In which Sid and Doris discover that not everyone agrees about the length of a road.
Today did not start auspiciously from the navigational point of view. Having agreed that we would walk back to the car park to see some more bits of Verona, Doris set off in completely the wrong direction (a very, very unusual error) and we saw rather more of Verona than we had expected, and – after we had realised the mistake – at a somewhat higher speed than planned too.
On the run out of Verona into the surrounding and now rather flatter countryside, we agreed that it was time to CONCENTRATE, put yesterday’s monumental goof-up behind us and get some focus. Today was going to be a busy day, with three tests and three regularities.
The test at Modena autodrome was great fun, although a moment’s confusion with a chicane at Cone B “Go left! No, the other left!” maybe cost us a second or two. Then a stop at the Panini museum, not as you might think some version of Terry Pratchett’s Dwarf Bread Museum but instead a most impressive Maserati collection. We haven’t had too many car museum photos on this journey so far, so it’s time to indulge in a few. The Mivalino was one of my favourites, although several old motorcycles were very covetable too.
Pause for coffee and time to chat to the other drivers about how they drive regularities. Our habit has always been that if you need to dash up the road a bit then you do, just take the racing line and get on with it. It turns out (after only 6 years of doing these) that you need to drive accurately down the edge of the road. Or possibly you can take the racing line but only within the theoretical limits of your side of the carriageway. Opinions vary – and this matters, because you need to have driven exactly the same distance as the organisers in order to get the time right. 10 metres takes about 1 second to drive, and it is easy to gain or lose several metres in a single hairpin if you aren’t driving it correctly. Add that up over maybe 10km of hairpins and you can see how things can go wrong.
We applied the New Technique to today’s 3 regularities and did them all within 1 second of the organisers’ time. Ha! We were also helped by being able to squeeze past various bits of slow traffic, reciting our mantra “There’s always room for a Mini”.
So, onwards through the countryside in a wide loop around Bologna on roads beloved of bikes and cyclists and GOB/GPCCs alike, which made for a somewhat busy few moments on a few corners. On the straights we were able to admire the Bolgnese hobby which seems to be assembling piles of wood. Everything from a layby full of carefully stacked tree trunks, through to firewood stacks which surely must last for more than one winter.
And onwards through wine countryside oo a vineyard restaurant where the organiser allowed us to dash downhill between the vines and wreck our brakes and clutches in the attempt to improve from the 42s of our first run to 41s for the second run. Motorsport is very mysterious sometimes.
And so to a very windy and sandstorm-y Rimini where our Grand Hotel was also the venue for a wedding.
We had been warned that the wedding dinner would be in the dining room next door, but we weren’t prepared for it to be actually one large room separated by some mirrored screens. Then the dancing started and the wedding guests started to wave over the screens and invited us to join in – and suddenly the bride was in our half of the room and everyone was dancing madly. Yes, even the Brits. The bride danced and we danced and it was absolutely madly good fun.
And you know, it wasn’t until afterwards that someone said “But where was the groom?” Still, it turns out that they had been together for 20 years already and this was a wedding they’d organised as a surprise for their friends, so we guessed he knew what he was getting into. That dress, slit up to the waist for easy dancing, might have been a clue.
PS Only a very rude or very observant reader would ask whether the bride actually had any knickers on under that dress.