Like everyone, our travel plans over the last few years were disrupted by the pandemic.

We had planned to go to South Africa in March 2020.

For obvious reasons that didn’t happen, and while we got most of the money we’d paid out back, that left us with a flight credit with Qantas – it had to be a flight credit as I’d paid for the original tickets with a mixture of points and cash.

If you’ve been following the news in Australia at all in the last year, you’ll be aware that Qantas have kept on changing the redemption rules on flight credits making the redemption process a bit like a bizarre poker game, do we twist or fold?

Well, earlier this year, we decided to fold.

We had family reasons to go to the UK, so we cashed in our flight credit and tried not to grimace at the excess we had to tin up for two economy return tickets to the UK.

So, in late September, off we went.

Rather than fly directly, we deliberately had a night in a hotel in Singapore, as the flight to Britain from Singapore as a 14 hour overnight marathon, in the hope that we would not be complete zombies on arrival.

Staying in Singapore in a hotel next to La Pau Sat was one of our better ideas as we could eat in the food court, collapse into bed, and then have a swim the next morning.

We wanted to go to Manchester to see J’s family, including Ben and Jen who visited with us earlier this year, so we asked Qantas to book us on a morning flight to Manchester.

Qantas, with great optimism, and believing that their flight from Singapore would arrive on time, put us on an 0830 flight to Manchester.

Qantas were of course almost an hour late into London, meaning a frantic dash from terminal 3 to terminal 5, through security, back through security for the domestic flight to Manchester, something not helped by some of the most snarky, obstructive and downright rude security staff in terminal 5 we have encountered anywhere, but we made it just as the gate was about to close.

We then sat on the tarmac for forty minutes as the plane missed its take off slot as BA decided to wait for other Qantas customers who were still stuck in security.

However, we made it, and tired and frazzled, checked in to a hotel at the airport – we’d emailed them in advance asking for an early check in – and collapsed into bed for a few hours.

Dinner, in a Turkish fusion restaurant attached to the hotel, and a decent night’s sleep we were more or less dezombiefied and ready to face the world.

So after we picked up our rental car, we headed first for the Trafford Centre to buy some supplies, and then to our AirBnB in Hebden bridge.

We picked Hebden Bridge as a place to stay as

• we like Hebden Bridge
• it’s a few kilometres from where Judi’s cousin, Alison, lives
• it has a pretty decent Co-op supermarket
• it has a train station

While we had a rental car we’d a backup plan to get the train into Manchester to go to the Manchester museum, and perhaps to the Amelia Edwards Egyptological collection in Bolton.

Alison’s husband had been quite ill, and when we booked the trip we weren’t sure how his health would be and whether or not we would have to ration our time with them to let him have a time out or two.

As it was, all was well, and we had dinner with them a couple of times, as well as a couple of canal side walks, plus lunch with Ben and Jen.

Egyptology will have to wait until another trip.

Our original plan had been to return the car, get the train to London, have a couple of days in London, and then go onto the South of France where we’d rented an apartment in Uzes for a week.

Didn’t happen, or at least not like we’d planned.

One of J’s other cousins had emailed her to say that an auntie that J had stayed with twenty five years ago when she came to London was going to turn ninety, and was there any chance we could make her birthday party.

Well, her birthday as a couple of weeks before our flight, but we decided we must pay a visit, however belated.

So we scrapped our train trips, kept the rental car for longer – insanely it worked out cheaper than taking the train to Hampshire – and decided to fly from Gatwick to Marseilles.

So, after checking out of Hebden Bridge we drove down to Lyme Regis in Dorset, where we had a day to ourselves to walk on the beach, and the plan was to drive from Lyme toHampshire for more family stuff before dropping the rental car back to Gatwick and a flight at stupid o’clock the next morning to Marseilles.

Along the way we stopped off in Southampton to buy a cake, flowers and some other things like that. To keep things simple we had lunch in John Lewis which has a Waitrose in the basement, and were amused and a little embarrassed by an elderly woman with a voice redolent of a vanished empire asking a hapless Turkish waiter for ‘Froot cake’.

He clearly didn’t know what ‘froot cake’ was and gestured helplessly at the rather nice cake selection. And no, there was no froot cake or even fruit cake. Tastes change.

After the family stuff, including a traditional and enjoyable pub lunch, it was off again that afternoon across the south of England to Gatwick to drop off the rental car, followed by a night in a hotel at the airport and an EasyJet checkin at a truly ungodly hour in the morning.

From Marseilles we picked up another rental car, and drove to Uzes, something that involved driving round the one way system in Avignon twice, where we had an apartment in a medieval building and within easy walking distance of the main square.

Uzes is a compact medieval city, and supremely walkable. Parking is a nightmare but our apartment had come with parking – admittedly about a kilometre from the apartment – medieval  apartment buildings on the whole don’t have parking garages, and a lot of the town is semi pedestrianised, with entry to the medieval core guarded by fearsome automatic bollards during the day.

A typical tawny limestone Provencal town that had been there since the Romans, it was built around the castle and a large central square cum market place. The walls have gone, to be replaced by a one way loop round the city centre, and the railway station has also disappeared, though nowadays there is a bus to Avignon and the high speed TGV line.

Other than a medieval garden there’s nothing remarkable about Uzes. People work, live and love in the town, while there are tourists it is not, at least in autumn, overwhelmingly touristed. It is simply a working town with a lot of medieval buildings, and none the worse for that

Basically we just relaxed and walked around and enjoyed the town. We did, however have some days out, including a trip to the Pont du Gard, somewhere I’d always wanted to visit since I was a geeky Roman obsessed ten year old.

It more than met expectations, and by chance we hit the dead part of the day after the morning school groups had left and before the buses full of elderly polyester trousered Americans arrived, meaning we had the site, if not exactly to ourselves, near enough so.

After Uzes, we dropped the rental car back to Marseilles airport.

Dropping the car back took far longer than it should as the rental company was having IT problems – more exactly they were unable to print any of the documentation required, so rather than get the bus to the main train station in Marseilles, we ended up with a taxi that got us there in thirty minutes.

From there, it was on to a TGV to Nice.

J had wanted a day or two in Nice to go the the Chagall and Matisse museums. Unfortunately the Matisse museum was closed for refurbishment, so we made do with Chagall, which, though up a steep hill was in walking distance of the hotel

After the museum, plus lunch at the cafe, we walked down the hill to the Promenade de Anglais for a stroll by the sea and an ice cream.

This was about a week into the Israel/Hamas conflict and there was a heavy police presence in Nice with riot vans and patrol cars parked up in strategic location.

Nice was also showing its gritty side with homeless people sleeping under the railway viaduct, plus the usual array of derros and clochards, including one man who was quite obviously wearing nothing but a rather grimy shirt.

However, it didn’t feel unsafe with plenty of ‘normal’ people about, plus the obvious police presence.

Then, it was on to Bologna, where we planned a side trip to Ravenna to pay our respects to Gallia Placida, and pick up a rental car drive to a hill village in Tuscany where we’d rented an apartment for a week.

Once there were direct trains from Nice to Milan, but no more, we first of all had to get a local train to the border with Italy to meet with the express to Milan.

Despite dire warnings from the man in seat 61, the local train turned up on time and delivered us on time to our connecting service at Ventimiglia.

Accidentally we’d timed it just as the sun was coming up so were rewarded by set of quite stunning dawn views of the Riviera coast.

After changing trains we set off for Milan, via Genoa.

There’s no catering on Italian expresses any more, just a couple of self service machines that didn’t work so we had to make do with a couple of bananas and bottled water that we’d had the foresight to buy the night before.

Despite not being the newest, our Trenitalia express delivered us to Milan on time.

People tell you that Milan is a wonderful station and you should take time to admire the architecture.

That Sunday afternoon it was a chaotic but functioning anarchy of people wandering about looking for trains, trying to get something to eat, plus the odd lost and confused tourist.

Still, we managed to get a couple of coffees and focaccias, and the it was on to our final train, the Italo high speed train to Bologna and points south.

It was fast. It was impressive, but had no space to put our luggage – fortunately the seats behind us were empty, so we used them.

We’ve been to Bologna several times before, and the railway station has always been a maze of confusing passages. It’s now doubly so as they have now built what looks to be a new high speed train station, strangly reminiscent of Birmingham New Street in the eighties, under the existing station, plus a monorail link to the airport (of which more later)

Sign posting inside the station is confusing and at times contradictory (you are in a maze of twisty passages, all different) but eventually we emerged into the main square outside the station and into our hotel.

I like Bologna. It’s a proper city, not a tourist showpiece.

Yes, there are the Unesco listed colonades, the grand Renaissance buildings, a Duomo, the museums, but it remains a city in which people live and work.

And you have got to like a city that still has a TAFE named after Rosa Luxemburg – you can catch a bus to it – and just to add to the feel of being somewhere different, it still has trolleybuses.

However, it’s also an easy day trip from Bologna to Ravenna, and that’s exactly what we did the next day, catching the local train across the Emiligia Romana plain.

Up to then, the weather had been fine – in England it had been early Autumn – Hebden Bridge had been showery and tin he south of England the season was beginning to turn, but in Uzes it had still been late summer.

The day we spent on the train from Nice had been warm and summery, The next day it turned grey and drizzly.

However, off we went to Ravenna.

Perhaps because it was a grey Monday in mid-October, it was quieter than last time we visited, but the mosaics did not disappoint, and I got some better and clearer pictures of them than last time.

The other thing, and it’s a minor point, in the intervening decade or so there’s been a marked investment in railways in Italy, with new trains and station rebuilds, so instead of a thirty year old rattletrap, the train to Ravenna is now a sleek new commuter train

Then, on to our final destination – a traditional hill top borgo in Tuscany. It actually was on the rising slope of the foothills of the Apennines and actually half way up the slope with a view across the plain to Siena.

This wasn’t without drama, although pretty minor on a scale of one to ten. We picked up a rental car at the airport. And as always with rental cars and tight spaces there’s sometimes a bit of back and forth to get it out of the rental company’s yard. Forth wasn’t a problem but back was as I put the car into reverse and the gear knob came off in my hand.

The rental company had no problem giving me a replacement, but they only had an automatic spare, was that a problem?

Of course it wasn’t – in fact it was a bit of a plus so off we went in a slightly clunky Brazilian made VW – obviously the economy version as it didn’t have a reversing camera or a GPS or the various beepers one expects on a car these days.

Given the need to wiggle and jiggle through traffic in some small Italian towns, being beeper free might actually have been an advantage.

 Anyway we got there.

A small sone built thirteenth century walled settlement clustered around an older church with stunning views and walking tracks. No mobile phone reception – not unless you walked up to the Etruscan tomb higher up the hill or drove down to the small town at the bottom of the hill – however there was wifi, and the two osteria in the village were happy to take bookings via Whatsapp – not that it was necessary – they were only a fifty metre walk from our apartment.

So, we walked following the trails and drove around the area enjoying autumn in Tuscany. Very low key and supremely pleasant.

And then it was over.

On the day we drove back it began to rain on the autostrada. Seriously rain. Some villages had bad flooding, but we got there. I did drop the tollway ticket in a puddle putting it into the machine and had to call for help, but fortunately there was someone English speaking at the end of the help button.

An afternoon in Bologna, with enough time to sit and have a drink in the main square, dinner and a night in a hotel.

Then a flight to London, an afternoon at the V&A before an overnight flight to Singapore, where we checked into a hotel for a night and another, crowded, cramped overnight flight to Melbourne before driving home.

Due to timezones our evening departure from London arrived on what was the early evening the next day Singapore time, allowing us time for a food court dinner before collapsing into bed and waking up more or less refreshed. That evening we flew to Melbourne on what should have been a relatively pleasant flight.

It wasn’t. The plane was crammed with extra passengers transferred from another cancelled flight, food service took forever and they ran out of options. However we got enough sleep to drive home safely. and driving out of Melbourne before the Sunday traffic started was pretty pleasant.

We stopped off in Euroa for morning tea at the bakery and a bit of fresh food shopping at the supermarket, before arriving home around midday to an overgrown garden.

Our holiday was over.