In fair Verona, where we lay our scene

In which Doris makes a beginner’s error on a beginners’ rally.

You may want to skip lightly over the next bit, which I am going to type quickly and then scroll away from.

This rally is deliberately designed to be easy from a navigator’s point of view.  The timing and the routes for the regularities are all given to you, the road book is clear and doesn’t require any map reading and the controls are manned by friendly marshals who will come and get you if you have forgotten to check in after lunch on time.

Oh God this is so embarrassing.

So today we had the ONLY regularity with two timing points.  That is, you do some distance and there is the Bloke Behind the Bush With the Watch saying ha ha you are only one second early well done.  And then YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO CARRY ON WITH THE REGULARITY UNTIL YOU REACH THE SECOND BLOKE.  Not toss the timecards lightly into the rally briefcase and start to work out how far it is to lunch.  Ho hum.  We were 45 seconds late at the second control.

And the really really really irritating thing is that apparently the Mini was top car on the regularities up till that point (we lose time on the tests which is why we are mid-field overall).  Which I didn’t know until after I’d goofed up.

Hero to zero in one instant.

Time to cheer ourselves up with the scenery and look at the very pretty grey-white airbrushed effect Italian cows.  Sorry I didn’t get any pictures but here is one I have cheekily pinched from someone else’s web site.

And here is a nice picture which I did actually take myself of the rally mechanics at work on one of the older cars.  The mechanics are amazing, they will fabricate bits that they don’t have on their vans and really work magic to keep those cars going.

Down, down down out of the Dolomites and the Cities of the Plain open up below us in a most scenic but hard-to-photograph way.  Quoting erratically from the very few lines of Romeo and Juliet that we can still remember, we make our way into Verona where the cars are parked about 15 minutes walk from the hotel.

Time to cheer ourselves up with Aperol Spritz, yum yum.

Verona is very nice, it calls itself “the painted city” and really deserves a longer visit.

I wonder if I should get the Italian tourist bureau to sponsor this blog?

Scenic pictures of Verona and our hotel dining room to finish off today’s entry.

Oh, and finally I took some pictures for Betka who has a most beautiful kitchen, but I think after seeing these she will realise that she really really needs a proper Italian “Berkel” meat slicer to add the finishing touch.  Or a beautiful classic set of scales.  Or both.  You might need to click on the pictures to open them up in the lightbox to see the detail.

PS These pictures were brought to you by your new sponsor, Berkel Meat Slicers and Classic Kitchen Machinery.