It's going to be a bumpy ride...

“Shall we go and look at cars?” Stephen asked. Seemed reasonable to me – so why did we spend most of the morning stuck in a ditch?

Foolishly, I believed when we set of that we would be heading towards Macerata where I had been lead to believe there were second hand car dealers, but when we headed in the other direction it was obvious that this wasn’t the case.

Stephen just wanted to show me something first, and as has become the norm, what he wanted to show me was down a stony road that soon narrowed to little more than a track. We passed the turn off to the castellated house that he has loved and lost (this, I think, was what we had come to see - the road that is, not the house - I’m still not clear) then continued down the ‘road’ as the stones became looser and the cracks bigger and more numerous and the pitch more pronounced. We went by the Contessa’s house – grand but desolate – where Stephen asked whether we should continue or not. I’m not sure why he asked that because he showed no signs for waiting for a response while I was thinking that we were getting a bit too close to the right-hand side of the road. This was of concern because by the road was a ditch, and by the ditch was a sloping field, and in my head was a vision of us toppling down the banking. Thus, when Stephen asked if I had the address of Ready Car as recommended by Alessandro, I squeaked in my best falsetto that I would get it in a minute as my hands were gripped tight to the courtesy handle.

We neared a junction at the bottom of the hill and I thought we were going to make it, but - there was a “Watch out!”, a grinding of stones, a thumping bump, an over revving of the engine and we were listing like some cheap YouTube remake of ‘Titanic’, one front wheel spinning in the air while the other wheel scattered sand and pebbles like Stone Age confetti.

I will have it known that no word of criticism passed my lips either then or since, I just did what any sensible person would do – I got the dogs out of the back of the car (yes, they had come car shopping too) and took them for a walk up the adjoining road to find some shade while Stephen figured out what to do. His answer, after several attempts to just drive the car out of the ditch, was to phone Flavia; she said that she would send Remo and Romolo with a rope to pull us out. That is when I knew we were in trouble.

However, while we were waiting two things happened. One was that a lady of a certain age, who was obviously out for a constitutional, passed by. I braced myself for a typically dramatic Italian reaction with lots of arm waving and asking of questions and kept well back to let Stephen deflect the barrage. And what happened? Nothing. She barely managed to mutter ‘Buongiorno’ in reply to Stephen’s greeting as she carried on at the same steady pace. We later learned that Remo and Romolo also saw the same lady and asked her if she had seen two men and two dogs and a car stuck in a ditch. ‘No,’ she replied – and there were we thinking we were making a spectacle of ourselves.

The other, more fortuitous occurrence was the arrival of a local man, who had seen our predicament from his house. Now, if Central Casting had been asked to find an ageing Italian farmer they couldn’t have come up with anyone more stereotypical: lean, gnarled, tanned, balding with wispy grey hair and wearing a white vest. To us he looked like George Clooney.

After some discussion with Stephen, they found the towing hook to screw into the front of the car just as R&R arrived. They pulled up, took the rope out while alternating between berating Stephen and arguing between themselves. Fortunately, our farmer quickly realised he would have to take command if anything were to be achieved and so he tied the rope to his car, (“I’m a farmer, I know how to tie knots,’ he said, which indeed he did – forming one that was strong enough to take the strain of the car yet unravelled with a flick of the wrist) then with Remo bellowing and gesticulating at the wheel of our car, he got into his van, revved up his engine and towed the car out of the ditch.

And it was all over bar the shouting - and the spreading of the mishap on the MSP jungle telegraph. The really unfortunate thing about all this is that it just confirms in the minds of the locals Stephen’s role as the good-natured eccentric Englishman, a creative genius but a walking disaster where cars are concerned.

Seeing as the morning hadn’t quite gone to plan, we decamped to the Stefoni household to regroup and eat lunch before setting out in the afternoon to search for cars. The problem with this was that nowhere was open. We passed several second hand car dealers and manufacturer dealerships, but all were closed for business. So we did the only thing that any self-respecting person would do: we stopped at a chic bar, drank an espresso and bought some fine patisserie for the house.

We also managed, in the evening, to catch up with Stephen’s friend Luca, who suggested we take the dogs and go walk through the woods at the Fiastra nature reserve. This was more complicated than one would think, as depending which notice board you read dogs were only allowed if on the lead, or they were only allowed on a lead and on the paths, or they were not allowed at all. We decided to follow the second option, which must have been all right as the friar who passed us both going and coming back didn’t advice us otherwise.

After that, what else was left but to go and eat roasted slices of pork, sitting on benches under the trees at La Baita Bar – and very fine they were too