So we have arrived in Flornce after a 7 day journey to get here. The ride out from Venice to Commachio on day 1 was, to be honest, horrible. It was a bleak day and even the supposedly quiet road we travelled along was full of trucks. We left late (that is a surprise) and we still had 60km to go when it got dark, opps. Luckily we bought a map in Adria, and managed to ride very quiet roads and cycle paths and avoid all traffic, it seemed much better in the dark!
We got back to the coast and found a spot amongst the dunes in the rain and nestled into the tent to the sound of the surf after 140km of flat riding. In the morning I woke up to find I could hardly see because my eyes were really swollen from mosquito bites! Great, I had to spend the whole day hidden behind Chris's big dark glasses. We arrived in Comachio, which is like a tiny Venice, and wandered for an hour or two, Chris proudly managing to jump across an entire canal to my horror (and amazement!).
Then we continued through to Ravenna, got completly lost leaving town, rode across some thistle bushes and Chris got 3 punctures successivley! By now it was 11.30 at night, and by the time we biked to where we had been planning to go it was 1 am while we cooked our tea in the forest... not so good!
In the morning it was still raining, and I was still Miss Puffy eyes. We biked into Forli and huddled in a warm bakery for lunch, located another topo map for the next section of our trip and a bike map for much needed brake pads and cables. Then we went shopping for supplies and rode up the hill (in the dark, again!) to find a nice spot in a random paddock thing.
No skimping on goodies to keep us going. That fellow in the centre is our friend Tiramisu (nicknamed terry...so delicious for 1.70 euro!
The next day we vowed things would work out and we would not ride in the dark...but calamity struck again. We set of earlier for change and rode on up the hill, then sensibly skipped a mtb section because the weather was still crappy. We dropped down to Prousteccio, had a warmupachino, then up a 600m climb to the pass. There we turned off onto the planned mtb route along to a wee refugio shown on the map. It was getting dark (yes it really was) andraining. Then the snow got deeper and deeper, till we were pushing, then shuttling one bike at a time, and it took both of us to push one bike along!
By 9pm we were still going and both rather tired! Our arms were dead! By 10pm we finally got my bike to the refuge, which thankfully had the back window open, so we snuck in and it looked good with a wee potbelly and plenty of wood (I presume it was shut for winter). Back down for one last push of Chris's bike and finally we were there! We got the pot belly going and ate tiramisu cake...delicious. At 2pm we finally went to bed!
Ok, so that was finally the end of such sillyness! The next day was still raining, so we spent most of the day by our friend pot belly. Then we pushed the bikes the final hour out to the road, checked out a couple of the other refuges marked on the map, but none of them were open so it was back up the hill to our friend Mr Potbelly for a relaxing warm evening.
The next day was nicer, so we cruised out from the hut (the snow was beginning to melt and our tracks from the day before made it a bit easier). Then we biked down the hill before turning onto another mtb track which was quite fun, but involved lifting the bikes of fallen trees and through the odd slip. The trees were all golden and before the sun set we found a pretty campspot and made a delicous fire to sit beside. We ran out of petrol for the stove so cooked on the fire and looked up at the stars.
In the morning we attached some new brake pads so we actually had some brakes again, then continued along the muddy track. We reached the road and drifted down through the yellow trees in the sun into Prattovecchio. From there we climbed over a small pass then down valley 30km into Florence where we had already cunningly sussed out a cool campground to stay at.
We found ourselves a 'house tent' at the Michaelangelo campground amongst olive trees from the 13 century which has a view over the whole of Venice, it seems very pleasant. We had a meal at a pizzeria, and ended up through some serious miscommunication ordering 1.0 liters of white wine, then Chris thought it was water so started guzzling it. But we had asked for red wine, so Chris asked to swap...and we ended up with .5 litres of red as well! So then we had to get through 1.5 liters of wine! We sat there for some hours...and eventually managed to make our way through most of it returning home thinking it was all rather hilarious (0:
Today was spent wandering round Florence admiring interesting reproductions of 'David' and the lady in the conch shell by (?), and lots of beautiful architecture, and some icecreams and pizzas, mmmm. Tommorrow we will continue our towards Pisa which I suspect will take 3-4 days. So thats us for now...back to that cozy wee house tent!
