Atri is a short drive from the house. It is small-town atop a hill, with the familiar medieval core of narrow cobbled streets, several ancient churches & a duomo, a couple of piazzas lined with a few bars & cafés and a couple of restaurants. A quiet, authentic Italian town.

Our journey there should have given us a clue about what was to follow. Setting the sat nav, the route took us down narrow, sunken lanes over hills & down tracks, past fields of harvested oats, black-trunked olives & grasping vines in this glorious landscape. In places, the road surface was reasonable, but in many spots there were dips & ridges & potholes of differing depths, hazardous at the best of times.

On a previous occasion we took a left too early and having driven for 2km down a rutted track ended up doing a U turn in a field of alfalfa to retrace our drive back up again.

Feeling mellow & replete after a wander, a beer & a splendid fish/spaghetti supper, we returned to the car. We sought to find an easier route home. But our three separate navigation devises failed to really register. So we sort of followed one out of town & waited for one other to follow & confirm our journey. Disappointed, we realised we were on the same road we came in on, but hey……..the next lane we’re told to take may be a bit narrow but it’s heading in the right direction.

Spirits began to sag as the road became a track & the surface deteriorated until the potholes merged together to create a scab encrusted, dry river bed surface up & down these hills & gullies – through a pepper grinder of a surface. This went on for kilometre after kilometre. Having descended gullies & climbed up the far side, headlights bouncing off overhanging vegetation, motor revving, tyres spinning for grip, stones & pebbles cracking the undercarriage, flashing yellow lights fleetingly appear in the far distance & then are gone – an obstruction? Warning of a deep hole?

Up one more Waltzer of a hill climb and suddenly the Angel of Death appears out of the darkness – a blazing Transformer rears above, at least eight headlight eyes on full beam blazing down on the car. This giant tractor ain’t moving. It edges forward, it threatens, it menaces. Its wheels are so high up there, piercing the blackness, chugging its throaty menace at the tiny black beetle that dares to enter its domain. The impersonal driver from up on high, obviously expects me to do the reversing into black darkness of hell.. with no effective reversing light! But this is what has to be done – nudging backwards along the track while my tormentor roars his engine & then, glibbly, with a final roar if rage, he clatters his way through the neighbouring field, leaving my world behind in silent darkness.Thankfully home is five minutes away. The stuff of nightmares!!