It seems hard to believe that it was only two days ago that I rode through the Mont Blanc tunnel and found myself in Italy. A dozen or so miles of burrowing through a mountain and I find myself in another country, grappling with another language and another culture, another people with another set of historical identities. The road on the Italian side wanted to take me me to Aosta, so that’s where I went. Taking the autostrada rather than the old road was a mistake though. For most of its length it tunnelled its way with ruthless efficiency through the mountain spurs one after the other, giving only brief glimpses in between, of the daylight and the valley. I began to feel a bit like Gollum, hiding away from all this sunshine. I decided at that moment that I’d had enough of autoroutes. After days and evenings spent among the seemingly quiet and orderly way of life of French provincial towns, with their easygoing politesse, Aosta came as a shock. Aosta was busy, anarchic, scruffy, excitable, and above all, I told myself, Italian. How much of all this was expectation and projection, I‘m not sure. There was no mistaking that this was an Italian town, though, as every tenth person I passed was licking ice cream and every twentieth shop I passed was a gelateria. Even some of the bars were selling multi-coloured ices. The narrow streets echoed to people’s voices and footfalls in the way that ancient Italian cities often do. In half an hour the impression of scruffiness and disorder diminished. The city centre is full of tall plain buildings intersected by tiny alleyways. It is all obviously old but well-kept and painted in Mediterranean colours. These ancient shells, I quickly discovered housed modern boutiques and businesses, and life here is lively and modern. I walked the length of the city centre enjoying the buzz of it all. At its mid-point, the long main street was casually bisected by a double line of Roman archways, linked by towers at either side, and at its far end it opened out into a small square. On one side of the square stood a half-hearted water feature (I later decided it was a drinking fountain with a very leaky washer) and on the other was a 2100 year old triumphal arch set in the middle of a roundabout. Between them, was a small outdoor café – just a wooden kiosk, surrounded by tables and chairs and an adjacent car park. This appeared to be Aosta’s happening place for students, twenty somethings and bikers – or one of them at least. I settled down for a tea and asked a group of bikers if they spoke English or French. For a moment there were blank looks and then, with a great deal of hesitation and stumbling over unfamiliar words, a shaven- headed bloke in Kawasaki leathers offered me friendly directions to a hotel near the station. In England I speak English. In France I can get by in French. Here in Italy I am the tourist, dependent on the goodwill of others. On this trip, this was my first experience of being the Englishman abroad. The air is mountain fresh here in the Aosta valley. Whenever you raise your eyes above the level of the buildings, giant snowy peaks rise up before you. They dominate the town without louring over it or diminishing its sense of energy or good humour. The hotel turned out to be more expensive than I wanted, but it was in the centre of town, and a good base to explore from. I was also very tired and very hot after a long day’s riding in the southern heat, still in my northern clothing. Evening stroll around Aosta-> Pleasant, solitary couples, tea at the bar, thinking about the barriers of language. The artisanal chooclate shop, and the drunk. The next morning I had breakfast in the square. (love their Italians for liking vegetables) and took photographs. Chatted with the woman in the Tourist information office in one of the towers at the double roman wall. She gave me advice on best routes. Now sick of motorways, I took the old road south-east down the Aosta valley to Ivrea and then on up to Arona on the southern shores of lake Maggiore. Here, the mountains captured and constrained everything. The old road and the new, the railway, the river and the overflowing abundance of human life and activity threaded themselves along the line of the valley, a blend of physical geography and human ingenuity. One town followed another in quick succession, one hardly finishing before the next began. The old road was constantly interrupted by small roundabouts (no use in wasting space here), each decorated with an artwork or something that said something about a particular town’s history or activities. The towns, themselves, were small, their buildings tightly packed together, but all light and energetic, unplanned but not chaotic. The chalet-style houses crowding up the hillside glowed in the southern sun, splashing the valley sides with a multitude of colours and forms. Everywhere, too, small industrial units appeared too, equally colourful, equally energetic, and neatly integrated into their communities, not separate and overwhelming like the massive industrial complexes on the outskirts of larger towns. Among the chocolate box houses there were concrete mixers and cranes, piles of timber, commercial units - modern life lived at a different tempo and in a different key. A chalet style cinema passed me by and an elaborately designed garage. And everywhere between the buildings, there were domestic-looking terraced gardens faced with stone . High above the towns and between them, small fields were cultivated on the shoulders of hills or on the tops of great bastions of rock, crops sprayed by gallons of water. And then way up above the fields the mountain sides were covered in a soft pelt of fir, finally to be crowned with jagged brilliantly white peaks. But always, down below, the lazy river, wound its way along the valley floor in its rocky bed. I was in an excellent mood and the Aosta valley danced and sparkled in my eyes. Beyond Ivrea I took the road eastwards. Here the land changed dramatically. Gone were the rocky gorges and pretty towns. The land now opened out to an open plain, as flat as anything in Norfolk and with as little shade. I stopped in one town to consult the map opposite a bar. The locals eyed me thoughtfully. Mad dogs and Englishmen... Wherever there were populations, there were masts stuck on top on tall pylons which opened up at the top into a funnel shape. All were marked with red and white chequerboard squares reminiscent of Tintin’s rocket. Unlike the towns in the Aosta valley which followed one another in an almost unbroken sequenece, here they were isolated one from another by the huge plain. Road signs pointed off in all directions to other towns in other places. At first, the towns were neat, dusty and self-contained. Eventually though, they became older though, scruffier, more traditional-looking peasant communities, with crumbling walls and bad roads. Later still they changed again, dominated by huge commercial and retail parks. I wonder if Staples sells the same kind of paperclips here as it does back home in Stevenage? By the time I got to Arona I was tired, very sweaty, dehydrated and anxious, and my mind was racing like the engine of my bike. My nervous system and its engine were vibrating together and at the same frequency. The last twenty kilometres became just a dizzy blur of incongruous impressions: roundabouts that suddenly appeared without signs to guide me, mazelike towns that seemed to go on for ever, incomprehensible junctions that panicked me, important looking signs that meant nothing or suggested something not very good. I was getting very tired. I was beginning to get tired and hot, and stressed. Following signs for towns or road numbers I recognised was difficult. Getting anxious when they stopped appearing at roundabouts or crossings became easy. When the distance to Arona displayed on the street signs began to increase rather than diminish, frustration set in. In this hot and exposed country, progress was slow enough. Was I being sent on a wild goose chase? Finally, coming down a steep incline into Arona on the shores of lake Maggiore, the bike began to jerk. At first I thought it must be the road surface, but I wasn't convinced. I needed to stop now and this would have to wait for another day. I found a campsite, and bedded in for the night. It is 6.30 am and I’m sitting on the shores of Lake Maggiore in Northern Italy. A church clock from across the water has just struck the half hour. A tuneful polyphony of birdsong is drifting down from the surrounding trees. Sweet to hear – apart, that is, from the cawing of a solitary old crow in the distance. On the opposite shore I can make out the colours and horizontal lines of a small village with a cluster of white boats on the shore line. The wooded hills rise gently behind the village. Further to the south are the white capped peaks of the Alps. Tiny, hypnotic ripples are breaking on the lake shore lake like breathing in and out. There is an occasional plop of a water bird landing on the water. I’m in no hurry to do anything. The campsite behind me where I have spent the night is very quiet. It is still the very beginnings of the season and the noisy energetic families of high summer have not yet arrived. The few people that are here are mostly older couples in camper vans. Mine is the only tent. The tent is new and is very comfortable. It has two awnings and two entrances, one at either end. The zipped entrances to the inner tent are perfectly circular so that when I wake up in the morning I have the impression of living in a hobbit hole. It is also extremely easy and quick to put up, as I found out on my first night of camping in France when I arrived in the dark. As for the rest of the day to follow, who knows. I'm heading round the lake for Como.