Archive for August, 2007
Saturday, August 18th, 2007
118km Riccione to Portonovo
We started and ended our day with seaside climbs, first waking up with a rolling coastal road which took us up and through groves of vineyards and pine trees to the picturesque town of Fiorenzuola, where we stopped for a cappuccino with several other racing cyclists. Coffee finished, we quickly dropped back down to sea level and the medieval city of Pesaro. The streets were crowded with shoppers out browsing at the local markets and hordes of people heading for the beach. From there, the road was flat and led straight along the water’s edge, making it easy for us to dip our toes in the waves as we rolled along. Just before the port city of Ancona the sandy beaches disappeared and turned into swathes of smooth and white rocks. It was late in the afternoon as we made our way through Ancona, including a fruitless stop at the ferry terminal, trying to get more information on routes across the Adriatic Sea. Everything was closed and, uniquely for most ports we’ve seen, there were no local ticket agents around to ask about where we might go from Italy. We will have to do our research online. From Ancona we had a steep hike up a hill that left us dripping in sweat as we then plummeted several kilometers straight down into Portonovo, a town almost carved into the huge cliffs right on the water. After supper we wandered down to the beach and watched strong swimmers being tossed about in the waves. The sea is quite rough here but the views are stunning and it’s not surprising all the beachside bars are filled with diners and drinkers enjoying the colours in the sky as the sun sets.
1 Comment » - Posted in Cycling Trips, Italy, Journal Entries by andrew
Friday, August 17th, 2007
62km Lido di Dante to Riccone
We continued our tour of the Italian seaside today. Despite 
yesterday’s warnings from the Ravenna tourist bureau we had a very easy time making our way along the coast. Small local roads run the whole way along the beach and we didn’t have to revert to the busy and narrow Adriatica SS16 once. Most Italians go on holiday in August and particularly this week, so the whole area is heaving with people. The beaches are so full we can smell the coconut sun cream just cycling along the road. If the sun worshippers aren’t on the beach then they’re out eating granita, tanning on the beach or shopping and in some way this mass of people made our job of cycling even easier. Everyone on vacation seemed to fill the roads with their bikes, going to the beach or to get groceries, and pedestrians were dashing out to cross the street all over the place. Car drivers seemed quite resigned to sharing the roads with plenty of other people, often waiting patiently behind us for quite some time before passing. The day was fairly hot but luckily the roads through the towns tended to be shaded with trees, so all in all we enjoyed our trip through the ocean towns like Rimini a lot more than we had expected. The campground we ended up staying in wasn’t exactly beautiful. The plots have definitely seen better days and people are crowded in, but it is right on the beach so we took advantage of our prime location to go for a late evening wade in the Adriatic sea, which is warm like bath water. No wonder the Italians are so keen to come here for a week of swimming.
1 Comment » - Posted in Cycling Trips, Italy, Journal Entries by andrew
Thursday, August 16th, 2007
110km Ferrara to Lido di Dante
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.
1 Comment » - Posted in Cycling Trips, Italy, Journal Entries by andrew
Wednesday, August 15th, 2007
Greasy hands: a day of bike work
We decided to take a day off after our epic ride yesterday and ended up doing some work on the bikes: taking apart the wheel and cleaning out all the dirt and grit that gets stuck there, regreasing everything and putting it all back together. Like most good jobs, this one took far longer than we thought it would and included a few minor hassles, including trying to figure out how to untangle Andrew’s chain from his spokes. Don’t ask how the chain got wedged between the spokes in the first place.
If you are tempted to do the same to your bike (take the wheel apart, not mangle your chain and spokes), here are some step-by-step pictures we took. Just click on the photo to start the slideshow.
You will need cone spanners that fit your bike’s wheels (we used a 17 and a 13 but ask at your local bike shop), grease, a clean rag and, if you plan to do the back wheel, a tool to help you get the back cassette off.
No Comments » - Posted in Cycling Trips, Slideshows, Trip Equipment by friedel
Tuesday, August 14th, 2007
120km Verona to Ferrara
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.
