Day 1 - Travelling

Our fourth wedding anniversary ended with a test of endurance. With a minibus arriving to collect the intrepid travelers at an ungodly 2.30 in the morning, Zoë and I decided it would be folly to try and get some perfunctory winks only to wake up groggy and bewildered and forget something crucial like passports. So we stayed up until the cab arrived bang on schedule, with only the company of a gargantuan spider to keep us on our toes.

In the dead of night the ten of us crawled into the minibus like a gang of incredibly polite robbers on a midnight heist, and only an hour or so later we were at Heathrow. Night driving is fantastic, the roads are quiet, the company is focused simply on staying awake and you are virtually guaranteed to arrive at your destination on time - I would recommend it to anyone.

This stress-free journey was welcome as we faced the bizarre choreography of countless cues to check in ourselves, our luggage, and our belief in the glory of being alive while waiting eventually to board our 6.40 Alitalia flight to Roma Fiumicino airport.

Now, I am a nervous flyer. Not in the hysterical sense that selfishly disturbs other nervous flyers, rather in the sense that my body and brain are engaged in a debate about whether being airborne in a piece of metal powered by a highly flammable liquid is wise or even possible. Thus I quietly (and very Britishly) quake and take deep breaths as we begin our assent.

This fear, like so many phobias, is completely irrational, yet at the same time follows its own skewed logic that seems personally reasonable to me. Two examples would be:

· The bigger the aircraft the safer I feel, which surely goes against my skepticism about the physics of air travel

· I feel tremendous excitement and even enjoyment at technically the most truly dangerous stages of flight: take-off and landing. The raw power of the thrusters is tangible, and almost makes me believe that this tin can actually has the muscle to achieve its miraculous aim.

That said, this flight was extremely smooth, and even enjoyable once brain and body had capitulated under the weight of evidence that we were airborne.

More fun and games were waiting for us at the car hire lot and on the car journey itself. Even before we had left the car park we were treated to our first glimpses of the Italian driving mentality, which is characterised by little patience and a great deal of "expressive" driving. Our cars themselves are very nice, modern and roomy, but we found that you need an engineering degree to:

· Rearrange the rear seats to accommodate luggage

· Find reverse gear

· Find the seatbelt for the central seat in the car.

Pete W was the first brave volunteer to drive our contingent from the airport to our villa. We had a map, we had fairly specific directions and we had five intelligent people to help us reach a destination a mere 25 km away.

That it took us about until 5pm (about 5 hours after leaving the airport) to arrive at the villa is down to a variety of factors. Pete was finding the car stubbornly unresponsive, while at the same time having to contend with the disorientation of driving on the wrong side of the road and the Italian drivers, whose view seems to be that the Highway Code is merely a set of helpful guidelines. We also found out that the directions were nowhere near as clear as we thought and we ended up going through the same toll booth several times, going off the map at one point and discovering the truth that all roads really do lead to Rome, which isn't helpful when looking for signposts to other places. We also received the alarming news from the other car that they had arrived at the villa to find no-one there to greet them. Liam and I were secretly harbouring the same concern - that we had come all the way out here and were about to be stitched up by an unscrupulous travel agent.

This delay motivated us to use the time productively. It was mid afternoon, few of us had slept, the drivers were knackered and no-one had eaten anything substantial for probably 10 waking hours. We drove uphill for 10 minutes into the nearby town of Palombara Sabina and found a simple eatery willing to serve 10 foreigners at no notice. We were treated to an equally simple but extremely edible two course meal with wine and water for less than €10 each, by which point Zoë was nearly comatose and Liam was also feeling none too clever, having been suffering from a cold with a temperature for the last few days.

With still some time to kill, we decided to shop for provisions, paid for out of the newly created kitty. Not far from the restaurant was a supermarket of sorts. This was perfectly able to sell us most of the necessities that we listed, which Jacquie, Ingrid, Sally and Liam searched for while David proceeded to fill a second trolley full of wine (and I write this without exaggerating. With the average bottle being around €3.50 (£2.30), this was not a huge expense and certainly a necessity. At the time of writing we have been at Le Gughe about 24 hours and have got through about half of the stock!).

Finally, with people's laps laden with boxes of groceries as our luggage was still in the cars, we found our way back to Le Gughe, relieved to be greeted and let in.