
some crossings they try to squeeze many cars into a very tight space but this
crossing wasn’t particularly busy, so there was plenty of room between cars.
Onboard,
we had treated ourselves to the Club Upgrade, which entitled us to use the Club
Lounge. Club Class is broadly similar
to First Class on a train in that there’s excellent service, free tea (always
a plus for me) in conjunction with comfortable seating and a complimentary
glass of champagne.
Once
we arrived in France, the temperature started rising as we headed south with
the cruise control set at eighty
miles per hour, so we switched the air
conditioning system on.
We
stopped after a couple of hours for a drink and I noticed that we had lost one
of our headlamp converters. This
started a comical sequence with me asking bemused French staff in the next
three petrol stations if they sold headlamp converters. I was offered all sorts of things including
felt tip pens (!) to Blu-Tak.
Given that it wasn’t dark 
and that
we had to cover ground, we decided to fix the headlamp issue later.
A word about French Autoroutes. Firstly, they’re toll roads. Now before the British get into a strop
about paying to use the road network, if you have a lot of ground to cover then
the motorways are worth it.
How
so? Firstly, the speed limit is one
hundred and thirty kilometres per hour, which is the equivalent to eighty one
miles per hour. Using Kermit’s GPS system this equates to just over an
indicated eighty five miles per hour.
The
other reasons are that the Autoroutes are wide, smooth and most important,
quiet roads. During the first leg I set
Kermit’s cruise control to eighty
indicated and we drove for an hour at this speed without needing to brake,
merely disengage the cruise a couple of occasions to give us a little bit more
time to overtake a slower vehicle.
Autoroute
stops, or services, deserve a special mention.
Although the fuel is a little expensive compared to going off the
motorway, the service stations are large, well kept and quick. If you need food or drink they have a
logical layout and helpful staff, most of which speak enough English to help
you. It’s always advantageous to speak
a little of the local language, if nothing else if you try it they’re keener to
help you out.
All
up, we were able to make excellent progress, until Paris. I’d said to Charlie a week or two before the
road trip that I would take any route to our first night stop providing it avoided Paris because it would be busy. Unfortunately, I forgot to check the
route... so our GPS system took us right towards one of the Paris ring
roads.
Paris
was busy. Very busy, it took us
approximately an hour to cover twenty five miles. Given that we had over four hundred miles to cover that day in
France, this was time that we could ill afford to waste, really.
Worse
was yet to come. We were just free of
Paris when the GPS system stopped
working. As in, it shut itself down
with a reset and wouldn’t fire up again.
We tried resetting it, we tried pleading with it, not to mention
teaching everybody around us some new British expletives.
With
the benefit of hindsight, we think that either the little PocketPC device
overheated or the battery wasn’t being charged. Either way we had to stop to figure out how to get to where we
were going! That took about an hour of
time, again an hour that I really wanted to spend on the road.
We
had another problem around about this point.
When we had stopped to sort out the GPS system, I noticed that we’d
managed to lose one of the headlamp converters on the drivers’ side.
So
we stopped at a few petrol stations (four in total) on the Autoroute to
try to get some more converters.
Driving without a headlamp converter, even without using the headlamps,
is an offence and we could be facing a stiff fine if we were stopped. And in any tunnels we’d be dazzling our
fellow European motorists coming the other way.
After
the fourth stop we reached the conclusion that we just weren’t going to find
any converters on the Autoroute so we’d have to bodge something ourselves. With two hundred miles to go and around four
hours of decent daylight, the clock was ticking!
Around
a hundred miles later, we pulled off the Autoroute to bodge the light. I remember reading somewhere on the
Internet that white cotton tape works well enough if you put it on the right
spot and I was sure I’d seen some in Kermit somewhere. We had some in our first aid kit, so
although it’s hardly professional, elegant or sophisticated, it worked well
enough that the next time we venture overseas with the kid, I’ll use it
again...
Anyway
to conclude the story of the first day, at quarter to nine we arrived at our
night stop, a Campanile at Dijon. By
this point we were feeling tired given what time we were up, but pleased that
the next day we should not have anything like as hard a day!
Sunday 3
April, 2005
Varennes-Les-Macon, France to Antibes
Juans Les Pins, France
After
yesterday’s early start and long drive, this morning’s lie in until seven
thirty felt positively luxurious. I
enjoyed probably the best shower I’d had for a few months, then one of the best
breakfasts too. Soon we were back on
the Autoroute heading south.
Again,
the Autoroutes are relatively quiet and this picture shows how busy it gets.
Is
it worth paying a toll for relatively quiet motorways? I guess this depends on how much you’d use
the motorway network and how quickly you’re driving. For today’s driving, I’d already decided to maintain a touring
pace of fifty six miles per hour (ninety kilometres per hour) and at
this pace, there’s little speed advantage to using the toll road compared to
the ordinary routes. However, it is
quieter and you get no aggravation from local drivers because it’s so quiet,
they’re able to overtake without any bother.
Late
morning, we stopped for petrol and a break.
There are two advantages associated with driving at a slower pace. One is that we save fuel and the other is that I have the opportunity to
see some of the scenery, which I appreciated after the rather quicker drive the
previous day.
As
you can see from this shot, Kermit’s still wearing his little cotton tape headlamp
modification that we applied the previous day.
And he’s still looking remarkably clean too. His cleanliness is an illusion because after zooming along at
seventy to eighty the previous day, his bonnet, Morettes, grill and bumper are covered in dead French
insects.
“Engage!”
“In
twenty nine miles, remain in the left hand lane.”
French Autoroute Tolls
I
know I’ve already discussed the French Autoroutes above, but the toll for the very north of France to the
very south isn’t exorbitant but you should allow for it when planning your
budget. It’s (probably) inside
one hundred Euros.
There are two kinds of
toll booth. One where you collect a
ticket and the other where you hand over the ticket and then pay the toll. These pictures illustrate the former, mainly
because the individual in the toll booth would probably object to having a
picture taken!
On
the approach to the tolls, it’s wise to slow down nice and early. If nothing else this gives you the
opportunity to check out what lanes do what.
You see, some are for vehicles with a special toll card, some are for
credit cards and some are for cash. The
signs help you, but sometimes you don’t have much notice.
Those
motorway users used to that toll booth (known as “Péage” in French) will
doubtless hoon in front
and change lanes so as to get the quietest one, but this will only save them a
few seconds.
If
you’re paying the toll then it’s recommended that you pick the one with the
human operator. J
You
know, manning a toll booth has to be a pretty boring job all up. You get to say, “Bonjour” and “Au revior”
all day to strangers and about the only excitement must come from seeing an
exotic car or a foreigner drop their change all over the inside of the car, or
out of the car. We didn’t do this!
Here
we’re picked the very right hand toll booth despite the fact that the one to
its left is empty.
And
then grab the ticket! Be sure to put it
somewhere safe because it you leave it, you’re in the pooh – which is what this
sign says. I think!
Once
you have paid your toll or collected the ticket, so as to fit in with the
locals it’s important to accelerate back up to speed as quickly as you
can. It’s quite usual for a toll booth
to have eight to ten lanes feeding a two or three lane motorway, and it’s also
usual to have four or five cars all accelerating at pretty much the same rate
for the same gap. There are some
advantages to having a machine with lower acceleration than most family cars;
there’s usually no competition for your particular gap.
Anyway,
getting back on topic we enjoyed a decent drive south and arrived at our hotel
for five o’clock. We were staying just
outside Cannes just off the Autoroute.
The weather was superb (indeed we’d been using the air conditioning for most of the afternoon)
Cannes
(just thirty off miles from the Italian border) is rather swanky. Famous for movies or something. J Anyway the bottle of wine in the Campanile
restaurant was certainly welcome as was arriving nice and early in the evening.
Monday 4 April, 2005
Antibes
Juans Les Pins, France to Hotel Christina, Italy
This
morning the alarm went off at half past six.
After sleeping comparatively well the previous night this didn’t feel too
bad all up, and after another superb breakfast I was soon loading Kermit’s boot
once more.
Why
is it that overnight your luggage seems to swell, or the Ka’s boot seems to
shrink? This unflattering shot of me
shows me <persuading> the luggage to fit into the boot without
leaving something on the back seat.
Anyway,
being so close to Nice, Monaco and Italy, it meant that there was quite a
change in the character of the roads and something new: proper tunnels.
Tunnels
can catch the unwary out, especially if he or she has been wearing sunglasses
in the morning sun! Tunnels on this
stretch of the Autoroute vary from just over a hundred metres to close to two
miles.
Signs
remind you to put your headlights on, which in any event is recommended in
France by the Government (and most people ignore it to be fair).
Monaco
Since
we were in the area, we planned a little detour through Monaco. Unfortunately, we arrived at the rush hour,
which meant it was busy. We took the opportunity
to drive through the old town and take a few pictures and saw more Ferraris
than we did Kas, and we saw seven Kas...
Charlie
saw this building and thought that it looked interesting.
I
didn’t see this building because I was busy avoiding people, cyclists, cars,
busses, scooters and indeed anything else that was considering getting in the
way of this mad Englishman in a Ka.
Even
if technically I’m Scottish! Oh and I
didn’t think the building was all that interesting anyway, heh. J
Monaco
is rather claustrophobic in parts. The
city has a curious mix of the old and the new, with many buildings thrown up in
the 1970s and 1980s mixed up with stuff that’s been around for centuries.
We
would have loved to spend rather more time in Monaco but prices are rather
steep. Two teas, how does €17
sound? And don’t even think about the
beer prices...
Do
you see anything unusual about this picture?
Look
again!
You
can buy just about any kind of car you want in Monaco – European, American and
as the picture above shows, just plain weird too!
As
you venture deeper into the city so it becomes narrower and narrower, as these
two shots illustrate.
It’s
not too clear on the picture, but that’s the street that goes up...
And
sometimes you get to drive on the proper side of the road too!
Not
to mention some decent gradients requiring first gear and plenty of
observation.
If
you’re in something smaller than a Mercedes S-Type many Monaco drivers don’t
seem to see you, even with the headlights switched on.
The Italian Border
There
is no picture of the Italian border.
This isn’t because the border police wouldn’t allow us to take a picture
but because these days, it’s no more exciting than crossing from England into
Scotland.
This
is the closest picture we have to the border; we stopped at a Shell petrol
station and shop to get some lunch and it also gave us another photo
opportunity... But you know we did stop
at a service station a few miles before this, but so too had half of the
Italian army and they were just getting in the way. After waiting to be served for what felt like an hour (but was
more like ten minutes) we gave in and pressed on. It was the right decision because the petrol here was slightly
cheaper but more importantly, it was significantly quieter.
Getting
into Italy was in some respects a little frustrating because we’d just gotten
used to French when we were seemingly thrown in at the deep end and needing to
talk in Italian.
I
don’t really know what this sign says (she has “Tres Jolie” written on her
knickers, which I think means “Very Pretty,” and she is) but it seemed very
photogenic! <cough>
Italy
brings about a change in the motorways.
The name changes from the Autoroute to the Autostrada and the funky
little tickets don’t come with a map any more.
The services are closer to the British ones compared to the French ones in
some respects and you’ll find salesmen pestering you to buy watches, handbags,
umbrellas or anything else that can 
easily
be sold. It’s important not to buy
anything off these salesmen because you encourage them and I’m led to believe
that it’s frowned upon by the police.
This
shot shows Kermit at Lake Garda, just a few miles from our hotel. The lighting looked so good I just had to
stop and take the picture!
Whilst
In Italy
Although
we’d decided to confine ourselves to the northern part of Italy (this is
quite important because given a free 
reign I
would have driven to the south “just because it’s there” thanks to my wanderlust), there
was still a lot to see and do. Lake
Garda itself is set in the foothills of the Alps, Venice is around a hundred
and thirty miles east, Verona is a bit closer, Milan is to the West and if you
drive another forty minutes, you’re at the Swiss border at Lake Como.
Lake Garda
We
were staying on the west side of the lake close to a village called Limone sul
Garda. There are two ways to reach
Limone, one is via the road and the other is to use the ferry. The SS45BIS road cuts through the mountain
as it winds its way up the western side of the lake and a couple of the 
tunnels
are over a mile long. Fortunately, the
Italian road engineers have come up with an ingenious (but remarkably simple)
solution to the problem of going from near pitch blackness to bright sunlight
when you leave the tunnel. You often
have around a hundred metres of part tunnel, where it’s semi-darkness. This gives your eyes an opportunity to
adjust. The drive along the shore of
the lake is certainly dramatic.
This
shot shows what the sunrise is like when the sun creeps over the mountains to
the East of the lake. It’s beautiful!
Venice
There’s not much that I
can write about Venice because it’s a city where there are canals instead of roads,
so from a Ka perspective, it’s pretty boring really. I’m afraid I wasn’t always in the spirit of Venice as one of the
most romantic places in the world, as you can see here. J
As a
special note, Charlie has already battered me for to quote “abusing the
camera.”
I’m
not sure what this funky boat thing is called but the guy doing the tour took
us down some especially narrow canals to show us the sights.
Verona
William
Shakespear wrote a play based in Verona – Romeo and Juilette, except the Italians
spell “Juilette” with a “G” rather than a “J,” just to confuse everybody. Mr. Shakespear never went to Verona either,
but many of the details are accurate.
Although the two families he wrote about exist in real life, there was
never a Romeo nor a Juilette and so he never climbed this balcony to give her a
big kiss.
However,
I admit that Verona is a remarkable city.
We did the guided tour thing, visiting many of the important monuments
in the centre of the city and driving past those we didn’t walk to
Lake
Como is approximately one hundred and thirty miles from Lake Garda, pretty much
due West-North-West. It has a different
character compared to Lake Garda with arguably even more dramatic scenery,
although I prefer to think of it as different.
If
anything, the scenery is greener than it is around Lake Garda. The road that goes around the southern parts
is rather narrow and twisty, but in this respect it’s perfect for some Ford Racing Suspension testing,
especially where slow Italian BMWs that overtake just because you’re driving a
British car are concerned <cough>.
We
drove along much of the southern edges of Lake Como but because time was
getting tight, we didn’t do any proper stops, just looked at the scenery and
look lots of pictures.
The
telegraph line ruins this shot, a pity really because the mountains look
superb.
Many
Italian drivers are in a perpetual state of hurry. They tend to tailgate
but are especially close when doing so, however at least they overtake when
they have the opportunity – unlike many drivers in the United Kingdom that
tailgate because they’re too stupid to overtake, heh. Speed limits are almost universally disregarded in urban areas (there’s
usually a fifty kilometres per hour limit in place), with most of Lake
Garda being either a fifty or a seventy limit.
Don’t drive through a village at fifty miles per hour thinking that “this
feels a bit quick,” because not only will you be holding somebody up
but you might get stopped by the police for speeding.
I
should say that the use of the horn is officially banned from urban areas but
this is as universally disregarded as the fifty kilometres per hour speed
limit!
However,
the Italians’ reaction to the horn is completely different to the British. In the United Kingdom, if somebody uses the
horn it’s often considered to be an aggressive posturing action, almost as bad
as shaking ones’ fist out of the open window.
In Italy, it’s completely different.
Using the horn because it took somebody just over half a second to move
off when the light turned to green is acceptable and not to be taken as
offensive. Once you get used to this,
the tailgating and overtaking, and the hand waving driving in Italy is
preferable to driving in the United Kingdom in many respects!
Oddly
enough, most people want to drive at a speed somewhere between fifty and
seventy kilometres per hour around the various lakes, where fifty or seventy
limits apply. There have been many
occasions where I’d engaged the cruise
control at seventy kilometres per hour and had to disengage it to slow down
for somebody who overtook me a couple of miles earlier.
Once
away from the lakes, things are a little different. This picture illustrates two differences. One is that no matter how fast you drive,
there’s almost always a queue of Italians behind you in waiting to overtake. J
The
other shot shows that everybody has their dipped headlights on – this is
because it is the Law in Italy, once away from urban areas. It’s sensible, too, after all it would be
difficult to realistically say, “sorry I didn’t see you” I should think.
From
Lake Garda, it’s a relatively short drive into the mountains, as this shot
shows.
Mountains
are good things to drive up and down.
It gives you the opportunity to check your engine and brakes!
One
of the notable things about Italian roads is that you can go from a relatively
free flowing stretch, as above, to a tighter section with rock on one side and a
steep drop on the other, as this picture shows.
This
picture attempts to illustrate that our GPS
system is telling us to drive through the narrowest, windiest and generally
scariest street it could find in the entire region just to save a few seconds
and about three miles.
One
of the problems of navigating without a road map is that you really do put your
trust into the judgement of what is a relatively simple little device. It doesn’t always immediately understand
that you just don’t want to drive through the tiniest of hamlets because you
know if you were to meet an Italian driver the other way, you would probably
have to reverse out of the way with much horn honking, only to find that
there’s another car behind you, so on and so forth.
Needless
to say I ignored that particular instruction from the GPS!
Although
I did consider removing the annoying black plastic bag from the street lamp,
which I consider to have ruined what was otherwise a splendid shot of Kermit,
this picture shows how dramatic the Alp foothills are even in April. That’s fresh snow on the mountain and the
reason why it’s a dull picture is because it was a dull day (it started
raining a short while after taking this picture).
Now
to get to this particular car park we had to go up a very tight, twisty little
road on the edge of the mountain!
This
shows how busy the main roads get on a weekend. Weekends in Italy are unusual because most places, including
petrol stations, close at lunchtime on a Saturday (many have self service
facilities available where you have to use your Italian card or cash). On a Sunday, after church many people head
off somewhere pretty for a picnic.
Or
at least that’s what we thought people were doing.
When
driving alongside rocky walls, for maximum effect, be sure to drive quickly
past the rock face! J
In
fairness for this shot we were only driving along at around forty kilometres
per hour, but it looks exciting enough.
These
next two shots show a typical Italian village on Lake Como.
The trip
home, well, it rained a fair bit. For
the time being I’m going to post up some pictures and I’ll fill in the detail later.
Here’s
Kermit in the reflection of a milk truck.
It
rained quite a bit on the way home...
More
tunnels!
Roadworks
on the Autoroute!
I
got bored of the Autoroute so we took the Route Nationale, that is, main roads –
like this one.
Here’s
the disadvantage of the main roads – you occasionally encounter traffic.
And
finally – Kermit in a rare break of the rain.