Just One Massive Golf Course

After Slovenia, we were in a race against time to reach Munich to meet friends. This meant zipping through Austria as quick as possible, which turned out to be just dandy, because Austria is Über-expensive. Even our as-then diet of cold tinned lentils mixed with paprika and dried bread would be unaffordable in Austria.

Austria is riddled with hidden fees, tolls and costs. To travel on their main roads, you have to buy a sticker for your car that costs 30 Euros. Roads have barriers and toll booths slung across them wherever the road had cost that little bit more to build. Strange unexpected additions appeared on bills. A tiny cardboard tray of chips cost 3 Euros.

The good news is that Austria is the most beautiful country in Europe. Austria has greedily grabbed all the best bits of the Alps, ensuring actually breathtaking views from any given point. The mountains shoot out of the ground and tickle the sky with their needlepoint peaks. Austrians must have permanent cricks in their necks from spending so much time craning eyes up at them for a better look.

Pootling through the valleys, we became vaguely aware that something weird was surrounding us, but couldn't quite put our fingers on it. After a day of driving, we figured it out. The hillsides, the mountainsides, the farms, everything was kept in pristine condition, like a giant golf course, or a massive National Trust garden. We saw men mowing hillsides en mass. Austria is a country that likes everything just so.

It lent everything a creepy Twilight Zone feel. This was exacerbated when we were asked to pay 29 Euros - 29 Euros! - to travel down a mere 13 Km of Alpine road by a man in a toll booth. Gem pointed at our map. There was a road along the valley parallel to ours. 'How much is the toll along this road?' she asked.

"Oh - that one's only 10 Euros," he replied with a cheerful shrug. We jabbered incoherently, swung the car around, and drove to the valley that is apparently only worth 30% as much as the first one. After that nightmare toll experience, Austria had a final joke up it's sleeve: to get into Germany - that is, to get out of their country - you had to pay an 8 Euro toll fee to trundle a couple of kilometres through a tunnel.

We shoved money at the manically laughing woman in the booth and got the hell out of there before we had to sell blood to survive any longer.

Yes, It's Small

Slovenia is tiny. You probably guessed that. But it's surprising just how small it is. You can drive through it, from north to south or east to west, in an hour or so. We excitedly passed through the border checkpoint.

A nice Slovenian man in a very starched uniform didn't check the car for contraband, smuggled immigrants or looted Yugoslav plutonium, as I'd hoped. However, he did firmly remind us that in Slovenia, headlights must be used 24 hours a day. Even their crime concerns are small-time.

Within about 25 seconds, we'd crossed half of the country and camped in another beautiful forest next to another beautiful river, near Ljubljana, Slovenia's capitol city. As we drove, we listened to my favourite radio station ever [see picture].

We visited Ljubljana in search of tasty food. By now, our money supply was virtually non-existent, and our staple diet was lentils and large hunks of bread, so the prospect of a snack composing mainly of saturated fats and/or sugar was exhilarating.

Ljubljana is hilariously tiny. It's about the size of Crewe, but with exactly all the charm, beauty and culture that is absent in Crewe. The city is built around a lovely river criss-cossed with lovely bridges, and the streets were trampled by unlovely tourists. However, if you ignore the swaggering tourists and the surprising number of Irish pubs, the city is a delight. If Disney made European cities, they'd look like Ljubljana. We ate pizza slices by the river and watched the world go by.

After a couple of days though, we'd seen almost literally everything in Slovenia. Austria awaited.

Squid For Tea x 10

We were later told by a barmaid that Senj 'was for old people,' and that we should have gone to Zrce, on Pag Island - 'the Croatian Ibiza'. Thus 'old' Senj suited us just fine: we were tired, poor and looking forward to a nice rest.

There was a small, cheap campsite with it's own shingle beach, and we quickly camped up and dived in. The Adriatic is crystal clear and as cold as ice - perfect, as the sun was hot enough to cook eggs on the car bonnet, and if we'd had enough money, this tasty protein-packed theory would have been tested to the full.

We were just happy to be able to sunbathe on a beach, something that Croatia's coast is strangely lacking in. Instead, Croats and German tourists jostle for sun-soaking space on large, specially-built concrete beach-jetties. They looked like langoustine on a griddle. In many ways, they were just that, oiled, pink and crispy.

After a long, cheap, satisfying rest on the beach, and many meals of grilled squid or burek - large quarter-circles of puff pastry filled with local sour cheese - we rattled up towards Karlovac, home of Croatia's main brewer of lager, Karlovacko. We stayed on another lovely campsite (a generally oxymoronic description), then spent a day next to a large, swimmable river, drinking the beer. The next day we visited Zagreb.

Croatia's capitol is small but large, local but bustling. The architecture indicated Austro-Hungarian wealth from the past, and the cheap, hearty, tasty food suggested Croatia's recent, poor, rural past. I had a vast lake-like bowl of bean and sausage stew for about £3, and Gem took another opportunity to gorge on grilled squid. We bought bottles of local, ultra-bitter Croatian aperitifs, cedar-wrapped cigars and visited ex-Croatian footballing superstar Zvonomir Boban's bar. It was a great day.

After spending twice as long in Croatia than we had reckoned, the race for our ferry in Calais was on, and Slovenia, Austria and Germany were inbetween us. The Micra was pointed for the hills.

Lard and Wine For Breakfast

Well, we slept when we arrived in Bologna - for precisely three hours - and then put on our dandiest clothes and caught the bus into town. Bologna is beautiful, like Italian cities are, and it has not one, but two, leaning towers. They stopped half way through building one because, due to subsidence, it was (and still is) leaning precariously.

It says much about the Italian predisposition for chaotic organisation that almost immediately, another, taller tower was commissioned to be built ten yards away from the first. It now leans at an even more perilous angle.

We spent the next three days hassled by benevolent Italian mosquitoes (the worst we found anywhere), and eventually gave up in an itchy, bite-fuelled huff and headed north to Schio. We found the cheapest campsite within 50 miles, which was up a mountain near Schio. It was staffed and populated by pensioners, none of whom spoke English, but all were thrilled by the exciting addition of young foreigners.

They demonstrated their pleasure at our presence through gifts of food, wine and by putting up with my garbled attempts at Italian. On the 1st of August, we were woken up at 9.30 and beckoned over to the social room, where everyone was sitting around tables, drinking litres of frizzante white wine and eating lard sandwiches. This, it was explained, is an old yearly tradition. Eating the cured pork fat sandwiches and drinking wine prevents snakes from biting you for the a whole year.

This seemed as good a reason for drinking at that time in the morning as any I'd ever managed to conjure up, so we joined in (see picture), and by 11.30 were full of lard and hopelessly drunk, and so went back to bed. Lesson learned: OAPs have lots off boozy fun. We stayed at the campsite for five nights, due mainly to the persuasive attention of the old folk.

In the end, we escaped for the border, through the delicious town of Trieste, and free-wheeled into Slovenia, hoping the petrol would be cheaper. It was, and, car topped up to overflowing, we gunned the mighty Micra for Senj in Croatia.

France Owes Us

We must have passed through some sort of electrical storm in the mountains, because my iPod suddenly died. Then the super-hi-tech phone that I found in the mud at Bestival which was acting as our GPS also died. Then the 12v-240v transformer that we'd been using to charge all our gizmos exploded in a cloud of acrid smoke. All within two hours. Bummer, dude.

We stopped for a few nights in the Pyrenees, and camped in a cherry orchard next to a man called Pascal, who spent his days talking to himself and whittling miniature chairs out of cherry wood. He was charmingly crazy, which may not be unconnected with his admission that he smoked 'great Lebanese hashish' for 20 years. We found a lane where we finally resorted to scrumping - picket apricots, cherries and plums off trees.

We left and headed to a small village called Blauvac, chosen, as all our campsites are, because it was the cheapest possible in the area. It turned out that we were right next to where the Tour de France finished - Mont Ventoux, and on the strength of many breathless descriptions from fellow campers about how INCREDIBLY AMAZING the experience would be, we went along, with a picnic.

Well, it was a fabulous experience after all. It was a bit like a theme park - maybe Middle Aged Obscure Sports Enthusiast World or something - where you could imagine what it was like to live a dull, mainly meaningless existence where waiting five hours - five hours, mind - for the infinitesimally short moment where a bunch of sweaty, grim-faced men whistle past at light speed, and then rushing for the car to beat the traffic constitutes a Good Time.

We moved on again to the Alps, and then into Italy, where the roads have been signposted by blind people, and ended up driving for another 24 hour stint, because the two campsites we headed to were 'Campervan Only'. By the time we'd been rejected for the second time, we decided to head to Pisa, to see the tower, and to see what would happen. Pisa was lovely, and I have no idea how the damn tower is upright, such is the crazy tilt. We mingled with The Kids by the river and got back into the car at 3am, and rattled away to Bologna, wondering when sleep might grace our lives again.

Another 24 Hours

We drove out of Yecla with heavy hearts, but light wallets - we had 'enjoyed' Spain too much and blown a disproportionate amount of cash there. 'It was all worth it, though,' we told ourselves, as we pootled on petrol fumes north up the coast. Alex's mum had cooked us a truly wonderful meal before we left, and, having stuffed ourselves, we weren't worried about needing to eat for another few days.

We were concerned about paying for pricy Spanish campsites. We were heading for Peniscola, in order to consummate the heavenly Coke-can/Male groin photo opportunity, but when we got there, it looked average, and we made a split-second decision to eschew the knob-gag and gun it for Barcelona.

We arrived in Barcelona and found the world's most expensive car park at the bottom of the Ramblas. It was dark (midnight-ish), and all other parking places were full. We got changed in the car and strolled, sophisticated, into Barcelona. We had enough money for drinks in three bars, but found that prices had rocketed since we were there a year and a half ago, and we only just managed two. The barmen had to prize the money from my fingers, and the grinding noise from my teeth echoed loudly.

We spent the rest of the night wandering around, being hassled by hundreds of Indian hawkers, all selling the same cans of beer for a Euro a pop. Just before sunrise, we went to the beach to watch it rise with the other Eurotrash drunks, slept for exactly 15 minutes, and went for breakfast.

We then made another (architectural) pilgrimage to the Sagrada Familia, drank enough caffeinated beverages to stun Amy Winehouse, got back in the car, and drove, exhausted, to France. We swore never to do anything like that again. A week later we did exactly the same thing, but that's a different story...

Heat, Road Movies and Extreme Kindness

Grenada was JUST TOO DAMN HOT. So we drove out of town, took a left and swung through what turns out to be the driest, hottest part of Europe, and where they filmed the Good, The Bad and The Ugly. It was thus hot, dry and had lots of straight roads through scrubland. I imagined we were in our own version of Vanishing Point, the ace 70's amphetamines and desert-speeding movie, and I felt ALL MANLY doing it.

Unfortunately, without the necessary Amphetamine-hard-liquor-and-fiery-death that would have completed my Vanishing Point dream, we pointed the Micra north, towards Yecla, a small town in the south east of Spain, where our amigo Alex Gil lives.

We stayed with his family in a spare apartment above the bar that Alex's dad owns. For the record, let me state that Alex's family are the most lovely people in Yecla, if not all of Spain, and they welcomed us into their home like long-lost relatives. It was wonderful.

Yecla is a hot town in the hills (I think), north of Murcia. When we arrived, frazzled and crispy round the edges, Alex whisked us off to a local spa, where for a few Euros, we lounged like sea lions in warm spring water all day. Alex and I fell asleep in the bubble pool, and Gem cruelly took photos.

Later, Alex took us around Yecla. He knows everyone. Sorry - I meant, Alex knows EVERYONE. A normally quick stroll across a quiet plaza involves people dropping shopping, babies, or anything else they might be holding and rushing over to chat with Mr. Yecla, who greets all and sundry with a cheery "Hey! Que Pasa?" It must be murder for him to get out of his seat in a busy bar to go to the toilet.

Alex's parents fussed around us, making sure we had enough to eat and drink, of which we had plenty, what with living just above their bar. Alex's brother, Victor, was there too; he is a supremely nice guy, and happens to be dating the most beautiful girl in town. And Alex's sister, Maria, is the cutest child of all time, without question. It was all just lovely.

In the end, we tore ourselves away, a day after eating a Paella served in a pan the size of a garden pond. It was excellent, and had a whole, chopped-up rabbit (head and tail included) in it, as well as snails. I hate snails, but Alex and his friend Reuben forced us to try them. So here's the verdict: the sauce the caracoles come in is delicious, but the mucus-like beings themselves are, well, mucus-like.

So we headed north, aiming to stop halfway up the coast, at the town of Peniscola, for obvious reasons. Oh, how wrong we were...