Time has flown by in Terni & Rome. We’ve had a great time as a family with all our friends and we’re very grateful for their friendship. Today I will drive to Lucca on my own – my family wants to spend less time on the road – rather a long and relaxing lunch at the sea somewhere en-route. Me, however, am looking forward to the trip. Today will be a very hot day and I’ve planned to take TW560 up some hills to get a reprieve from the heat. TW560 was charged slowly at 0.02C to allow the […]
TDI2020 – Terni & Rome
After arriving in Terni, we’re ready for a week of time-off, Italian-style! We live with our friends whilst our kids live distributed across town with their grown-up children or stay with the extended family. Most of our days consist of sitting at long tables and eating fabulous food or visiting other parts of the family – very relaxing. With Covid Lockdown1 over, most of public services are back – with the hot weather we’re loving the fact that we have a swimming pool just around the corner from where we live! We spent a few afternoons here. Our kids, however, […]
TDI2020 – Southwards along the Adriatic Sea
After our two days with our friends, it’s time for us as a family to spend some time at the sea on our own. We’re all looking forward to 3 days in Lido di Dante – it’s a trip down memory lane: as a young family we came here a few times when the kids were all in their single digits and it was just perfect – kid-friendly Italian restaurants – pizza and pasta universally loved by our children, beach fronts with playgrounds and shallow water…and tons of other kids. Our new vacation setup sees us parents getting up and […]
TDI2020 – Two Days On My Own
A new TWIKE adventure! Post-Lockdown1 relaxation of travel restrictions to Italy meant that we – at short notice – arranged to visit various of our Italian friends and stay a few days at the sea, both on the Adriatic and Tyrrheanean side of the Italian peninsula. The first two days will see me driving on my own to Brescia and staying there with friends and their family before my own family joins me on late Sunday. I really need the time-off and two days on my own as I’ve been extremely busy lately. As always, it doesn’t take me long […]
Pre-TDI2020 battery spa
As always, the time until a major trip seems endless until…the trip is just 2 weeks away and the agenda is still full with calls and meetings and weekends are chock-full with other stuff. Equally important is balancing a pack before setting out on 3 weeks of full-cycle discharges during long-distance daily trips. Thanks to the fact that I have multiple battery workstations, balancing the 42 strings takes only about one day in total and – as mentioned previously – this exercise is also a very good indicator for cell ageing and cell health in general. TW560’s pack is nearing […]
TDE2019 – Day 11: Last leg back home
After a gloriously refreshing night of undisturbed sleep thanks to super-fresh air and no noise, I wake super-refreshed even after a boozy night smoking multiple cigars. Seb and I meet downstairs for breakfast with fresh Zopf and home-made jam and honey which we eat enjoying the same incredible view on his balcony. Life could definitely be worse. Enjoying the honey, I was unaware that he had started beekeeping and asked him about his experience and what it took to have a few hives. He offered me to have a look! Very interesting to see the bee colonies and […]
TDE2019 – Day 10: Hello Italy, Hello Switzerland
Given that I slept in a communal space, it was surprising that I woke up refreshed when the rays of the early morning sun filtered into the room. Grabbing my overnight bag I head upstairs to the upper desk passing still-closed bars to get a glimpse of what’s going on around the ferry and find out where we are. Another brilliant and blue-skied day greets me. The last hour of our trip takes us along the northern Italian coast along which TW560 and I drove earlier this year during TDI2019 and before that during TDAF2016. Should I ever have the […]
TDE2019 – Day 9: Barcelona, frustration, ferry
My last day in Spain has come. I have to get to Barcelona early, as I need to get a full charge to be able to get to Seb’s on one charge. Seb is a long-time friend and reader of this blog who lives in lower Valais. There are only a few commercial charging options in Barcelona and I have a selection of charging cards and apps to choose from. Given my experience with commercial charging in a southern European country earlier this year, I’m expecting the worst. At 5 AM I load my stuff into the TWIKE which is […]
TDE2019 – Day 8: Hills, Hills & bye-bye sea
After not having slept well due to excessive noise levels outside of the hotel, I get up early and look out of my room to check if TW560 is still there. Two things to report … Good news: it’s still there. Bad news: something else TW560-related appeared overnight: a huge new oil leak. I really need to tend to this ASAP! After getting into TW560, I see that it must either have rained overnight or the humidity was extremely high – there was a lot of sand on my windscreen. Let’s fix that by driving to the next petrol […]
TDE2019 – Day 7: Are you handicapped, Sir? …& WIND!
We get up at 5 am and pack both car and TWIKE. My family is heading to Sète in southern France as they liked the pictures and description I gave them and wanted to experience the place for themselves. I will drive to Valencia today. Instead of taking the same road back along the coast, I’ve decided to take an inland route via Xixona which will take me across a mountain range and some very hilly stretches of – hopefully – quiet back roads. Without any big fanfare, we set off. The trip back will take me 5 days […]