"Italy Continued"

This is me last week, shopping in a hilltop town in Umbria. But a long time ago, I was 19 years old and I went to Italy on my first trip abroad.

I'd had holidays in Cornwall, Wales, the Lakes, holidays throughout the UK. But all those years ago, This Trip Was Something Else.

I was a student in Liverpool, my school friend S was a Geographer at Durham; her feller and his two best mates were dentists at Newcastle.

That winter, huddled in a pub up in the NE ( no doubt supping Newcastle Brown) the five of them, plus a few others, planned the Ultimate Grand Tour Of Europe....and I was cordially included.

This, you understand, was all A Good Few Years Ago.....when a Gap Year probably meant putting up with an ugly space between your teeth till the dentist could fix it....not hiking through India in Tiva sandals and a sari or swimming off Bondi Beach or sailing across the Gulf of Thailand to a Full Moon party with the youth of Australia in tow..

But this WAS, in its day, pretty exciting stuff.

We filled a mini bus with food, sleeping bags, tent gear and off we went.

Brussels, I think, was our first stop, then Strasbourg where we camped by the river and sang all night.

Even the place names were magic; there was Milan, Viareggio, Lake Como and Naples, there was Rome, Brussels, Brindisi, Bologna...

And there was us, new to travel, new to Europe, new to days of travelling in our jolly, friendly van....

Us, new to nights on sultry campsites (by beaches, in pine woods, on hilltops ) where people spoke many languages and some looked like Dylan and some like Baez and they smiled as they strummed guitars and all the while, the Beatles, the Stones, Velvet Underground sang out.... as we cooked and laughed and smoked and talked and drank.

And some of us were new to each other and probably new to ourselves.