Never Thought I'd Be Excited About Potholes

Much as we love life on Leila's mountain, the road leading to Il Sogno is anything but smooth.
When the FIL visited in October 2011, he went
back to England and said he'd never travelled on
such an awful donkey track in all his life (a slight
exaggeration - the road is actually tarmaced). It is owned by the Comune, who are responsible for its upkeep, but it's pretty
obvious that they hadn't bothered repairing it for quite some time (the pic above is one of the smaller potholes).

Back in February, on his return from the supermarket run, hubby noticed one of the local Polizia Municipale and 3 other guys inspecting some of the potholes further up the mountain, so he
went to find out what was going on. 'We're going to be repairing all the potholes next week, we're just working out how much cement we're going to need'. This was exciting news - not just for us, but also for Sven & Hella, who own the restored ruin above Il Sogno & use it as a holiday home about 4 times a year.

The first week of March came & activity was heard beyond our boundary wall.......but all that happened was that the verges were strimmed (rather haphazardly this year). A few days later a truck with a mini digger stopped outside Il Sogno, but that was only
Gerardo having trouble keeping it stable as he transported it from A to B.  And so March ended with no road repairs having happened at all. Sven & Hella had arrived for a few days, hopeful of a smooth ride up the mountain & were disappointed to find nothing had changed since their Christmas visit.

April, May, June & July came & went....still no road repairs, and as we are now officially in Ferragosto, we really weren't expecting anything to happen until at least September (a lot of businesses
close down for the whole month).  So hubby was pleasantly
surprised when he set off up the mountain  to go to the Posta this morning, only to find his way barred by a cement lorry & a gang of workers making a start on the road repairs. He turned round, drove down the mountain & went the long way round to Montecorice, hoping to get back home before the cement lorry barred his way lower down the mountain.

And so, it's all done - we have no potholes! This is cause for celebration indeed; we have had 2 harsh winters since we came here & the weather has eroded the road surface more each year; in some places the potholes were more than a foot deep & negotiating them in our previous car (Ed, a Suzuki SX4) had been a nightmare. We've been for a walk up the mountain this evening to inspect the repairs and, whilst they are not perfect, they are a vast improvement.

It's a pity the Comune didn't see fit to do a
'proper job' with tarmac but a road with no potholes is preferable to the state it was in before.

Oh, & we e-mailed Sven
& Hella to let them know that the repairs had finally happened and they are VERY excited! They'll be back in October to see for themselves.