Day 25 May 8th

Cassino

An early start as we wanted to get into Cassino and then drive to Rome, around Rome and then north of Rome including the 'M25' of Rome!

Despite the promises of the locals, it was not a very bright start with lots of low cloud and mist over the hills. It has been a surprise to see how hilly and mountainous the whole region is, as well as the darkness of the sand. We think that the nearness of volcanoes means the sand is a mixture of ash and other volcanic debris.

Arriving in Cassino led to a minor domestic over the route to be followed. Ignoring the proffered advice of 'Don't turn left', nevertheless I did and ended up in a narrow side street. This meant I had to get an aberrant Italian motorist (nb: surely I mean ALL Italian motorists?) to move their/her badly parked car. I pressed the car horn! (note to self: get a bigger car horn!). She duly appeared, looked surprised and moved it into another, awkward position but one I could get passed.

Anyway, said domestic got a touch more tetchy and, faced by honking buses as I stopped across a junction, I had to commence the drive up the hill to the monastery, the subject of the 1943-44 battle sooner than I had hoped. After seven hairpin bends and about three kilometres, we arrived at the top, as the cloud that had obscured the summit when we sat in the town, began to clear. The view is well worth the drive although the monastery, now re-built, is perhaps not that impressive. Nevertheless, we got to see what the problem in 1943-44 had been and that the site clearly commands the whole valley below for a huge distance.

We did not stay long. As we drove slowly downhill, we met the inevitable cyclists toiling up! We also saw an ambitious runner heading to the top.

Once at the bottom we headed for the cemetery. In typical Italian fashion, the parking was occupied but students' from the nearby college so we had a minor problem getting the van off of the road. One achieved we began to wander about to the noise of the local workers having a bit of a row, which was not good.

Unfortunately, the cemetery book, which lists, apparently, all of the graves in the cemetery, failed to list Nich Carew. We tried all forms of combinations and spellings but to no avail. It was very frustrating. However, the day by then was warm and sunny with bright blue skies and the cemetery was in pristine condition. It lies peacefully below the summit as the pictures suggest. It is large, and a search of all the graves would have been possible, I guess, but it would have taken a lot of time with no guarantee of success. As we now know, since I was able to check the CWGC site on the internet later, the book was wrong and incorrect which, as I sit in a campsite north of Rome is very frustrating.

Therefore, we left and drove north to Rome. For only the second time we used an autostrada and, of course, saw rather less of Italy than before. However, we did get to the Rome M25 before the rush hour, which was probably a good thing. It was bad enough at 2 pm!