And so, to Bologna

Following our lovely day at Vinci, we needed a campsite.  We found one just a few kilometres away, in a small village north of Vinci called Lamporecchio.  Again, it was up, and up, and up, into the hills.  And once at the campsite, it was then up, and up, and up to pitch No 62, with commanding views over the countryside.

Lovely views

Lovely people there.  Very helpful.
We woke up in the morning and found the the 12 volt plug for our cooler box had stopped working.  But not to worry, as Timmy carries a spare one after having the same issue some time ago.  But,...  the spare one had died the death too.
A short bit of substitution and a test with my multimeter, and the diagnosis was a faulty plug end at the cooler box.  There was nothing for it but to see if we could find a replacement.
The campsite office gave us the name of a place in the nearest town, and so we put the address into Google maps, and headed off there.  It was on a small trading estate and we couldn't for the life of us see which unit it was.  The adjacent garage helped us, once we had shown him the name of the firm concerned.  We knocked on the door, and small Italian came.   We gesticulated to him what was needed.  He had a look inside our van, at the broken lead, at the cooler box, at me, at Ruth, and at his dog (who was faithfully at his side).
He wanted to chop up my 12v lead, and patch it to a mains lead, to make a hash up.  Well, now.  I could have done that, easily enough.  So I told him that I was an electrician.  He understood and beamed at me, and backed off.  I said it was "no problemio" in my best Italian, and we left.
We pulled in to a McDonalds and in the car park, I got my tools out, some insulating material, and made up a temporary lead.  It will do until I get home and find a new lead on Ebay, or Amazon.

Making a temporary repair to a 12v lead

The journey from there was simply stunning and we weaved our way through some wonderful hairpin bends, where the road drops off away from you!  I deliberately took a route that was off the main roads.  I wanted scenic, country routes.
Boy, did we find some!
Some of the hairpins had roadworks on them, and the only thing to guide you was a series of minuscule traffic cone things that looked like they were from a Lego or Playmobil set.

miniscule traffic cones

But we needed a campsite.  The only one we could see was called Panoramo Camping, or something. We called but there was only an answer machine.
As there were no other sites nearby, we felt that there was no option but to head off to find this site.
It was a bit off route, but seemed worth the extra travel.
The route took us again, up and up and up, until we were on a stoney, gravel track.  When we got there, there was an iron gate across the road and it was obviously NOT a campsite.

a gate barred our way!

We sat there to ponder our options.
Just then a car pulled up, a lady got out and opened up the gate, and drove through.  When she came back to shut the gate, I asked her "Campeggio?"  "Camping platz?"
She launched into Italian, and I was pretty sure that she was saying that it was her home and that there was no camping there.  A bony finger pointed down the valley, at some distant point, as she began to talk louder and louder Italian at me!
We got the message and left.

A bit later on we discovered a campsite in Bologna, (famous for people thinking of spaghetti bolognaise).  A quick call, and we were booked in.  The drive was a bit further than we wished.  But we were really glad to find a campsite for the night.