When I told people we were going to Italy next I got a lot of sucking of teeth and warnings about Italian drivers. Whenever we move to a new country I get nervous, about all sorts of things but the roads being a big one, so with all these warnings ringing in my ears it was with trepidation that we crossed the border.

So here is a little bit of a write up of how I have found Italian roads and drivers, so far. We are only just getting to the poorer south so there may be more on this topic later.

Motorways: These are interesting roads. Think A1 from 30 years ago rather than current M25. First thing after crossing the border was a toll booth. With France, Spain and Portugal under our belts we have done loads of tolls. So we pulled up at the booth, through the very narrow entrance and looked at the machine to the side of us. All you had was a big red button; the words don’t press the red button jumped to mind. In the end we did and the ticket was dispensed. Later toll booths had instructions next to the red button, sometimes in English but not the ones on the border. Toll ticket now in hand (shoved on dashboard) you go around in circles, criss crossing lanes until you are hopefully on the slipway to motorway you want in the correct direction. This is the time not to blink because if you do you will miss the slip road, average length being about 2 Bertie lengths and then your on the motorway with traffic doing 130K(80mph). The first few motorways we did had narrow lanes, if you can fit 2 English motorway lanes in then it’s 3 lanes. The lorry in front of us had one wheel on the white line and the other wheel 6 inches from the concrete crash barrier. Overtaking in the middle lane in wind took so much concentration as you could not risk to move from your line at all. Lorries wing mirrors are the same height as Berties and although us and lorries can only go at 100kph you really don’t want to touch. I have to confess that the motorways in Tuscany are much better than those first few we did in term of width and road surface. They even have hard shoulders. So let’s talk about road surface. Now bearing in mind that I’m still on toll motorways you’d think that the surface would be good. They are for Italian roads. Our sat nav is held in place by a strong magnet, we’ve broken one holder in the past taking the tom tom from the stand the magnet is so strong, on Italian roads it often is bounced off the magnet, flying through the air to land in some useless out of reach position on the dash. Pot holes are sometimes, not often, filled with lumps of tarmac, roads have subsidence, joins between lanes are gaps, you can certainly forget any conversation as the contents of Bertie are bounced along in an alarming fashion. Mind you it’s good when you have put some cleaning fluids in the water tanks. Brits you really do not know what bad roads are, Willingham road is a dream.

So you are bouncing along, holding your line with 6 inches spare and then obstacles start. I’ve already mentioned the short slip roads, lets throw in a few others. Lay-bys with no slip roads, yes on a motorway, bends, 100 metre warnings for lane closures, no speed limits through roadworks or contraflow. And these are the good roads that run through Italy. And the final thing on motorways, the road signs are green. Major roads being blue.
The more minor roads are just a worse version of the above, and also include hairpin bends and single tracks. Most of the roads we have done have had some tarmac on them, or have had at some point.

Drivers: Italian drivers are renowned for being foot heavy brake to accelerator, up your bumper drivers. Actually I would say not more so than Brits. You get some stupid Brits who think that their reactions are impeccable. Italians are also known as rule breakers, an Italian friend said rules are only made to be broken. So the turning lane in the middle of road is certainly fair game for getting past a GB motorhome doing the speed limit. Solid white lines on a blind corner mean that it is safe to overtake, but once you have learnt these new readings of the road markings you’re fine, you just keep your line and let the bastards deal with the oncoming vehicle that does come around the blind bend. To be honest at this point of time I’m not finding it an issue. I normally see what they are doing and prepare to take evasive action, which as yet has not really been needed.