VENICE FERRY (NO FERRY), Dubrovnik

On Sunday, we rendezvous with Tommy in Isola and make for Venice. It takes us a long time to locate the campsite on the industrial outskirts of the city and it’s dark by the time we park up. The inside of the van looks like the aftermath of a school jumble sale with bits of biscuit, toys, cartons of juice and items of clothing everywhere.

Michael is becoming an expert at putting up the tent. Sam connects the compressor to the boys’ airbed and goes off to find out about ferries into Venice. Trying to create order out of chaos inside the van, the rest of us forget about the inflating airbed until an explosion from the tent signals its demise. Bummer.

Next morning we catch a ferry into Venice from just outside the campsite. We like the ferry docking areas that look just like floating bus stops at the entrances to the city but Max finds Venice itself disconcerting - the waterways, the tall buildings rising out of the sea, the professional beggars. All the most expensive designer shops are here, close to the church of San Marco and the Doge’s Palace. There is so much to see: the impressive courtrooms; a painting of the known world in Marco Polo’s time showing his travels across East Asia; Bosch’s terrifying vision of hell; the jail where Casanova was imprisoned. Flora and I whizz through it all at top speed because she needs the loo and the only toilet open is on the ground floor where the lengthy tour of the palace begins and ends. It feels rude to race through such important historical artefacts with barely a second glance, but I guess history is always like this, someone in the crowd not paying attention because they’re desperate for the loo.

Later that evening, we get ourselves organised for the ferry journey to Greece. It’s been a long day, the rain has started up and we decide not to rake through our food boxes for something tasty to eat but buy some takeaway pizza instead. This is Italy, after all.

It’s Tuesday morning, 11am and the man at the ferry port is shaking his head and making dismissive gestures with his hands. Our ferry, due to leave Venice in two hours, is apparently still in Greece. Sam asks when they expect it to arrive. The port official shrugs. ‘In Greece,’ he says, ‘they have many problems.’ So we take it he doesn’t know. After a few phone calls, we are given a full refund of the £515 fare. The dockers are on strike. I am reminded of those signs you see in the Highlands at places where a bridge or causeway has replaced a ferry: Strome Ferry (No ferry); Meikle Ferry (No ferry). Venice Ferry (No ferry).

There’s a possibility we may be able to get a boat on Wednesday evening, but it’s not certain. We study the stained map on the side door of the van. Could we forget about the ferry and drive all the way to Greece? It would mean driving back along the coast of Slovenia and Croatia, skirting Bosnia, passing through Montenegro and Albania before arriving in northern Greece sometime at the beginning of next week. But Venice is wet and very expensive. It doesn’t take us long to make a decision and then we’re back on the road.

Stopping for occasional toilet breaks and simple meals consisting of bread, cheese and sausage, we motor on through Croatia. At 1am, Sam stops the van and we lift Flora and Hector out of their car seats and into the upper bunk bed. We are too tired and it is too late to pitch the tent. Max is already asleep across the front seats of the van. I end up sleeping on the floor amongst the van debris. It is eerily quiet.

We wake up in what must be our most bizarre camping spot to date. We are in a deserted club resort on a small peninsula. When Max wakes up, he thinks it is the creepiest place ever and the ideal setting for a zombie movie so we give the boys the task of scripting a zombie movie for their schoolwork. The beach is huge and empty and dotted with sun umbrellas. On the door of the nightclub we see a sign we’ve never seen before: no handguns.

We decide to stay another night, even though the wind has got up and the rain is really coming down. We spend a few hours in the afternoon checking out the local firebrigade:

Just as we are getting ready to go to bed, a car pulls up next to us and a torch flashes in the darkness around us. Sam goes out, but the occupant of the car doesn’t approach us. After a while, a second car pulls up. Maybe it is our imagination or too many zombie fantasies, but the out-of-season resort feels suddenly threatening and we feel vulnerable. Sam hops back in the van. ‘Everyone sitting tight?’ We’re on the move again and the rain is torrential. Flora says, ‘I don’t like this Greece, I want to go home.’ We spend the night in a service station in the Croatian mountains and it feels a whole lot safer than the zombie resort.

On Thursday, we run out of motorway and the road through the mountains to Dubrovnik narrows and winds through beautiful villages and valleys. Sam stops the van and picks pomegranates for us off trees at the side of the road. Clementines, limes, hazlenuts, figs and pomegranates grow in profusion.

In this particular photo, Sam's head appears to have been replaced by a sack of satsumas.

Dubrovnik is by far the cleanest and possibly the most attractive city I have ever visited. But in this part of the Balkans, close to the border with Bosnia and Montenegro, the evidence of war is still visible on the walls of buildings near the centre. I realise I am hugely ignorant of the circumstances of the Balkans conflict and turn to the Kindle for a bit of help. I download a good book written by an American journalist during the Kosovo crisis and find myself once again questioning national identity.

We find a family-run camp site nestled between the mountains and the sea just outside Dubrovnik. Friday dawns blue and hot and we spend the day on the beach.

‘I like this Greece,’ says Flora. The campsite owner tells us that some British travellers have been turned away at the border to Montenegro for not having a green card. I’ve heard about green cards for motorists but they are not compulsory and we don’t have one. But we do have all our vehicle documents with us. He also tells us, contrary to what we have been hearing from other sources, that Albania is a very welcoming country and we shouldn’t have any trouble driving through it. He gives us the details for a campsite. I’ll be sad to leave Dubrovnik. I would return here without a moment’s hesitation.