After a month in the beautiful rolling-hilltop region of Italy called Le Marche, it’s time for us to move on once again. We have truly had a wonderful time staying with the Wills family, earning our keep by doing lots of painting and household chores for them, while sampling the local wine, swimming in the sea and admiring the view. On a good day we have seen mountains over 350km south of here — amazing! We’ve also done a fair bit of work for ourselves, ordering new sleeping bags, applying for visas and renewing our health insurance. So many things pile up when you’re on the road.

All good things have to come to an end though and now we’re up at the crack of dawn, ready to get a train to Ancona and a ferry to the Greek port of Igoumenitsa. From there we’ll take about 2-1/2 weeks to reach Turkey via northern Greece, where again we’ll settle down for a few days to collect various visas for the trip eastwards.

We’re a little nervous about the journey ahead. It’s hard to leave good friends — we get attached easily to people and places — and for the past year we’ve been on relatively well known territory. After Greece we’ll be treading new ground and Central Asia sounds like a challenge: tales of weeks of nothing to eat but mutton and rice and plenty of travellers falling ill with stomach woes. We hope we can rise to the challenge and keep our sanity while also enjoy the fantastic scenery the area has to offer.