Sitting in the lee of a motorway for lunch, easily our least pleasant location to date, we looked at the map in horror. We had grossly mistaken the amount of time it would take us to reach our next target, Sterzing-Vipiteno. We had estimated about a week – we now realized that it'd be a stretch to say two days.

After our lunch under the motorway we really wanted to get away from roads. The only problem was that we were in an alpine pass with a flat bottom covered in stuff and then almost vertical sides. In our attempt to get away from dangerously Italian traffic, we made our way somehow onto an earth track that turned out to be a disused railway line. We were mildly concerned when we came to a tunnel with a rather brutal 'private, keep out or we'll murder you horribly' style sign so we decided to take some metal steps instead. It was a bit Jurassic park; these steps had been bolted into the stone above a vertical drop and not touched for the last twenty years. Parts of the floor were completely missing, meaning a jump was the only way across, and some of the thick steel steps were so twisted and bent we worked out that only falling rocks quite a bit heavier than us could've made them. It took us a while to navigate this little death-trap and when we got to the end, all proud of ourselves, it turned out that it just took us to the other side of this short tunnel. We felt a bit like muppets, and when we came across the next tunnel we just walked through it.

The other side of these steps we came across what looked like a shanty town with one inhabitant. Someone was living in an old railway hut and had collected all the crap that had been dropped in the area for the last thirty years, populated what was in effect a re-structured rubbish heap with a random assortment of goats, ducks and chickens and turned the whole thing into a shabby but livable small-holding much at odds with anything we'd yet seen in this region of almost clinically perfect construction.

We didn't see that again, but we did see a few more abandoned huts and one whole station.

That was very useful because this old railway line was not on the map and up until then we had no idea where we were, save not where we were supposed to be. We camped that night in possibly our most idyllic location yet, and over the next couple of days we meandered to try and avoid reaching Sterzing before our parcel.

It turns out this whole region is littered with old WWII bunkers, some still having the rusted remains of their mock-stone doors hanging off the deep concrete slits. This was a nice distraction, but we wanted to get moving and work out where we would be going. To that end we had a little look at the map, only to find out that even though the map company promise that they overlap, these two maps here actually don't because in the 'new' series that one of them belongs to, they've changed the areas the maps cover slightly. Is it just me that thinks that is monumentally stupid?

Well, regardless we still needed to get to Sterzing and the walk was so beautiful. The sun decided to come out again, and we remembered exactly why we were here. We even had our most storybook encounter so far...Walking through sloping fields surrounded by a velvety deep-pile carpet of blooming spring, we came across a farmer tending his hives and selling his own honey. I must say usually near a lot of bees I get a bit nervous. When I see that much potential harm within a few feet of me, I tend to get a bit jumpy. It's like police with guns – I don't expect to get shot, but it raises the temperature. I looked at his hives, hundreds of bees everywhere, and sensed nothing but industry. I always knew bees were not interested in stinging people, but looking at that hive hard at work surrounded by so much pollen, I really felt it. The bees just couldn't care less. We bought some honey from the farmer, who let us refill our water from his own personal spring (on which he proudly showed us his fathers' initials carved in stone beneath proving the progeny of the private family spring). They usually bottle it and sell it, but as with all springs around here it just keeps gushing whether it is used or not, so it cost him nothing to let us drink.

So armed with honey and water, and navigating some rather large roadblocks (see above) we made camp outside Sterzing and made our way down into the town.

Our early arrival would have been cause for great joy if reality had been tweaked slightly – but right now we were rather peeved by our efficiency. We had set up a post-restante at Sterzing and our package was not due to arrive for about a week, making it a rather long stop-off when all we really wanted to do was continue walking south. If this was our only problem, we would've been OK. Julia had some work to do so we needed to stay put for a while and we had found a very good secluded campsite that we could go back to. It was just at this point we ran headlong into our lack of planning.

The next morning in town we failed to find internet. Sterzing is quite a large place, and it did have a coin-operated internet machine in a coffee shop, but that was it. Julia's rucksack was just beginning to rip, and we really needed a new one. Sitting in a place that did pizza for lunch suddenly it all came flooding into our brains, all the little things we would change if we could. Get a better knife for cooking, make a special tiny chopping board that doubled as another lid for a saucepan, get Julia's taxes done, sort out a job interview for the winter, get Julia some more socks, a new penny whistle, get a new wooden spoon, earn a bit of money to offset the outrageous spend so far. The list went on...

...the end result of this was that it was just a better idea to come home and sort our lives out than stick around. It was going to be cheaper, easier and less stressful. So that's what we did.

It seems I only get to write a journal entry at moments when something has gone wrong. Unfortunately for anyone I've suckered into reading this, plans are afoot to ensure that this will change. As Julia was finding it very difficult to get reliable internet access via third parties and as all she wants is word-processing and handling small files, we've got a cheap and light netbook and strapped the laptop battery equivalent of a nuclear reactor to the backside of it – giving it a tested eight or nine hours of battery life. Combine this with an Italian 3G SIM card (got the dongle here) and we're ready to go (although watch this space, I forsee trouble actually making this work).

So, we're off again on Tuesday with a slightly better kit and a bit more knowledge. We've also managed to dent the deficit too. If you look at the number dated 24/5/2009 you'll see for the first time it's gone down. This doesn't include an extra few hundred of work that Julia has done and will be paid for over the next couple of weeks and so it's (and I say this with slight shock) only going to look better in a week or two's time.

We've also had to get a bit realistic about 'never coming back to the UK ever! No matter what!'. Really, to make this work we'll need to come back every now and again to earn a bit of money or pick up some better clothes and maybe some books if we get a stationary job for a few months. Even at this early stage, I think that we're beginning to get an idea of how this might go.

For the first time since this started, I think this cost-neutral travelling lark might actually work!