Dirty laundry and Monaco
What has a pile of dirty laundry and the glamorous resort of Monaco got in common? Well, let me tell you. In our previous life along the ancient trade route of the Occitano, living in rural Italy with no electricity, we went one day to do the laundry. We drove down the hill from Costabella to the laundromat in our local town. About 5 metres from the laundrette/laundromat depending on your geolinguistics, is a road sign pointing the way to the beautiful Ligurian beach resort of Finale Ligure.
I had seen this sign many times and always been intrigued by how a tiny sign in a tiny town so far away could point the way to such beauty, especially if you were just doing your laundry. How could you resist such a big temptation, esp if you were just washing your smalls?
So, bored with domestic chores, and with 4 young children in the car, I swung a hard left and avoided the laundrette altogether to follow the signs to Finale.
Truth be told, I already knew Finale Ligure, a beautiful little town on the Italian riviera, we had been several times before but always followed the A6 from Torino to Savona, which if you use your imagination, emulates the ancient trade route from the Occitane to the Riviera that we lived on. That road takes you right down from Torino to Savonna on the Ligurian coast and you can then split left to blousy, slutty in a good way Genoa or right to the totally under-rated yet sophisticated resorts of Noli and Varigotti and the rest of the Italian Riviera. If you keep going that way, you hit Cannes, Antibes and the rest of the French riviera, where we were to live a few years later.
This time, though, was different. We followed all the small roads, at first disappointing as they led us through the flat lands around the River Po, the plateau between the mountains and the sea, actually home to the best risotto rice in the world.
It wasn’t all boring though, the road is not always conected to the satnav, so can lead you to angry nonnas as you try and turn around in their courtyard within a hamlet you never meant to go down, or it can lead you for the same reason to other hamlets, other courtyards, where you might have to exit your car and chat to the lovely lady that gives you a bag of tomatoes for your journey. You never know.
This tiny road took us ever ever higher, through Limone Piedmonte and up and, it seemed, across the ridge of the Maritime Alps. These were not even roads, they were dirt tracks through vineyards, across scrubland populated only by olive trees, scrubby vines, wild thyme. There were more goats than people or buildings. The motorway would have taken us to Monaco in 2 hours 11 minutes, yet here we were high, high up where the road as it was just kept on twisting and turning. We are in a place where only joy and blue sky exist, a state of life where roads don’t matter and europop blasts out of the 20 year old citreon radio as the kids hung hip height out of the rolled down windows.
We saw a sign, improbably, for Monaco. An improbable sign in an improbable place. In my experience though, in rural Italy/France/Switzerland, the more improbable the sign, the more possible the route. Many signs in small places indicate a previous, old route, that still exists in some way.
Monaco kids? Yes! they said, as all children, they were up for anything. they were in a car, for them a chariot, on a journey. For my kids in those days, a long car journey meant at the very least, an adventure, sometimes it meant a chance to connect with family and friends and sometimes a way back to our beloved Costabella. We always drove because we have always had dogs.
I wish I could tell you the route, all I can give you is an approximation. Like all the best adventures, we set out to do something ordinary and by the turn of a wheel it became something extraordinary . We went in those days by balls, a feelings, guts and were well rewarded. Hope I can keep it up.
