Thursday 6th May.
Cavarzere – Badia Polesine.
Our plan is to follow the River Adige up the ‘Valli Grande Veronese’ towards Verona today and for once all went according to plan. The land here is perfectly flat but about ten miles north the hills begin and look very pretty.
Valley Veronesi
The road hugs the river which is about 150 yards wide at this point, and also flowing very fast, full of fallen trees and roots. There has been some wild weather up in the hills and the water is very coloured. There wasn’t too much of a headwind the road was clear of traffic and the sun was shining. We saw a couple of golden Orioles, a Little Bittern and Black Terns catching flies on the water. The noise from the warblers in the reeds was deafening but there was hardly a glimpse of one. We found a quiet spot for lunch on the bank so caught a few rays too to keep our tans up. This was not quite as restful as it could have been as we were joined by about 1000 ants who wanted to share our picnic and liked climbing all over us. Alec was rather braver than me about this.
Lunch spot - bit noisy with all those sheep, ants, birds!
More guests!
About 3 miles short of our B and B we were treated to another thunderstorm; this seems to happen every afternoon so we took shelter again for 40 minutes. We stayed in our first Agriturismo which was really lovely. Le Clementine is about 2 miles outside Badia Polesine down a long track, near the canal.
Clementine (for that is madam’s name!) was lovely and had a menagerie of chickens, ducks, guinea fowl, peacocks, turkeys, pigeons (edible) sheep, donkeys (not edible? Pepperoni maybe) and pigs. Not to mention the first Alsatian we’ve ever met which didn’t give the impression that it would like us for his breakfast.
Dinner was in a barn (bit like ours at home), there was another couple staying and a single man – from Colombia. He spoke very good English and introduced himself halfway through dinner. Having ascertained what we were doing he said with what we thought was a little bit too much feeling – no wonder you can both eat so much, - well!! There were also 2 dinner parties of 8 but they weren’t supposed to be there, you knew that they were though as they were having a lot of fun! (Imagine having a dinner party at home and just going to someone’s barn and having it all done for you – marvellous! We had an extremely comfortable room which could not be faulted until about 4am when something upset the donkey. His ee-oaring upset the peacocks who upset the guinea fowl who upset the cockerels and from that moment on sleep was impossible! Our host and hostess made strenuous efforts to find us another Agriturismo for tomorrow night but the closer you get to Verona the more ridiculously expensive they get so we decided to see how far we could go tomorrow before making a decision. It is still fairly low season so nothing is very booked up yet.
Cavarzere – Badia Polesine.
Our plan is to follow the River Adige up the ‘Valli Grande Veronese’ towards Verona today and for once all went according to plan. The land here is perfectly flat but about ten miles north the hills begin and look very pretty.
Valley Veronesi
The road hugs the river which is about 150 yards wide at this point, and also flowing very fast, full of fallen trees and roots. There has been some wild weather up in the hills and the water is very coloured. There wasn’t too much of a headwind the road was clear of traffic and the sun was shining. We saw a couple of golden Orioles, a Little Bittern and Black Terns catching flies on the water. The noise from the warblers in the reeds was deafening but there was hardly a glimpse of one. We found a quiet spot for lunch on the bank so caught a few rays too to keep our tans up. This was not quite as restful as it could have been as we were joined by about 1000 ants who wanted to share our picnic and liked climbing all over us. Alec was rather braver than me about this.
Lunch spot - bit noisy with all those sheep, ants, birds!
More guests!
About 3 miles short of our B and B we were treated to another thunderstorm; this seems to happen every afternoon so we took shelter again for 40 minutes. We stayed in our first Agriturismo which was really lovely. Le Clementine is about 2 miles outside Badia Polesine down a long track, near the canal.
Clementine (for that is madam’s name!) was lovely and had a menagerie of chickens, ducks, guinea fowl, peacocks, turkeys, pigeons (edible) sheep, donkeys (not edible? Pepperoni maybe) and pigs. Not to mention the first Alsatian we’ve ever met which didn’t give the impression that it would like us for his breakfast.
Dinner was in a barn (bit like ours at home), there was another couple staying and a single man – from Colombia. He spoke very good English and introduced himself halfway through dinner. Having ascertained what we were doing he said with what we thought was a little bit too much feeling – no wonder you can both eat so much, - well!! There were also 2 dinner parties of 8 but they weren’t supposed to be there, you knew that they were though as they were having a lot of fun! (Imagine having a dinner party at home and just going to someone’s barn and having it all done for you – marvellous! We had an extremely comfortable room which could not be faulted until about 4am when something upset the donkey. His ee-oaring upset the peacocks who upset the guinea fowl who upset the cockerels and from that moment on sleep was impossible! Our host and hostess made strenuous efforts to find us another Agriturismo for tomorrow night but the closer you get to Verona the more ridiculously expensive they get so we decided to see how far we could go tomorrow before making a decision. It is still fairly low season so nothing is very booked up yet.
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