Tony Edgecombe

We usually spend our summer holidays camping, either in the UK or northern Europe. This is a great way to keep the costs down and the kids have always enjoyed the open space you get at a good camp site. Unfortunately our folding camper had been showing its age so we sold earlier in the year to a couple who planned to take it to Glastonbury.

I’ve always loved Italy, the food, the cars and the people. I’ve travelled there on business many times and we spent our honeymoon there twenty years ago so we decided to go back.

As I stopped flying quite a few years ago we took the train, travelling from St Pancras, London to Paris on the Eurostar then Paris to Turin by SNCF. St Pancras is a splendid station completely spoilt by the shopping centre built underneath it, you are out of luck if you want to sit down before you enter the terminal. Travelling by Eurostar turned out to be much better than SNCF, the food on the SNCF train was appalling for a six hour journey.

We spent a night in Turin, a rather eventful night in Verona then travelled on to Colfosco in the Dolomites. Colfosco is a quite village, mostly geared to skiing although there is plenty to do in the summer. We stayed at the Garni Delta, a lovely warm and welcoming B&B at the top of the village.

From there we travelled over to Venice for a couple of days. Venice is very popular and they clearly don’t have to try very hard to keep their customers. It was over priced with poor food, lots of graffiti and rubbish everywhere. I don’t remember it being this bad last time we visited, perhaps they are getting too many visitors.

For the last few days we stayed in Bergamo, a town in Lombardy about 40 km from Milan. We stayed in the Cillà alta, the 17th century old town on the hill. The old town is largely pedestrianised, very quite and pleasant, a complete contrast to Venice. We stayed in A casa mia, a small friendly B&B run by Cristina Gherlinzoni.

It was a lovely holiday, travelling by train was fine although I will spend a bit more for hotels closer to the station next time and take my own food onto the SNCF trains.