Road Trip - January 2026

Witham, Cisternino, Blackpool. Thursday 24-January/Friday 01-February-2026.

A three part road trip:

• 2 nights in Witham, Essex with our friend Andrea
• 6 nights in Cisternino, Italy checking up on the apartment
• 3 nights in Blackpool for the Blues, Rhythm and Rock festival. 

This came about due to a combination of two factors.

• Mary likes to celebrate her birthday in Cisternino  and use it as an opportunity to check up on the how the apartment has survived over the winter.
• We had tickets to go to Blackpool for the Blues, Rhythm and Rock festival the weekend following Mary’s birthday

Flights available at this time of year from Stansted courtesy of Ryanair. Since our friend Andrea lives not far from Stanstead we decided to go down a couple of days early, spend some time with her, fit in a parkrun, and take the Saturday afternoon flight out to Italy.

Thursday, 23-January-2026.

The long drive down from Penrith to Essex and supper in with Andrea. 

Friday 24-January-2026.

Chilling out with Andrea, another delicious supper of slow-cooked lamb shank cooked by Andrea.

Saturday 25-January-2026.

Malden Prom 29/01/26 30:56 [270 / 473]

Saturday is of course #parkunday so we went to our NENDY (Nearest Event Not Done Yet) from Andrea‘s place which was Malden Prom and we were rewarded with a lovely sunny day. 

Two and a half loops on a varied course, mostly tarmac with some grass and trail. Big crowd and lots of encouraging marshalls.

Mary left her phone behind so had no music or prompts to push her on, so she was expecting a slow time.

After a shower back at Andrea, we head off to dump the car at Stansted Mid Stay car park and fly off to Italy. 

We picked up a hire car at Brindisi as it was cheaper than a taxi at either end of our trip and using our own car once we got there. We ate on the plane and arrived in time to park up and wander around the town and have a beer in Umberto’s.

Our newly installed Internet enabled controller for the boiler appeared not to be working. Although we switched on heating remotely a couple of days before it lied to us and we arrived to a freezing cold apartment. We slept under multiple blankets that night.

Sunday 25-January/2026.

After checking out the boiler and the electricals and restarting the boiler, we finally cracked it by unplugging the boiler, leaving it for 10 minutes and then plugging it back in again. Upon rebooting it burst back into life and started working. So we had heating, but the entire apartment worked like a reverse night storage radiator soaking up all the heat we could pour into it and it took several days for the apartment to get back up to normal temperature.

Sunday we met up with friends Patsy and Les and ate in Da Tonia that night.

Monday 26-January 2026.

Mary‘s birthday! We were travelling very light courtesy of the minimalistic, tiny cabin bag, but I did manage to smuggle in a birthday card and a small present so that Mary had something on the day. 

Still dealing with the fallout from my wallet being lost /  stolen when we were in Bologna in October. The bank card was replaced a couple of days later, the carta d’identita turned up a couple of weeks later, but no sign of the replacement driving license after a couple of months. So Pietro and I went down to the police station to put in a repeat application. The very helpful policeman examined all my documentation, issued me with a temporary permit to drive and put in a formal request for a replacement. He said it would take about 20 days which turned out to be the case.

That night we dined at Piatti Chiari, one of the better restaurants in town that was open on a quiet Monday.

Tuesday 27-January/2026.

In the morning we went for a walk along the escarpment behind Hotel Lo Smeraldo then drove down to Savelletri for lunch. We drove via the monumental olive trees at Masseria Pettolecchia and were treated to an impressive murmuration.

Wednesday 28-January-2026.

We picked up 10 litres (two times 5 litre tins) of new season olive oil from Gaetano who runs the linen shop and a holiday apartment both in our street. 

Supper was in the unpretentious , family run Testaurant 21 on Vis Roma  it has a Italian-German theme to the menu because the husband lived in Germany for many years. 

Thursday 29-January-2026.

Took Pietro who has helped us with our properties for over 30 years and his wife Nunzia for a “thank you” meal at Il Cucco. We were joined by Carole and Mino who able to join us. We hadn’t seen for ages so it was great to catch up with them!

Friday 30-January-2026.

Drove to Brindisi airport to drop off the hire car. The flight back to Stansted was uneventful and on time. We jumped in the car and drove straight to Blackpool in time to see Mississippi MacDonald  He was followed by the Deborah Bonham Band of which we saw half their set but were so knackered from travelling we bailed early and went for an early night.

Saturday/Sunday 31-January/01-February-2026.

Two days of music which had its own blog post: UK Blues Festival 2026.

Monday 02-February-2026.

Drive home.