When in Italy, do as the Italians do. This time of year, all the Italians are at the beach so we set a course for the seaside as well, first rolling by more farming fields outside of Ferrara and down a busy road into Ravenna, a town known for its many stunning early-Christian mosaics. We wanted to stop and see one, but we were out of luck. You can only buy a ticket for entry to all the sites and since the day was nearly over when we arrived, it wasn’t worth the cost of the combined ticket just to see one church. Instead we stopped at a free display of some Syrian mosaics, which depicted animals and visions of paradise. While we were in Ravenna, we decided to pay the tourist bureau a visit and this proved to be fairly useless. First they told us it was impossible to cycle to Ancona because the only road was too busy and blocked to bikes. Then they told us there were no bicycle paths in the area and finally they said all the supermarkets were closed. All three statements were wrong. As we headed out of Ravenna we found two open grocery stores and with our panniers loaded we headed to the beach for a meal of hamburgers by the beach. After a little swim in the warm waters of the Adriatic, we found a bike path going through the Po Delta park and a forest of pine trees, which provided a perfect tenting spot for the night. An evening examination of our maps shows lots of small roads leading to Ancona, so we are confident we will have no trouble getting there by bicycle.

We had a cat to accompany us at breakfast this morning, purring by our sides as we sat at the picnic tables in Verona’s campground eating our cereal. She looked like a city cat who’d found a good thing; a spot where plenty of passing tourists will give her food. We started her day off with a saucer full of milk, then packed our bags and hit the road in the early dawn hours. It was great to beat the heat at least for a couple hours and we knew we had to get going if we wanted to make an ambitious target for the day: the walled city of Ferrara, apparently the most bike-friendly spot in Italy but quite a distance from Verona. The flat terrain certainly helped us along. Cycling along this part of Italy is rather like being in the Canadian praries. You can see miles down the road and the only scenery is made up of fields, fields and more fields. Tractors almost seem to outnumber cars and on this day they were all out harvesting the corn. As  we passed through a series of small towns, we were surprised to see Moroccan teleboutiques, which were an exact copy of their African  counterparts. Alongside, we also saw shops selling spices, tea pots and other goodies from Morocco. We stopped at one of the teleboutiques to check our email and as the Arabic music played in the background we almost felt we were back in north Africa. A Moroccan community must have developed here because of the need for workers on the thousands of farms. In the afternoon we had a fruitless search for an ice cream, finding all the shops closed for the afternoon siesta, so we pushed on and a couple hours later we got our treat: lemon sorbet popsicles with licorice stick handles. So refreshing! It was early evening before we polished off the final few kilometers and arrived in Ferrara. We gobbled down supper, put up the tent and had just started to relax when Mareno, the Italian we met and cycled with a couple days ago, showed up. A nice surprise! We caught up on our routes and then he mentioned that tomorrow was a holiday and everything would be closed so we had to add a few more kilometers to our total in a last minute dash to the grocery store. Well after dark we finally collapsed into bed and sunk into a deep sleep.

We’ve started feeling the heat again so we made an extra effort to get up and rolling early before the sun began working its magic. Cloudy skies helped us along and we made good time along the wonderful Via Claudia cycle path, which meanders along the Adige river and through plenty of vineyards, growing grapes for tasty wines like Pinot Grigio. A stop in a small village led us to the local shop with all the fixings for a great lunch: salami, cheese, fresh bread and a basket of juicy plums. As we got closer to Verona the bike path disappeared but we managed to follow the back roads into the city and happily found signs to the campsite. We were thrilled to find the campground in Verona’s castle – what atmosphere! – but their check-in procedure was less pleasing. It seems to date from about the same medieval era as the castle. When we arrived we found a huge group of new arrivals, none of whom seemed to know who was last in line. It took over an hour to get through the queue, which was managed by two men in dreadlocks who moved at a snails pace and frequently took breaks to rearrange their hair, sip a drink or to shussh the crowd into silence when their concentration was interrupted. At the end of it all we did get a spot for our tent with a great view over Verona but the quirks of the campsite are rather annoying. In addition to waiting ages to register, we found limited hours for hot water, bathrooms closed for most of the afternoon for cleaning and squat toilets. Not what you expect when you are paying “big city” prices for a place for the night.

After days of complaining about the rain and cold temperatures, now we can comment on the exact opposite. What a difference in the weather since we descended from the Alps, through Italy’s German speaking South-Tirol region and into the start of the plains that surround the Po river valley. It’s no longer chilly and wet but hot and humid and we are gulping water in large quantities as we fly along the wonderfully kept bike paths in the area. Today we truly flew, even though we didn’t have the advantage of yesterday’s long downhill stretch. Instead we had the company of an Italian going in same direction. Mareno was carrying a quarter of the luggage we have so he set a quick pace and we had to work to keep up with him. Mareno will also stick in our minds for his amazing skill of using one hand to look up words in his English-Italian dictionary while using the other hand to steer, keeping up a steady speed of well over 25km an hour and managing to avoid other cyclists coming towards us on the path. This feat trumps the Dutch cyclists and their trick of biking in pairs, arms wrapped around each other. To Mareno and his bike skills, we have to say  complimenti! We stayed together until the town of Trento, where we all got ice cream cones and then carried on our separate ways. A fierce headwind blew up in the afternoon and we found ourselves stopping often to get out of the wind and the sun. After quite a distance we managed to come across a bench in the shade and happily grabbed it for a long snooze and supper. Since there are no campsites in this area at all – nothing, in fact, between Bolzano and Verona – we had no choice but to find a field as a home for the night. On the bike path this is easy and once dusk falls there are rarely any people out at all since the path isn’t lit. Unfortunately the motorway runs near the path so we do have traffic noise from just across the river to put up with, but on the upside we have a huge field all to ourselves and even though we are only just outside Roverto there are no houses in the immediate area, only grapevines and apple orchards.

Our hard work climbing yesterday paid off today as we hopped on our bikes for a roller-coaster ride downhill and out of the mountains. It really was the bicycle equivalent of being on a theme park thrill ride as the bike path led us around swerving corners, through narrow alleyways in tiny villages and down slopes that were graded as steeply as 20 percent. This continued for most of the day, so although we notched up quite a few kilometers, we really didn’t have to work too hard to get to a big total. In between we had time to lunch under the shade of an apple tree, one of the millions that cover this part of Italy, both on the flatter fields and high up onto the mountainous hillsides. Apples seem to be the sole crop in this area, aside from the odd patch of cauliflower, and it’s harvest time so everywhere we saw farmers out filling green plastic crates with apples ready for market. Plenty of cyclists joined us for the ride along the Adige river and in the afternoon we chatted to German couple who had driven into Italy and were doing short trips around the area. They were very interested in our trip but when we invited them to come along they quickly replied: “not on your life”. Apparently a world exodus doesn’t appeal to everyone! Further down the road we marvelled at another couple going the opposite direction. They had four bags each like we do but also a fully loaded trailer. We thought we carried a lot of stuff. What could they possibly have in that trailer?? We stopped for supper along the bike path and turned on our link to the rest of the world, our shortwave radio, to listen to the BBC broadcasting live from the first day of English football. It’s nice to have a taste of home sometimes. Then we carried on, intending to find a wild campsite but instead we went to the campground in Bolzano. It was nice to set the tent up early, have a swim in the pool and relax before we carry on to the hotter southern parts of Italy.