Leaving Lake Iseo
Friday 29th September
Today we leave Camping Covelo and Iseo after a very pleasant few days stay. Our first task today was to pack up, leave site, and head for Iseo where we wanted to get some Christmas shopping done. We had identified a suitable place to park the motorhome the previous day but had perhaps under estimated the impact of market day in Iseo. As we approached the town we could tell that the place was heaving. I guess that not only the whole town had come out but everyone from all of the surrounding areas as well. Now this was late Friday morning and I’m just wondering whether anyone is at work today because they are all here. Maybe they work on a Saturday instead, I don’t know.
Anyway, we headed for the seldom used car park that we had identified to find it choker-block. We did however find a space for the motorhome and proceeded with dogs in tow to the town. Now this was not a trivial task because Lily (our oldest Dalmatian) is a country girl at heart and as she gets older she seems to like the quiet life more and more. The market was large, bustling, and had just about every type of stall imaginable – she hated it!
We had a look around the market and then headed for a shop where we had identified some potential Christmas presents. After a coffee, present shopping done, we returned laden with carrier bags back to the motorhome.
We set off and headed for the motorway. We still needed some fuel and we wanted to top up with LPG as well, not knowing how easy it would be to get LPG refilled in Croatia. It being lunchtime the local fuel stations were shut except those that offered self-service by card payment. This was OK for diesel but LPG in Italy is filled by an attendant. Filled up with diesel we later found a service station on the motorway where we were able to fill up with LPG and to be honest the price wasn’t that much different from the local service stations.
Our plan was to head for the Trieste area stopping just short of Slovenia. There is not much in the way of campsites in this particular part of Italy so we knew we had to head for a sosta and that would be fine for an overnight stop. There was a sosta in Monfalcone which lies just to the west of Trieste and it looked fine from our guide books. We could have headed to Trieste where there were a couple of options but it’s a much bigger place and we thought it would be more secure in Monfalcone.
So that’s where we headed. Not too many hic-cups on the way, a missed slip road (I’m beginning to treat these as normal driving events now) and the satnav wanting us to cross a railway line where there was no road (or even the slightest sniff that one ever existed). When we arrived at the sosta there was a barrier across the entrance and a few signs in Italian which we guessed were requesting that we call to request access. Now we speak a little Italian, enough maybe to be polite but not perhaps to start a conversation with an unknown person at the other end of the line. It was a great conversation piece, we didn’t speak Italian, the lady who answered the phone didn’t speak English, but we gathered that she would send her husband out to us in 6 minutes.
There were quite a few campers in the sosta and we had hoped that as in Mery-sur-Seine someone would come out and let us through the barrier. As we were to find out later all of the other campers were parked (we presume being stored) and not occupied. Whilst waiting for what we thought would be the arrival of someone to let us in, a couple from Israel turned up also looking to stay the night. They had been touring Europe and were now heading home via a ferry to Greece the following morning.
Those 6 minutes seemed an awfully long time and we began wondering whether the lady was asking us to phone back in 6 minutes, hmm. We struck up a conversation with the couple from Israel who didn’t speak Italian either and they asked if we had tried the barrier – of course not, a barrier is a barrier right. Well no actually, whilst it all looked secure and controlled with buttons to press and card slots, the barrier could just be lifted. So, we were in, and shortly afterwards the man arrived who also didn’t speak English, but between the five of us we managed to sort ourselves out for an overnight stay.
The sosta is strange because it is actually quite well appointed. Marked out bays, the whole site has been paved, there is 16A electric hookup for all, and at one end of the site is a motorhome service point with a very good drive over waste point, fresh water, and chemical disposal. At the other end is a purpose built amenity block with toilets, showers, and what appears to be a communal room of some sort. We’ve stayed on worse campsites than this but at 15 Euros a night it’s perhaps not the cheapest sosta you’ll use.
The sosta is located adjacent to what looks like industrial units but the initial appearance is a little deceiving because this area of Monfalcone is given over to boat building, and not just boats but big expensive ones and some of the yards adjacent to the site oozed wealth. There is also a marina and yacht club, the latter having a restaurant accessible to the public. We did toy with the idea of visiting but opted for a quiet night in.
It was a good stopping off point and a relatively peaceful place to spend the night. In the morning we noted another guest, this time a car towing a caravan had pulled in. Whilst there was not room in the marked-out spaces there was plenty of space around the outside of the site to accommodate a caravan or two.
