The last birthday

Though you know logically that you only have a year and a day, its only when the major milestones come around (and they come around so fast) that it sinks in. We’d celebrated four birthdays – in San Francisco, Costa Rica, New Zealand and Pompeii – now only Jenna’s was left. Our baby had spent almost all her 4-year old days on the road, a fifth of her life, and she was about to turn 5. How close we were to finishing the trip and going home. Travelling has been our life for the past 11 months and it’s with some trepidation that we look at settling down to a ‘normal’ existence in one place, with school and work. Not surprisingly, we wanted this last birthday to be a good one.

Florence was the venue for our last birthday but not before we visited Umbria and Tuscany – those second-home strongholds. After Rome, we fast-forwarded 1,500 years to the Renaissance, with Medici villas and hill towns set in rolling countryside and poplars.

The plan was to stay in Spoleto after visiting Orvieto. Well, the first part of the plan worked fine. Driving from Lago Bolsena, we had lunch at an eclectic place above Orvieto then wound our way to this amazing town, perched high above on a 300 metre-high batholith. As well as narrow medieval streets and a stunning natural setting, Orvieto boasts a completely OTT Duomo facade. It’s a mindboggling medieval riot of colour and exuberance. We stopped to gawp and for a couple of pics, then headed on. Alas our experience of Spoleto wasn’t quite as billed. We saw the aqueduct and a quick view of the town but were looking for the campsite and would see it at leisure over a couple of days. Good old guidebooks: in a May 2007 edition we’d found two: a pokey campsite in town (seen and dismissed quickly) and a flashier affair 7 km northwest in a village. At this point, maps, road signs and intuition let us down badly. We spent 2 hours trying to find said village but instead found farm tracks and milk processing plants. After 3 goes alone, we did the unthinkable and actually asked someone! Following excellent instructions, superbly translated by Joe, we did indeed find said village. 2 donkeys and a mafia summer retreat. We drove at it and round it from every angle, but without sight nor sound of a flashy campsite. Eventually we did find a restaurant and Joe awoke some poor waiter, who told us that the campsite had shut down. 2 years ago. Oh well done Rough Guide. Always good to know they check their information between editions.

Alas there were no other places to camp anywhere around and it was 6.30pm, so reluctantly we changed plans. We’d found it increasingly hard to get places to stay as the summer holidays were here – at least for the Dutch, Irish and those educated at British public schools! Joe phoned ahead to Fiesole near Florence who could, thank goodness, put us up. I put my foot down and we flew past Umbria’s tourist centres – Assissi, Perugia – and within 2 hours we were at the Tuscan capital. It was very late when we arrived and we gratefully opted for a cabin rather than putting up the blasted tent in the dark. So much for seeing Umbria, then.