Pompeii – Troia – Pineto

Pompeii to Troia then Pineto - 280 miles

We've had enough sightseeing for now so it's time to start for home, albeit taking a few days chillin' whilst we've got excellent weather. Today we're heading sort of east towards the Adriatic coast, to a small town with a free sosta that had been recommended by a Funster.

First off a visit to the nearby Auchan to restock the fridge then onto the autostrada heading for Salerno. Which went a bit wrong when we tried to avoid a traffic holdup and ended up heading for Sorrento. Now this would have been okay if we were going to the Amalfi Coast but that was definitely not part of our plans so we got TomTom to sort us out. Ah well it was an interesting half an hour!

Troia

A couple of hours run on a decent autostrada, pausing for lunch at a service area, saw us heading towards Foggia in Puglia province, a more rolling than mountainous area. We turned off onto less well used roads (in other words a little indifferent, some good some awful) to go cross-country to Troia where we found the sosta with no problem. Unusually this offered free electricity along with the normal services, however apart from the electric it was all locked up! Not a problem though as we had fully serviced the van before departure. We later discovered the services were only open between 6.00 and 9.00 am!

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Troia is a small walled hilltop town, even though it called itself a “citta”, our Rough Guide giving it half a page, most of which was about one church. It apparently, however, has seven patriot saints although when we explored later we only found five churches. The guide book also mentioned that the locals seemed somewhat indifferent about the origin of their town's name; apparently it means slut! But it was a pleasant enough place and we spent a quiet night. Well until a pair of Austrians on the sosta decided to provide some entertainment. Derek of course had to have a go too!

Alpenhorns in Southern Italy!

View from the sosta

But it was really only a one-night stopover and we wanted somewhere to properly chill for a few days so Saturday we headed to the coast, by-passing Foggia and joining the “Adriatic”, the main road following the coast northwards. We had picked out an area north of Pescara where there were four seaside ACSI campsites so headed out, only to find the access road blocked by a badly parked car, however we found a back way which took us round the town one-way system. But then we missed a turn for the autostrada (again!) so a bit more backtracking – Terry blames TomTom who only warned us of the turn with 35 metres to go but at least put us back on track.

Roundabout art

A short run along the motorway but needing fuel we turned off seeking better prices and found a nice little town with reasonably priced diesel, LPG and a Lidl for our lunchtime baguette. Thinking the non-motorway road may be nicer we stuck to it for a while until Termoli where we stopped for lunch in a huge empty carpark – think it was for the cemetery. We were going to continue off-toll but realised that due to an increasing number of small towns and villages it was going to take considerably longer so reluctantly got back on the autostrada. A good move really as we saved an hour of time for a cost of €7 which was probably less than the cost of fuel.

We had chosen Pineto Holiday Village at, erm, Pineto and after negotiating a few back streets and a railway tunnel we found a very nice looking place right on the beach. However the pitches they offered were not really acceptable, the first right next to the busy railway line, as were the second. The third was inaccessible to us so we said not to worry, we'd move on. There then followed a brief conflab in the office after which the receptionist showed us to a perfect pair of shady pitches right next to the beach and close to the amenities. They did mumble something about a small extra charge but did accept the ACSI cards so we'll see. There was still railway noise but it wasn't as obtrusive – this'll do us for a few days!