Vinci, home town of Leonardo

Thursday 19^th June

Leonardo day! We left the campsite earlyish and drove all of 10km down the mountain to the free camping car sosta just outside Vinci. I drove the van and Tina rode the scoot down in front of me. Slowly.

There was about 4 vans already parked up so I chose a slot alongside a French van with shade. I jumped out and was greeted by the French lady who immediately asked if I could move to another space so that they could get their table and chairs out! In my best French I reminded her that this was a sosta / aire and that you cannot expect to have space for tables! I told her that I had parked here to get the shade and was not moving. Bloody foreigners. I did shuffle our van over a bit to maximize the space between us.

free sosta in Vinci

We pitched up and scooted up to Anchiano a tiny hamlet 3km above Vinci where Leonardo di Vinci was born. Great views from amongst the olive groves. We watched a video presenatation which was very informative about how the illegitimate Leonardo was raised and the overall timeline of his life. Very well done.

Leonardo Di Vinci's birthplace

view from Anchiano

Back on scoot and down to Vinci for museo 1 which contained some very accurate scale models of his engineering ideas. He was most definitely ahead of his times when you study the detail in his sketches. Some of the crane designs were incredibly complicated and of course all powered by humans / animals.

model of a crane design

computer images

self propelled cart design - model built in 2004

We had an ice cream then into museo 2 – Leonardo the architect and renaissance technology in general. He very clearly refined and improved many designs including how to cast cannon barrels. The 3D animations were brilliantly done and helped explain his ideas. A very interesting insight into Leonardo the engineer and architect.

view from roof of museum

Vinci - Anchiano in distance

Friday 20^th june

We decided to use the autostradas for our big drive back north to the lakes. The state of the provincial roads are so bad we couldn’t face hours of crashing and banging over potholes galore. A very good decision as the autostradas we used up to Genova and then north to Lago D’Orta proved to be pretty good and quite cheap compared to France. The tunnels around the coast and Genova made us feel like moles by the time we emerged into the Po “rice” plains. I first said to Tina that there were what appeared to be paddy fields either side of the road – surely not? She checked in the guide book and yes we were in the main area for the production of rice in Italy! There were hundreds of paddy fields with weird metal wheeled tractors working in them. Interesting.

We arrived at Lago D’Orta a bit tired but not too shaken. This is a small lake to the west of Maggiore and much quieter. We ended up in camping Punta D’Crabbia . Again we squeezed our van onto what seemed like an impossibly small pitch. The camp owner was very cheerful as we were taken by electric golf cart to inspect the pitch. No walking here! Shady but a bit noisy as we were right above the road.