What a find the house we stayed at in Longeville. Mary and Greig made us feel so welcome, it was just like staying with old friends. There were amazing views to be enjoyed from the house and garden across the Ardennes - it was a really lovely spot.

After having a lovely meal at a Lakeside restaurant on Saturday evening, a truly fitting farewell to France, we took our leave about 10am and headed through the Alps (and I do mean through as there were countless tunnels). The longest one that took us to the Italian border was the Frejus Tunnel - we think about 22Kms long! The sun shone all the way I am pleased to say.

we stopped for a picnic lunch en route, enjoying views of snow-capped mountains. However, all did not go well when we reached the coast. We arrived in Savona around 4pm and planned to drive along the coastal road till we found some accommodation. We had hardly gone half a mile when we came to a grinding halt. Not overly suspicious at first as the traffic was heavy but when we had only completed half a mile an hour later we knew we were in trouble. Seemingly there had been a very serious accident somewhere in the area and the whole of the coast was grid-locked! We ended up being stuck in that jam for nearly 3 hours before we found a way out. On the lighter side, as we were crawling along past the docks we saw this huge cruise liner loading. It was the largest boat I had ever seen and its name "Costa Fortuna". No I havn't made it up.

We did find a really nice hotel at the end of all this that turned out to be part of a group call Logis d'Italia, so we are now on the look out for more of them. We met another English couple staying at the hotel, Chris and Susan from South Wales. They were both disabled, Susan in a wheelchair, but were about to go on board HMS Nelson for a week's sailing as part of the crew. They had travelled to Genoa by train and were quite an intrepid pair as nothing seemed to daunt them.

The next day, Monday was much more enjoyable. We meandered along the coastal road around the Porto Fino area. It is such a beautiful coastline and again the sun shone. After lunch we hit the autostrade and travelled down past Pisa to a little coastal resort called Orbotello. Found another Logis d'Italia and had a pleasant evening there.