I started my European Tour at 6.00am on Wednesday, made it to the Eurotunnel on time after meeting up with Stone Monkey (this is another blog post to follow). The gods were not looking favourably as the weather for driving was terrible and the ring road around Brussels at rush hour is NOT the best at any time! I arrived at the Noelanders’ Club at 7.25pm only 5 minutes before the start.

Bad weather in Belgium

A ‘friendly’ crowd at The Noelanders Club

It was a good turnout of 60 members considering the weather. I stayed the night with Stéphane Van Lind and his family and the next day held a workshop for six guys. Some nice trees were worked! Then it was a six hour drive to my overnight in Stuttgart.

My GOD the Germans drive fast! So I had to join them. My AVERAGE speed being 105mph sometimes driving at 120mph! At 5.15 am I set off for Arco, I had six hours FAST driving ahead of me, through some beautiful countries.

I had no time to soak in the beauty

Italian Police want to what is in my car

Getting into Italy was ‘interesting’ the Border police wanted to know what I had in my car. As you can imagine they were fascinated… they held me up for 25 minutes, and I was already on a tight schedule. I arrived in at 11.00 with one hour to spare to have my tree registered for the event, and it is from here that I am posting.

Outside the venue at Arco Bonsai

Arco is a beautiful town about 2 miles from Lake Garda in Italy. The venue is in the Municipal Casino (it’s not a casino) I will be posting a full report about the event soon.

Juniper on a rock at Arco