Saturday

Another blue-sky, sunny day. The forecast was for thirty degrees. I decided to take a break from the centre of building and gardening operations, but more importantly, with time passing, I wanted to see some of the more local places which I'd bypassed so far. Cerreto de Spoleto is a good example. I must have passed by it twenty times, but it sits at an absurd height above Borgo Cerreto, which has a petrol station, supermarket and a few bars and restaurants, but gives the impression of a "passing through" town. The desire to explore its high namesake hadn't come to me.

Which was a mistake, because I really liked the place. Although perched high on its hill, it has a more or less flat centre, with a big public square and even a little park. On one end of the square is "Joseph's Old Inn", which has the look of an Irish pub without being an identikit Irish pub. I'm sure it has its lively moments. The town has a number of well-preserved Seventeenth-Century palazzos: big posh town houses. I wonder how and why the settlement became rich back then. The road up to Cerreto is probably the scariest I've driven on. It seems just to be a ledge cut from the mountain side, and the drop, or more accurately the volume of empty space, on the far side of the crash barrier gave me an unwelcome feeling of fear in my belly and loins.

I took a different road down, not because I was scared, but because I wanted to go to the supermarket down below. The road I picked wasn't the most direct one to the Borgo, but very scenic. The Eurospin supermarket is one I hadn't used before, even though it's probably joint nearest with the Norcia Co-op, but the Co wins hands down on quality and choice of products. (Although almost all the Eurospin's wine was very cheap. Not that it would affect my judgement. Well, the wine would, in sufficient quantities.) I did buy one of their "own brand" products, which was revealed that evening to be a definite success. "Mambo Kids Bruschetta al Rosmarino" is tiny, coin-sized slices of toasted bread with rosemary and olive oil. A tastier, healthier substitute for potato crisps.

Just down the road is another hill town I've passed by, Vallo di Nera, officially one of the hundred most beautiful towns in Italy. My guide book says that the derivation of the name might be from the Latin "vallum" for wall, from the Roman castle that was once there; or from the Germanic "wald" for forest, from its occupation by Longobards in the early Medieval period. The one thing that seems obvious is that it's nothing to do with "valley", because it's on a high hill top.

I'm not sure about the top hundred. It's nice: medieval, well-preserved. But I actually preferred Cerreto. They do seem to be taking their star status carefully, with a new car park and (I think) public toilets under construction for the coming tourist season. And everything is well-restored and clean and nice. Like Preci back home, some of the well-restored houses seem to be empty -- either second homes or holiday homes to let. I only saw one commercial establishment in the town, a bar and shop. For me, the best aspect of Vallo is also the first you see: the loggia of the medieval town hall, the Palazzo del Popolo, also acts as the main gate, and has wonderful views through the stone arches of the surrounding countryside.

After I left Vallo, I took a cross-country route marked on one of the tourist leaflets. Actually, it was my second attempt. The first road I took looked promising at first, but eventually became unpaved, a good indication that it wasn't going anywhere much. I gave up on it and came back to take another, more likely road. It wound up higher and higher through some of the most beautiful countryside in the area. There was no other traffic, and when the snow-capped tops of the high mountains came in to view, I knew I was having a traveller's "experience". I was smiling a lot. My target town was Poggiodomo. Another typical medieval hill town, perhaps a little unusual in its thousand metre altitude, and I took a few photos, also of Usigni, a scenic small village on a hill near by.

Onward then. I had worked out a return route via Cascia and Norcia. Although I'd been to Norcia a number of times, I hadn't visited its larger neighbour, only ten or twelve kilometres away, mainly because I'd been put off by the guidebook entry which said that the old church which had commemorated Santa Rita had been replaced by a twentieth-centry basilica. (Rita was a nun who worked as a diplomatic intermediary and peacemaker in the 1300s. She was canonised in 1900.)

There's quite a lot of other modern development around Cascia, apart from Santa Rita's basilica, but it's not unpleasant. I was following P signs for parking and pulled towards one spot in a square, only to be waved away by an attendant with wagging finger. I returned to the ring road, realising that I was getting lower, which I didn't like because it suggested a hike up hill in the heat to get to the old town centre. But then the P signs began to promise escalators, and I gave them the benefit of the doubt. I parked in a big car, coach and camper park dedicated to Pope Leo XIII. There were indeed escalators, five flights I think, and a three-storey elevator, which got me right up to Santa Rita's basilica with no tiring climbing. Interesting inside, but somehow hard to reconcile self-consciously "modern" frescos with the usual decoration of churches. The approach to the church has a modern, but traditionally-inspired series of loggias on each side of the road.

There doesn't really seem to be much of the old town remaining, and what there is contains too many tawdry souvenir shops. In a way, Santa Rita has eaten Cascia's soul.

Norcia was a short drive. I took a few photos and bought a gelato, and then took the road up over the mountain pass and back home. Just past the village of Campi (always a handful of particularly slack-jawed yokels hanging around the bar and general store there) I came around a bend and almost into a stream of bald, skinny, brown sheep, flowing across the road under the control of three dogs, although not any humans, as far as I could see.

"Shep! Time you and your mates brought in the sheep!"

"Woof!"

I was nervous that some other driver would come round the bend too fast and collide, even considering reversing back around with hazard lights flashing, but the flow of sheep ended at last and Shep and friends disappeared from sight, after giving me appraising looks. I drove on.

Two hooded crows flew off the road at my approach, and I saw that they had been eating a dead snake. A little further on, I saw another (unattended) snake body. These were the first snake corpses I'd seen, and if it's not just coincidence, I can't think of a particular reason for them becoming roadkill at the same time.

There were nothing remarkable for the short remaining distance of my journey. I'd been on tour for a surprising eight hours.

Sunday

It was the first night which had been uncomfortably warm (for me). When I first arrived at Casale Carocci, in early April, I'd had to have the central heating running on a few nights, even with all available blankets in use. Some of the apartments have their own open fires, but mine is too small for that. The gas central heating is excellent though, and I'm sure would make the place inhabitable even in Winter, although you'd probably need a helicopter to get to the village for your groceries.

There was a travel television programme on in the morning about a region of Italy called "Umbria". I know that, I thought. There was a lot of aerial footage in it, which was interesting. Most of the programme was devoted to Assisi and Perugia (both of which I have visited a few times) and Gubbio, which I haven't. Gubbio does look inviting, but I decided it was too far away for a visit this time.

The day was spent mostly indoors, because it was too hot to go out and do owt. In the morning, before the temperature really soared, I walked down to see how the swimming pool was doing, and the water was running, but the level was less than knee deep. Sergio had a group of guests coming on the next Friday specifically to swim, so I did wonder about the lack of filling progress.

I had some next door neighbours, but they were so quiet that I never knew if they were in or not. I was never in that apartment, but from guesswork, the living room and kitchenette are on the lower level, and the bedroom and bathroom on the upper, contiguous with my living room. On the last occasion that the place was occupied, by a young Italian couple, they tended to bellow at each other regardless of where in the apartment each happened to be.

After dinner, with darkness almost complete, I went out again for a brief tour of the surroundings. It was cool. Up in the forest, about a hundred metres from the house, I could hear a sound that I can best describe if you imagine an old, grumpy and quite agressive man saying "Pah!" repeatedly. Since it didn't sound remotely canine, I was sure it wasn't a wolf, but the tonal quality definiely suggested a big animal, and I concluded that it was probably a boar. There was a stuffed one outside a Norcia or Cascia shop the previous day and it came up to my waist.

Monday

Thirty two degrees by ten in the morning. It makes you a bit sluggish, I find. The coolest place on the hot days was definitely inside the house, with windows and doors open to get as much cooling airflow as possible. Even in the shade outside it was noticeably hotter.

I pottered about, read some, and had lunch. In the afternoon, I decided to go out in the car, a trip which was pleasant enough, but almost totally unsuccessful. It took about twenty minutes' driving for the air conditioning to make the car interior cool. I don't use air conditioning if I don't have to, because it burns more fuel (and I'm mean, I mean green), but there's no better option when it's so hot.

I'd noticed on one of the tourist leaflets that there was a waterfall via a turning from the road where I drive towards Spoleto. Cascata Cugnuntu, which is an intriguingly non-Italian name. Maybe Etruscan. I took the turn and found that it went through a farmyard, but did emerge from the other side, and so did I, with two barking dogs following. The road was a single track through the forest, although moderately well surfaced. After a few hundred metres, the dogs decided that their duty was done and fell back.

A bit further on, there was a small sign pointing to the cascata, and I parked the car on the verge and took a look. It was a ford across a dry stream, followed by a rocky dirt track. I explored a hundred metres on foot, but saw no end to it and gave up. It was tempting to try driving the hire car down the track, but I chickened out and drove back past the dogs. They didn't even bother to chase this time. At the junction back onto the road, there was a girl in a graden with her bikini top undone, so it wasn't an entirely wasted trip.

My next objective was San Salvatore church, just outside Spoleto, which is very old and features a lot of recycled classical Roman building material. Neither my guidebook nor Spoleto city map gave any guide to the location, except for roughly indicating the motorway exit. I came off the motorway, followed what I hoped was the right direction, and found myself on the slip road back onto the motorway, back the way I'd come. I had to drive the five kilometres back to "my" junction to get turned round.

The second attempt was no more successful, or possibly slightly more successful in that I didn't immediately go back the way I'd come. But I couldn't see an old church or any signs, and after a bit of driving around, I gave up and went in to Spoleto. It was late afternoon, but still very hot, except in some of the shadier streets. I thought there might be a breeze up by the castle. There's a cafe with great views over the valley, and sitting in the cool with a beer or ice cream (or both) seemed like a good idea. However, when I got there, there wasn't a breath of wind, and it didn't seem so inviting.

You can follow the road right round the base of the castle, past the Ponte delle Torri. Or rather, you can't, because the far end is blocked by construction works, I think to do with the forthcoming escalators, but they don't tell you that until you get there. Still, it was mostly in the shade, and I found a place where you can descend a little bit down the ravine and get photos of the bridge almost head-on. It was a rocky, scrubby sort of place, with twisted old olive trees, and in the blazing sunshine put me in mind of the Middle East, or Biblical land scenery. The Devil didn't turn up and tempt me though.

A little further round and the city began to come in to view, and far below I saw a big, old, basilica-style church that had to be the San Salvatore I had been looking for. I could even see that I had almost found it, because it looked as though the road to it was the one I had ignored because it had seemed just to be for access to a modern cemetary. I'll know next time.

To compound my sense of failure, I found from the posters that I also seemed to have missed "Spoleto Backbeat" by two days, an event with live bands, and, unbelievably, Pete Best, best known for not even being good enough to be in the Beatles. The afternoon, "School Band" slot had featured Therapy, without a question mark, but since they were billed below Mega Fuck (huge poster in Piazza Garibaldi) I doubt they were our lads from Ballyclare.

I drove home. I could have stayed in Spoleto for dinner, but I had food in the fridge to use up. Back at Casale Carocci, I met a slightly fraught Sergio, whose swimming pool was not yet filled, in spite of both well water and mains water. The water company had promised him an extra supply for the following day.

Tuesday

I was affected by a strong sense of imminent departure, making me feel unsettled. The television weather forecast predicted that the spell of very hot weather would break on Wednesday, possibly with thunderstorms, but there was no hint in the air of the change coming. It was still blisteringly hot, and the only thing for it was to open all doors and windows and take it easy.

It was very quiet in the morning. I had two or three sets of neighbours in the other apartments, but they all seemed to be away, perhaps to take advantage of the last of the hot weather. After all, they would only have one or two weeks of holiday to go places and see stuff. I could be more relaxed about it.

One other family group did appear in the midday heat and have a look around, something that has happened a few times. I suppose they expect the office to be manned so that they can ask about vacancies and rates, but it was still too "low season" for that. This couple were speaking English, but the man had a non-English accent, possibly Dutch, while the woman was obviously English. They had a couple of brats.

I was just finishing lunch when a small lizard came through the open front door. I sat still, thinking "How cute. I've got a lizard on my living room floor." He came in further, exploring, and came to the sofa. It was at that point that I realised that a sofa, particularly a sofa-bed, has a lots of nooks and crannies, and possibly I didn't really want a critter living in mine. Then he was on the sofa, climbing up onto the back cushions.

I thought that if I made any sudden move, he'd zip into the nearest nook, or cranny, and would be all the more difficult to find and evict, but the coolness indoors seemed to be slowing him down, and I was able to direct him towards the exit without too much trouble. Call back soon, but just know your place, OK?

In the afternoon, a few brilliant white cumulus began to boil up tall in the Eastern sky, but nothing came of it. Even these clouds dispersed within a couple of hours, but I supposed that they might signify the truth of the forecasts. In the cooler late afternoon, I checked in on the Filling of the Swimming Pool. I don't know why -- it wasn't as if I was desperate to use the thing -- but I suppose it represented "something happening" on the estate.

The water was flowing out from the four nozzles, with the water level almost having reached them, meaning just about fifty centimetres to go. In fact the line of nozzles was obviously slightly off horizontal, since one was already under water and the opposite one a few centimetres clear. Or maybe the water surface was sloping. I don't know exactly how swimming pools work, but I think the vents at the "full" level act to circulate and filter the water, something that wasn't happening yet. obviously. Which I thought might account for the profusion of drowned insects and other debris floating in the water. You wouldn't catch me swimming in that.

On the way back to the house, I noticed that a skinny cherry tree was loaded with ripe and nearly-ripe fruit (which is how I knew it was a cherry tree). I tried one (yes, me, eating something wild off a tree) and it was sweet and delicious. If I hadn't been in sight of the Dutch girl in the deck chair, I might have gathered a handful, but I didn't like to be thought of as monopolizing a common resource. I thought I'd do it when no-one's looking.

There was still food to use up, but a rather diverse selection for any one meal. I came up with a kind of buffet effort based on bread and cheeses and salami, but it was getting clear that some of the stock would have to either left behind or imported to Ireland. Probably not much in the latter category, since anything you can't easily buy in the shops there (like regional Italian cheeses) is probably illegal to import (under chemical warfare regulations).

Wednesday

I was up and away before half-past-nine, while it was still realtively cool. Well, twenty two. I was on my way to Spello, one of the few main tourist targets in mid-Umbria that I hadn't ever visited. I liked the place. There's plenty of free parking outside the city walls, and just by the main gate, the Porta Consolare, there was a market, which I think always gives a lively feel to a place.

Naturally, being another hill town, there's plenty of climbing, but at least the ancient narrow streets give plenty of shade. Most of the buildings are medieval in appearance, with a lot of eccentric arches, loggias, stairways and changes of floor height, but apparently, the street plan is not much different from Roman times. The city walls and gates are all of Roman origin, parts dating back to the Roman Republic.

In virtually every alley, the inhabitants had decorated their doorsteps, stairs and balconies with pots of colourful flowers, geraniums in the majority. I later noticed a poster which revealed that it was a contest, sort of Spello in Bloom, but that didn't detract from the attractive effect at all.

The town is small enough for the layout to be obvious, and I had no worries about getting lost. This was just as well, because the free map from their tourist office is fairly hopeless. I'm sure there's a market for good town plans for Umbria. Well, I suppose that Gooogle maps and similar have probably really got it sewn up.

When it began to get too hot for exploring, I sat under the trees outside the town hall for a while, and watched the world go by. And one of those pretty Italian policewomen. Later still, the forecast clouds did turn up and the intermittent periods of shade were pleasantly cool. By the time I was heading for home, the sky was covered in cloud that was only broken in a few spots, although back at Preci itself it was more like fifty-fifty, with plenty of sunshine breaking through.

When you take the turn off the Spoleto-Foligno motorway in the direction marked for Norcia and Cascia, there's about a kilometre of new road before the long tunnel. The tunnel is just two lanes wide, so of course, overtaking is illegal. (I have had cars overtake me in the tunnel, but have never given in to temptation myself.) Anyway, as I started up the approach road, I could see a convoy of four slow lorries. The driver of the white van ahead of me obviously saw them too.

The approach road, while wide, is also just two lanes, and they are divided by a double, continuous white line. No overtaking there either. But with a look behind for Carabinieri or Polizia Stradale, white van man and I managed to get past three of the four trucks before entering the tunnel. Actually, that wasn't much of a success, because we were still blocked by the remaining one.

On the other side of the tunnel, where the winding mountain roads start, white van man had got to his destination and turned off, leaving me behind the slow lorry for several kilometres more, until with one final, illegal dash, I got past. I didn't see another vehicle in front for the entire remainder of the drive home, about twenty-five kilometres.

In general, the standard of driving in Italy doesn't differ much from what I see in Britain or Ireland. The style is different though, more definite, by which I mean that you don't tend to see people faffing about trying to make up their minds about where to go. I like it better. You decide what to do, make your intentions clear, and then do it. Even when the manoeuvre is, strictly speaking, not legal, everyone else still understands and drives appropriately.

The clouds began to gather later in the day, and by eight in the evening, an ominous wind was shaking the foliage. The birds were making anxious noises. I heard distant thunder. Then, before nine, brief rain splattered the courtyard outside and the thunder sounded louder. This certainly seemed to be the breaking of the heatwave.

I had vegetarian cheezburgers for dinner, followed by real cherries off the cherry tree.

The thunderstorm was just over the next hill, and the sky was peroidically lit by the flashes. I was counting seconds and reckoned it as under five kilometres away. I went outside and let the wind blow through my hair as the lightning flashed above. Then, at last, the storm came my way, and as I came back indoors and bolted the door, the rain started in earnest. I could now see the zig-zag strikes across the valley, and spent time trying to get a photo, with slight success. Then I put the camera on video capture and let it run for a while.

I had the window open all this time. The rain just outside suddenly became a solid waterfall, and when I looked up, I could see that what had actually happened was that the guttering had given up. With the eaves a good distance out from the wall, in typical Italian rural design, I still didn't get wet. Lightning was alternating between visible jagged strikes and cloud-illuminating flashbulb ones that lit up the whole landscape like day. I saw two sets of car headlights coming down the road from Preci, and wondered if it was the two Dutch couples from the next-door apartments. My logic was that only crazy foreigners would be on the roads.

Sure enough, they appeared a few minutes later, luckily equipped with umbrellas. I guessed from their clothes that they'd been to the hotel for dinner. We all hung out of the upper-floor windows for a while until the storm subsided. When the rain stopped, the crickets started declaiming loudly.

Thursday

Last full day at Casale Carocci. The weather was bright and blustery. Very sensibly, I had decided on a day of taking it easy and not doing any travelling, but I did have to pack. When I got most of the stuff into my suitcase, it was straining at the seams. I couldn't understand it -- I'd acquired hardly anything in my time in Italy, and the two bulkiest items which were new, my cheap MP3 speakers and my big, lovely, bright yellow, fluffy towel from the Co-op, they weren't even packed. I feared I'd have to abandon the towel. Cost me €13 too.

You might be surprised to hear that I get apprehensive about travelling, even though I've done quite a bit of it. I think it's because I think too much. After all, what's the worst that could happen? Well, the worst that's ever happened to me was a long delay at Pisa airport (small charter company didn't have enough planes to cover contingencies) leading to missing any connecting flights from London to Belfast and having to stay the night in a hotel. And that's hardly hardship.

Anyway, I still get a little nervous; and that meant that my day felt somewhat unsettled. I couldn't fully relax. I'd arranged to meet Sergio in the evening to pay the balance of my rent. His credit card machine in the office of the farmhouse was non-operational because of telecommunications problems, but warned in advance, I'd withdrawn cash and stashed it in the safe in the apartment along with my passport.

I didn't mention the safe? Well, it's a secret. It's hidden. I kept the key to it in the fridge though, which is probably pretty obvious.

The Pool was Full. Probably nothing to do with the heavy rain. I estimated the size by counting paving slabs and got about fourteen metres by six, meaning that the last fifty centimetres took about forty thousand litres of water. The total volume must be around a hundred thousand litres, or a hundred tonnes. Just goes to show how our civilization is well-endowed with water, but we're a bit blasé about it. I was offered a swim, and if the tempreatures had been up above thirty as they were a few days previously, I'd probably have done it; but not only was it much cooler, at about twenty-three degrees, the strong wind from the West provided additional discouragement.

I paid off the man, and cooked myself a pasta-based dinner, based on the remaining left-overs which I had to use up. Still enough left for a tuna salad lunch tomorrow, I thought. Since I was in for an evening in, I turned on the television. Just the basic, analog channels. Eight, count 'em. RAI one to three, Mediaset four to six (although six is heavily promoted as "Italia Uno"), LA7, and Italia 7, a freak reception from Tuscany, mostly showing football. There's far, far too much Chuck Norris on Mediaset, and mobile phone companies TIM and WIND repeat their adverts too frequently.

There's a melodramatic German police series, dubbed into Italian, called Cobra 11, which I had watched a little back home, with the subtitles for the deaf turned on. As a deaf Italian, I'd be doing fine, since I could follow all the important content, perhaps because translation from German to Italian to Italian text is inevitably a process of simplification. My television set in the apartment was too stupid to display subtitles (an American might say "too dumb", which is what an American might call "ironic") so I had to cope with the spoken word. Of course, if I tried to lip-read I got German, which was more confusing.

There were lots of adverts about the forthcoming elections, and it all seemed very complicated. The 'list' system of proportional representation means that you choose a party or coalition of parties, and their posters and leaflets helpfully show how you put an 'X' through the desired symbol. However, if I'm understanding correctly, you can then write in the names of the politicians on the list which you specifically prefer. This would be a way of compensating for a weakness in the list system whereby the party leaders and grand figures always get elected (the proportion of votes for the party as a whole selects the number of representatives, but the party chooses the individuals). There is no chance of a glorious "Portillo moment" under a pure list system.

Franceschini, the leader of the main opposition PD, has been in the news a lot with some ferocious criticism of Berlusconi's morals and values, as exposed recently in the news about his wife, girlfriends and children. Franceschini at least has the bearing of a statesman, in contrast to Berlusconi's increasingly buffoon-like appearances, but of course if I was an Italian, or an official resident, I'd be throwing away my first preference on an unfashionable communist cause.

Friday

My departure. It was another hot day. I drove the car up into the courtyard for the first time, and parked it at my front door. That wasn't absolutely necessary, but I wanted to do it just for the hell of it. I loaded in the luggage and, after lunch, hit the road.

I'd decided to make a detour to visit Orvieto, which at about two hours' drive, I'd considered too far to be worth a day trip during my stay. The extravagant façade of Orvieto's cathedral is a real icon of Umbria. Checking the map, I saw that the first part of the route would be from Spoleto to Acquasparta, and I was very proud of knowing Spoleto well enough to drive directly to the right road out of town.

The drive was through some stunningly beautiful countryside too. Much less rugged than the mountainous parts I'd become used to over the previous few weeks, but with plenty of variety of landscape: hills, forests, fields, vineyards and the ever-present cypress trees. That brief visit has definely got the area onto my shortlist for house-hunting.

I passed by Todi, another historic and attractive city, but no time to visit today. The road then follows the valey of the Tiber, where it's dammed to create the Lago di Corbara, and I stopped briefly by the lake to take photos.

At Orvieto, I followed the signs for parking, and it all began to become familiar from my previous visits. However, my recollection was obviously confused, because I proceeded to do something very stupid. Believeing that I was still well below the historic crown of the hill town, I saw the signs for the funicular and assumed that you had to get a ride up. I bought a ticket for 95c and got into the carriage. It was only when it began to move and descend that I realised my error. It was going to the more modern Borgo on the plain below. I know there's somewhere I've been where you travel into the old town via funicular, but obviously, it wasn't Orvieto.

Fortunately, my ticket was valid for any number of journeys within 70 minutes (why?), which meant that I could get out, walk insouciently around the square and re-board the carriage for the trip up again. Actually, the design of the train is quite interesting. The two carriages counterbalance one another, so that as one descends, the other ascends. But they travel on the same track, except for a short section in the middle with points, where one ges left and one goes right. Well, I thought it was a nice bit of engineering.

Back at the top, I walked past my parked car, only having wasted fifteen minutes of my allotted two hours, and went up the Corso into town. The cathedral was my first port of call, but there's a lot worth seeing in Orvieto. The basic structure of the town itself is intriguing: it's built on a rocky volcanic outcrop, and the town walls grow organically out of it, incredibly ancient Etruscan blocks at the bottom, with Roman work above that, and medieval above that. The place is also full of holes. The inhabitants have been tunnelling through their rock like moles for millennia. You can do an underground tour, but I didn't have the time.

One of the things I've found out about re-visiting old cities is that you can always find parts that you hadn't seen before. In this case, it was a section of the rampart around the walls, and the church of San Giovenale. There was something about the colour and the worn shapes of the stone that made me think of Edinburgh's Old Town, although the blazing sunshine was distinctly un-Edinburgish.

It was another couple of hours' drive from Orvieto to the airport at Fiumicino, all of it on motorway of one sort or another. It's fast, but quite stressful, because you do really need to keep your wits about you, particularly on the sections with just two lanes in each direction. Where there are three or more lanes, the heavy trucks can overtake without disrupting the entire flow, but with two lanes, a big vehicle pulling out can suddenly cause a ripple of brake lights coming back at you.

But I got to the airport exactly on schedule, and returned the car in one piece. I had a slight worry about that, because I'd noticed some scratches on the roof which had been on the car when I got it, but weren't noted on the form at the time (a previous renter had also put a scuff on the front bumper, but that one was down in writing). But it was not a problem in the end, because the EasyCar rep was a young lady of quite small stature who couldn't see the roof.

And that was it. Flight home by Aer Fungus in cattle-class in a plane that was full (apart from the one seat belonging to the guy who checked in, went to the bar and stayed there).

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