Journal · Field guide · 3 min read
A line to Tuscany, and three evenings along it
For forty years the drive to Tuscany began in January, at the kitchen table, with a road atlas and a telephone. He would ring three hotels on the way south, one in Bavaria, one below the Brenner and one somewhere past Verona, and write the confirmation numbers on the inside cover. The atlas is still in my door pocket. The numbers are still on the cover, the oldest in fountain pen.
This October she sat at the same table with her laptop, four days before we were due to leave, and drew a line instead. Home at one end, the hills above Lucca at the other. Vacamp put it on the map as a plain stroke across the Alps, the way a crow would go, which I am not. I understand the roads are left to me, and to the navigation, which he has never entirely trusted.
Along the line came the campsites, every one within fifteen kilometres of it, in the order we would pass them and each with its distance from home. He leaned over her shoulder and read them out like stations on a railway. Kilometre 310, a lake. Kilometre 540, a farm below the pass with a meadow and, she noticed, a long pitch. She is considerate about my length. I have never asked her to be.
She chose three. The lake for one night, the farm for one, and a place on the Garda shore for two, because the grandchildren had sent a photograph of it in August and she had kept it. She gave each stop its nights, and the dates arranged themselves behind them, one evening after another, down to Lucca.
← Not me. A cousin, possibly. Same habit of waiting.
Then she pressed Check all, once, and Vacamp asked each of the three about its own night. The lake had room. The shore had room. The farm below the pass was full.
He reached, I regret to say, for the telephone. Forty years is a long habit, and the hotel in Innsbruck has the same number it always had. She put her hand on his wrist, quite gently, and scrolled. Twenty kilometres further along the line there was another meadow with another long pitch, and it had room. She took it out of the list, put the new one in, and the dates moved up behind it without either of them having to count on their fingers.
That was the whole of the planning. The line chose the direction. The evenings stayed hers to choose, and she chose them four days before we left instead of nine months. If something had changed on the way, a pass closed, a grandchild with a cold, she could have moved a stop from the passenger seat. She did not need to. I mention it because she checked, twice, at a petrol station near Rosenheim.
If you would like to try it
- On the Vacamp map, press the route button beside the search and add the towns you will pass through.
- Widen the band if the line runs through mountains; the campsites tend to sit in the valleys either side.
- Save the trip if you are signed in, or share it as a link. He sent it to our daughter, who replied with a thumbs-up.
On the first evening I stood by the lake while he made the small adjustments he believes are necessary. He walked around me twice and lowered the step. She found the bench. The atlas stayed in the door pocket, which I took, if I may, as a compliment to both of us.
With every good wish,
Oliver
