Home thoughts from abroad

Today we visited Punta Ristola, the most southerly point in Puglia.

We've still got a long way to go, a lot of time and a lot of miles, but from now on it's all more or less north.  We need to be back in the UK by the end of May, and we think it might be a bit of a shock.

As an exercise in optimism, we've set ourselves the task of listing ten things we miss about Britain.  It's odd that a lot of them turn out to be things that we grumble about in Britain, but during our travels we've found that compared to other places Britain isn't really that bad.

1. Friends and family.  We often used to neglect them when we were living in the UK, but it was good to know they were there.  We must remember to spend more time with friends in the future, if they still remember us when we get back.
2. Being able to speak to people using the past and future tenses, and understanding roughly how things work, or roughly how to find out how things work.  In Italy for example we don't even know how many police forces they have (we've seen Carabineri, Polizia Municipale, Polizia  Locale, Polizia Nazionale, Guardia di Finanzia, Polizia Penitenciaria, Polizia Forestale...), let alone which one we'd go to for help with a particular problem.
3. Road infrastucture.  Before we left Cardiff we used to grumble about the roadsigns in the Vale of Glamorgan, but places like Spain and Italy make even Vale of Glam look good.  Sometimes its caused by a lack of resources, but often doing it the UK way wouldn't have cost any more, it's just mystifying.  They must be working to other rules we don't understand.    Just three examples;
• two signs at a junction saying the same thing, pointing the same way.  That extra moment it takes to read them both, double take and re-read to check they really are identical, means missing the junction
• Numerous signs saying things like 'Motorhome parking this way' that lead you off into the Genoa one way system and then run out.  "Ha ha! Over to you now sucker!"
• Arrows painted on the lanes of dual carriageways that seem to mean nothing or to mean 'If you're in this lane, you might want to continue straight ahead or you might want to change lanes, it's up to you'.  One favourite, seen several times in Spain but never photographed (for obvious reasons), had the left hand lane marked as being for going straight on or turning right, and the right hand lane marked as being for going straight on or turning left.
4. Access to the countryside.  A source of much grumbling and campaigning in Britain, but compared to Italy the UK system of rights of way is brilliant.  At least in the UK you can spot a roadside footpath or bridleway sign and be pretty sure it's a place you can stroll with your dog for half an hour.  The bits of Italy we've visited have been nothing like as well supplied with country parks and marked walking paths.  In Italy (and parts of Spain and France) it's common for stretches of beach to be private.  That's not something we expect in the UK.  Bless the Crown Estate (which owns almost all the beaches and leaves them open to strollers).
5. Food.  Britain has a deservedly terrible reputation for food, but there are a few genuinely distinctive indigenous traditions we can be proud of and miss.  Specifically; pies (Spain has its empanadas, Italy its Calzone, but it's not the same as a hot meat pie, or even fruit pie), sausages (maybe we're missing our own sausage machine as much as anything), good mature cheddar, sweet pickles, rice pudding, salty Welsh butter and the variety of food from all over the world (particularly Asia) that you can get in Britain
6. Hikers' pubs.  Hard to find even in much of Britain, but the sort of place in the Peak District or Devon that serves bitter and pies (see above) to a crowd of walkers steaming infront of an open fire, firelight shining in those three bottles of single malt behind the bar that no-one ever seems to drink.
7. The BBC.  Before we left the UK the most value we got from our license fee was from their web site and 6 Music, but the output overall contains some really high quality material and it's all at least competently produced.  Italian telly makes you realise how high standards are in Britain.  In one place we had over 50 digital TV channels, but the only ones that weren't encrypted for subscriber-only access were poorly dubbed American B-movies, gameshows and poorly produced news programmes.  They often get their foreign news from American cable channels, broadcast unaltered with an Italian voice over.  Their news announcers struggle to read their autocue while gazing at the wrong camera.
8. Pavements.  In most of the places we've visited pedestrians, scooters, prams, street vendors, cars and trucks all have to share the road.  When there is a pavement, nobody knows what it's for, so scooters scoot on it, cars park on it and pedestrians amble about in the traffic.
9. The familiar people we've come to rely on and trust to help us out in a crisis; St Davids Veterinary Centre, our dentists, Rumney Hill Surgery, the physiotherapists at the DTR Clinic. Fortunately we haven't had any significant emergencies, but it just compounds the stress when you're having to look for help from strangers.
10. Scooby says he misses squirrels, cats that follow the rules and run away, and mud.