The navigational rally begins around the local area. The day started with me giving the van a 1000 mile service, and my compatriot cleaned it.

We attended a briefing and prepared the information to leave for the navigational rally at 30 second intervals. I had calculated our start time as 12:30 and 30 seconds. This turned out to be a miss calculation as it was actually 12:12 and 30 seconds. We found out just in time and made it on time to the starting gate.

If you are late or early you get penalty points, so we need to pay more attention in future.

The navigational rally using a Tulip route book took us through some lovely countryside to a typical Italian restaurant using local products for an excellent lunch.

We had to leave the lunch stop car park exactly 2.5 hours after passing the starting gate this morning, and then cross between two lines in exactly 5 seconds without stopping. This year we have two magnetic kitchen timers, but it has not improved our performance. We know there are several phone Apps that could help, but these have been rejected by my compatriot as to difficult to operate.

We then followed the route back to the hotel. On route I needed petrol. It seem that all Italian petrol stations are now self serve including paying. I tried one and my credit card was rejected in Italian I could not understand. I went into another garage with two cars in it. A nice italian lady helped me through the process by translating, and my cards were rejected again, so I went to a third. When I went to start the refueling process I realised I had left my locking petrol cap and keys at the previous petrol station. So we retraced our steps confusing all the cars on the rally behind us who could see us coming in the opposite direction.

We found the cap and keys and return back to the petrol station and filled up ready for tomorrows adventures.

Who would have thought a simple process could be made so difficult by the Italians.