I shall draw a veil over this journey. Speranza performed beautifully but we had bad luck with extreme weather, heavy traffic, road works and some kind of massive incident on the A12 in Austria that caused a delay of over an hour. We were stationary for all that time in two disciplined lines at the extreme edges so that emergency services could zoom back and forth up the middle. When we made it to an exit our navigation system took us on country roads to the other side of the obstruction  

My French mechanics definitely didn’t service the air conditioning correctly. When temperatures reached 26C for the last 90 minutes in Italy we were unable to cool the interior and had to drive with the windows down. As I was driving at 140-150 kph to try to make up lost time this rather inhibited conversation!

I enjoyed those 90 minutes though. I like to take Speranza home and for much of our route we were following signs for Modena, her birthplace. 

Having found our home for the night in Cola, Babicka was disappointed we had no view of Lake Garda. As our bags were in the rented apartment, we were able to put the roof down and cruise to a nearby lakeside restaurant to enjoy Mojitos (virgin ones for me as I had to drive home) and watch the sun set over the lake 

Not the best day but life’s still good. Yesterday’s news still had my soul singing. Tomorrow onward to Cannes and to dinner at my favourite restaurant in the whole world in Cap d’Antibes