On Tuesday 26th April, we set off on our journey towards Greece. The objective for the day was to cross the border from Italy into Slovenia, the most Northernly part of the Dalmatian coast with views in the South over the Gulf of Venice. Being a Tuesday, my objective was to reach our destination in time to play on line Bridge with my friend in Greenwich at 7pm UK time.
Most things with the Sprinter had been going well. We had mastered steep hills and hairpin bends, 4WD and low range gears. We were becoming adept in setting up the bed and restoring it to living room in the mornings. As the weather was still a bit damp and chilly, meals outdoors had less appeal than our cosy lounge. We were now reasonably confident in handling the fuel pumps, grey water pump, loo contents disposal, water tank filling, battery monitoring, heating space and hot water, getting the freezer working and accessible, but somehow or other, the fridge did not seem to be working despite being illuminated by umpteen blue lights. The impact of a full fridge with little or no effective power was resulting in a hygiene problem. An urgent consultation with Dave (our favourite Sprinter guru) during the day (when we had a phone signal) revealed that I had somehow managed to turn it off and it was no longer connected to a power source! 🤷♀️. So the lights were just illuminated to confuse me!
Since Brexit we have had a lot of trouble with having reliable access to the internet in the van. This had never been a problem pre Brexit travelling in our older Land cruiser. We now have super sophisticated equipment, but our Tesco Mobile Sim card which was supposed to throw data around the van, stopped working when we left France and entered Italy! We had back up with two so called International French La Poste SIM cards in our phones with loads of data and once we had left France neither of us could get them to work at all for either calls or data. Even if it was potentially crackable, time and lack of wifi was against us. Jim’s UK EE SIM failed to work in his phone and we were left with one operational Data Sim which was a UK Vodafone contract. Now all of this may be very boring to our friends, but to other overlanding travellers, this is something most people will want to crack. Perhaps a night in a hotel in Mostar with good wifi, I will attempt to tackle La Poste Mobile back in France.
Our Wild free camping night in Italy was such a success that we decided to try again in Slovenia.
Our arrival at the recommended spot, (courtesy of the IOverlander app) was delayed by around two hours as a result of the most horrendous accident involving a few lorries on the motorway not far in front of us on the busy toute towards Trieste and the Slovenian border. The motorway was brought to a complete standstill whilst emergency vehicles and helicopters came and went. We were fortunately able to make cups of tea and patiently wait until the road had been cleared. It is hard to believe that the driver of one of the lorries could have survived. The place where his cab should have been was a mangled, burnt out wreck. (Glad not to be a first responder).
It is rare to witness such things even when travelling a lot. But it has to be said that road accidents were a more frequent occurrence on our trip to countries including Iran, Turkey and Cambodia in particular. The skeletons of burnt out lorries littered the roadside and down ravines as a constant reminder to us to remain vigilant.
Crossing the border from Italy into Slovenia was a non-event. Being part of the EU, there were no border checks or passport control. The main road just swept through.(Compare and contrast with Dover to Calais which has featured on the front pages of all the National papers over the Easter period).
The motorway roads all day were mostly good although quite busy and as we approached Trieste, nose to tail with heavy goods vehicles.
We think that on motorways that our Sprinter can go a bit faster than most lorries but a lot slower than cars. It was hard for us to work out whether the road signs, speed limits and overtaking restrictions for lorries applied to us or not. It is likely that we may have overtaken when we should not have and potentially exceeded speed limits which were meant to apply to us and the heavier commercial vehicles. Only time will tell whether traffic infringement notices arrive on our mat!
The first roads we sped along beyond Venice and between Trieste and into Slovenia were amazing. They wended their way around tight bends, sweeping across gullies and spiralling back on themselves. Not having the best head for heights I found myself slightly sweaty as we were swept along at a great height on narrow viaducts with my on-line Bridge deadline now fast approaching. Leaving the main road, through a small town, the route up to our camping spot promised views over the Gulf of Venice, was quite tricky. Jim navigated us up and up higher into the hills. Here we again benefitted from the 4WD and low range gears as we headed into increasingly narrow lanes through settlements looking out across the sea. The instructions warned that the route was challenging and may not be suitable for the larger rigs. So we approached the off road turning into the woods with some apprehension. We started well along a short section of rough, narrow, rocky track. We then came to very uneven section which was also wet with muddy potholes. I had to choose between very uneven or very wet and muddy. Those of our friends who recall our unhappy bog experience in the Pamirs will know which I chose! We rocked and pulled our way across, the van rallied and after a bit of wheel spinning, gripped solid ground and powered us through.
I was walloped on the head by a flying sun glasses case and a heavy set of important instructions on how to drive the car, which bounced off the shelf. We wobbled our way to a relatively solid spot to camp with ten minutes to go until the bridge game started! Never mind the view. (Which was superb).
What I had failed to clock was that we had no phone signal on our remaining SIM card as we headed up into the hills and therefore game over! There was nothing for it but to crack open that bottle of red Barbera d’Asti that we had picked up in the supermarket earlier in the day. Cheers!
