The ferry from Genoa to Tangier takes a languid fifty-one hours, but if you think of it as a Mediterranean cruise with a brief stop in Barcelona on the way, it seems about right. You could leave from southern Spain and make the crossing in about an hour, but first you’d have to get to southern Spain and we were in southern Germany, which is…quite a long way away. So Genoa it was. It’s a seven hour blast from Göppingen if you are determined not to actually enjoy the journey. Instead, we ambled south over the course of a few days, stopping in little towns that might have something to see. Usually they did. Neuhausen am Rheinfall, just inside Switzerland has Europe’s largest waterfall (by volume) and little boats ferrying tourists over to see them.

Sometimes a little boat ride is all you need in a day and we pressed on south to the Swiss canton of Ticino, staying the night in a wide, flat field behind a barn in a river valley. This is Italian-speaking Switzerland and we found dinner in a large, venerable Italian restaurant lined with wine bottles and attended by a dignified maitre d’ who was very proud of the Italian menu. And rightly so. Switzerland is such a mix of ethnicities, all of whom adhere firmly to their roots it seems.

Bellinzona, our final Swiss stop the next day, turned out to be an absolute gem.

Its three 15th century castles once controlled the entire Ticino valley with a wall right across it.

The complex is largely intact and we strolled the ramparts in strong sunshine.

Switzerland. It’s not just banks and chocolate.

But it is expensive and free parking is almost impossible so we zipped into Italy and found the narrow road which skirts Lake Maggiore. This is classic holiday Italy, with lakeside houses glowing in the late afternoon sunshine and an autumn wind ruffling the trees at the lake edge.

We watched the sunset from the beach where we camped, milking the last of the warmth from the day. The moment the sun vanished, the wind chilled us to the bone.

There was one more stop in Italy which reminded us of the heart of the place. Voraggio promised a free overnight stay in the car park next to the soccer pitch. How could we resist? The final section of the route was a dark twisty road through closed up villages and we found our parking area silent and cold at the edge of the village. We set out to find a place to eat – and there was just one.

La Filanda was down a track off the main road glowing like a beacon. We settled in and it filled up around us until it was absolutely humming. It felt like most of the village was in there – three generations of the same family spilling across multiple tables, greeting friends as they came in with a shout or an arm across the shoulders. Little kids eating pizza, adults passing platefuls of lamb chops, the middle-aged waitress swinging her hips to the eighties tunes on the speakers. This was Italian life in all its richness and we loved being a part of it.

We explored Voraggio a bit the next morning and it was a time warp.

Fading frescos and dimly-lit shops, but a bustle about the place too, and signs that some money is being spent to refurbish this authentic little village. The bridge built by the Romans needed no refurbishment.

We were now just half an hour from Genoa and we set off after breakfast, back through the villages now waking up with blankets being shaken and bread collected. The motorway is split, with a modern two lane road going more or less straight up the mountainside while the old two-lane road has become southbound carriageway and reflects the engineering of the time it was built – hugging the contours and winding down the slope. It is a sloping serpentine racetrack with motorway speeds and sharp bends and boy-racers showing off. Not ideal for our Arnie but we got to the outskirts of Genoa intact. And missed the exit. And then got lost. And then got lost again as the racetrack branched off into other racetracks; narrower and steeper and more congested. We drove clear across Genoa on its overpass, watching the port traffic below us heading to our boat. Once out of central Genoa we were finally allowed a u-turn to go back in – below the overpass this time and finally, half an hour later than planned, to the port. We were early but the parking area was already pretty full of cars, campers, bikers and trucks and lots of small Moroccan lorries loaded to the gills with plastic-wrapped goods lashed to the roof.

The ship appeared vast and when we were eventually ushered towards it, the immigration official inspected the landing card we’d been given.

“Where is the stamp?” He asked.

“What stamp?”

“It must be stamped by the police” he said waving us towards a non-descript building with no signs on it at the edge of the parking area. We were apparently supposed to know this step of the journey by some sort of osmosis, but we got the stamp, gave it to the official, bumped up the ramp and into the cavernous hold. As the sun began to sink, we slipped out of Genoa, bound for North Africa.