Our trip home this morning actually began before 8 am. We woke at about 6:45 and took care of everything faster than even we had anticipated. We even had time for a short walk with Ayla before piling in the Defender and heading out on our 1000 km trip home. We weren’t sure if we would make the whole trip in one go since it’s 10 hours drive without stops, but we figured we would see how far we could get and just play things by ear.

Before we left, we had to take a picture of the fire safety box there at our campground. It read at the top “To crash in event of fire.” Some might not find this so amusing, but if you’ve known any Italians which don’t speak perfect English, you know that they would like say it just this way instead of “Break in even of fire” as we would normally see it written.

We decided that switching drivers every 3 hours or so would probably work best. One of the great things about a Defender is you don’t get sick of driving it, you don’t get sore or cramp up in your leg or worse and you can really just enjoy the ride.

As we progressed through Italy and then Switzerland with no traffic or other problems, we started to decide that we’d definitely be able to make the trip in one go. Our own couch and bed were calling out to us and despite the trip lasting about 12 hours overall, we probably could have gone on further if we’d had to…but thank goodness we didn’t. We ran into some construction related traffic as soon as we crossed in Germany but otherwise had a very nice trip. The dog barely made a sound during the journey and actually seemed annoyed to get out during some of the pit stops, wanting to just lay and enjoy the silence more than anything it seemed. Of course since she had been playing watch dog the whole trip and clearly not getting a very deep sleep at night since she was always on guard, it must have been a relief to be in a “secure” area so she could really catch up on her naps.

We are already looking forward to our next trip to Tuscany although we’re not quite sure when that will be. We are also thinking of getting a camper van a bit bigger than Steffen’s or perhaps an RV. We’ll definitely be doing some research when we get home though lol.

Until our next adventure…