Tuesday Feb 24th : Observations

The site has a surprisingly large Italian community. They are hearty campers and hail each other from great distances- “Hey, Alberto, buonjourno!” etc. A gathering of 6 or more Italians is also guaranteed, sooner or later, to burst into song (sooner, if fuelled by quantities of alcohol), let by a self-appointed Pavarotti, who will lead the assembly in murdering a selection of popular operatic arias.

Saturday saw the obligatory local dancing, laid on by the site. There were several different troupes. The photo shows men in white who danced with trembling shoulders to the accompaniment of drums and small flutes. Of course, it all looked strange and exotic as intended, but probably less bizarre than morris dancing appears to foreign visitors to the UK.

Small “put-put” motorbikes are used by locals of all ages, carrying up to 4 people, but rarely wearing crash helmets. The guy we were keeping pace with in the photo had his dangling from the handlebars, observed a police check down the road, so quickly put it on. After riding past the policemen, he whipped the helmet off and restored it to its’ rightful place on the handlebars.