London to Pisa

[dellzeqq]

Day 3. The big one.

The Mercure laid on an early breakfast for us, and we were out the door at ten past six, turning right at the McDonalds and heading down the Boulevard de Choisy, stopping only for about a hundred red lights before turning left and crossing the river at Choisy-le-Roi. All this was good. Paris on a Sunday morning is a treat for the cyclist, and our escape through tranquil suburbs, through one of the better looking parts of town was wildly different from the previous day’s mayhem. And then....just as the one became one with one’s smugness....apres le-Roi, le deluge. We’d got about a mile down the D138 to find the dip under a bridge had collected four feet of water. A local showed us his new gumboots (to be fair, they were pretty darn spiffy) and said the tops had been surmounted by water. Quel dommage!

Back then, north and then east to the RN6. Which was tough. I’ll explain....

I had three routes to Melun in my back pocket. The first was to use the RN6 from Villeneuve-Saint-Georges, get off at the D50 at the point that the signs say ‘pas des velos’, go through Montgeron, then jump back on the RN6 again before sliding on to minor routes through Lieusaint. The second was to go east from Montgeron, skirt the Foret de Senart and come in to Lieusaint from the north. The third was to go east from Montgeron and go on forest tracks across Senart. As in off-roading. Scary.

So, by the time we got to Montgeron the RN6 was looking kind of tough. Enter, stage left, three club cyclists, all togged up for a day out. At the point where the D50 rejoined the main road, they struck off left toward Senart. Hmmmm......We followed, through suburban streets memorised from Plotaride, and, nothing ventured, nothing gained, went on to the forest tracks, which were ok, in a faintly squishy kind of way.

So, there we were for about five miles, rolling through one of the Sun King’s hunting forests, listening to the birds, taking in the early morning forest vapours, and watching the sunlight glance through the branches. And there he was, a deer, lit by a shaft of sunlight, standing on the path ahead of us, giving us the eye, before slipping away into the darkness. On such a big day there’s a temptation to invest these moments with significance; a reproach, a warning, or an invitation. In reality it was just a dumb animal unused to the sight of bicycles.

At Lieusaint we joined the Napoleonic road that underlay most of RN6, now retitled the D306. Straight as an arrow, flat as a pancake, paved to perfection it took us in to the cobbled centre of Melun, and, thereafter on to the D605, another iteration of the old main road. Now we had the legs working the miles slipped by. We rode through stone villages separated in to two by the generous width of the road, and in truth still separated by routiers avoiding the tolls on the Autoroute. A brief stop for a squashed fly and cheese sandwich sustained us all the way to Pont Yonne, where our route took us off the main road and down the western bank of the River Yonne. The water level here was no less startling than in Paris – on a level with the road having submerged gardens and taken away small trees.

Another short stop in a bus shelter, more squashed flies, more cheese and ham, and with forty miles to go we were still in decent shape. The traffic on the minor roads was close to nothing, the tarmac was baby’s bottom smooth, the temperature almost ideal and the gradients had taken pretty much the entire day off.

We crossed the river, went through Joigny and rejoined the RN6, now titled the D606 – our home for the next day and a half.

By this time the routiers were out in numbers. A penny dropped. They were giving us three metres, whatever happened to be coming the other way. Now....truck drivers in southern England have improved out of sight in the last twenty years, but they are not on the same page as French truck drivers who (and this is not too strong a word) cherish cyclists. We felt ourselves blessed, reckoning that even if France never ever produced another Tour winner, the future of the Tour de France was enshrined in a culture represented by the routiers. I doubt that the Googlebots that succeed them will be as good company.

One last nasty little rise on the outskirts of Auxerre and we found ourselves in a town of some style, arriving at the wonderful Relais Saint Pierre at twenty past three – not bad for a 108 mile trip.

Auxerre’s half-timbering was less embellished than Normandy, but the angles were just that bit crazier. And the town clock was............judge for yourself.



We took a stroll round town, had a burger and fries washed down with.....


And met a young man cycling from Northern Ireland to Marseille to watch his football team play. And then, pooped as pooped can be, we went to bed.

https://www.plotaroute.com/route/198250

 

[dellzeqq]

Day 4. Pour les gastronomes.

A good breakfast of fresh bread and coffee with crisp linen on a boarded table in a pale white room. Stuff happens. .

We took a small road out of Auxerre which turned in to a smaller road which turned in to a track. Plotaroute settings blooper. Susie was, all said, pretty cool about it. Diversion over with we went back to our old friend RN6 and struck south along the bank of the Yonne and its tributary the Cure, the road keeping flat while the wooded valley sides steepened.

We’d planned on lunch in Avallon, the only town of any size between Auxerre and Arnay-le-Duc, and we arrived at about midday. I’d decided to post back some clothes and half a dozen IGN maps, to lighten the load on the bar bag and make my steering a little less wayward, so we found the post office. Susie waited outside while I took my place in the queue.



Ever wonder how on earth CTCers who’ve known each other half a century manage to find something to talk about? All day? Try the queue at La Poste. The chat is bloody interminable. The forms are bloody interminable. The system is, on the face of it, a model of dirigiste simplicity – you take your box (for the clothes) go to the machine that asks you for your address in France (cue Paul Young) and put on the destination postcode. Disastre! The machine will not accept any postcode that includes letters – letters that offer just a little by way of describing the place to be coded – insisting on some abstract numerical code dreamt up by that two-time loser Napoleon Bonaparte. Back to the forms and pursed lips of disapproval. And, having filled out forms for the box I have to take my handy pre-addressed plastic envelope, brought all the way from England for this very purpose to another desk, where another functionary with pursed lips pulls out a pair of bright yellow plastic callipers and indicates that the form I have filled in (as instructed) for the envelope is invalid as the envelope will not pass through the callipers, and another form, again insisting on my address in France must be filled out....

Staggering in to the sunshine I apologised for the forty minute delay. We had an undistinguished lunch, and headed out of town, uphill into an afternoon getting hotter by the minute. Somewhere southeast of Rouvray we took to a small shortcut and passed the watershed between the Seine and the Rhone. A celebratory pee made its way slowly south to the Mediterranean. Perversely the climbing continued to somewhere around eighteen hundred feet, and the temperature went with it, reaching the low eighties. We reached Saulieu at about three, pretty hot and dry, and stopped at a bar for a soda.

We were tired. A shortish day had taken a good deal out of us. The last fifteen miles in to Arnay-le-Duc were more down than up, but our progress wasn’t easy. And, a mile out of town I had a rear wheel puncture, fixed in just a few minutes but still and all, wearing.

Chez Camille was a step back in time. Le Patron had the most wonderfully droopysome moustache. Madame wore a Chanel jacket that couldn’t have been less than forty years old but was still as chic as chic can be. The restaurant had palm trees. The chef stood in his kitchen like a martinet as his assistants ran around. But this is to jump ahead a little.....

We checked in, put the bikes in an old salon, showered, and went for a walk in town. And this is what we found.....



Arnay-le-Duc was having some kind of cycle festival. Here I am, taking my place in the pantheon of cycle jerseys.



https://www.plotaroute.com/route/174013

And so to dinner. Ham with parsley in Aspic. Pike mousseline with crayfish sauce.Blackcurrant vacherin. Hence the Gault-Millau certificate on the door (younger readers may have to look that up).

A half bottle of 1er cru Chassagne-Montrachet saw us off to bed. Having arrived at five we were asleep by nine. It had been a tougher day than we'd anticipated and we had another long day to look forward to.

 

[Flying Dodo]

Three weeks ago, as we zoomed through northern France at 300 km/h heading for Avignon, we saw all the flooded roads and fields and hoped you were able to wade through. Looking forward to the next instalment, and hope the food stayed at a decent quality.

 

[Shadow]

We’d planned on lunch in Avallon

We had an undistinguished lunch

Sounds like Avallon has not changed since I had the misfortune of staying there overnight 20+ years ago in what was the most disgusting, dirty and unpleasant hotel I have ever come across. This was not perhaps the fault of the town itself but our poor choice of accommodation.

and headed out of town

...certainly our best move of our journey.

 

[dellzeqq]

Day 5. A load of cock.

We’d settled up with the hotel the previous night, allowing us to creep out at six in the morning. The routiers were out in force, and, for all the miles we’d done from Paris both the road and the surroundings were pretty much as they’d been for the last two days.

We struggled a little. There are days when your legs aren’t quite across the task, and this was one such. I reckoned that I was always one tooth down from where I should be at the back. On the plus side the trucks were as generous as ever as they passed, the temperature was just perfect and the tarmac was a joy to ride on.

We’d set upon Cagny for breakfast, and it was turning in to a bit of a slog. And then......having climbed just under seven hundred feet in fourteen miles we dropped a thousand exhilarating feet in the next eight. That might not seem a great deal, but eight miles in twenty minutes with barely a pedal turned is sets one up for a baguette and coffee like nothing else. And, on the way down that south-facing slope, we’d gone by Chassagne Montrachet, home of last night’s vintage. The world was treating us kindly.

We pushed southward. We’d heard the first crickets at the watershed the previous day, but they were a near continuous accompaniment. The poppies that had lined our ride through Normandy continued, but we also had bougainvillea and palms. We crossed the river at Chalon-sur-Soane which is a fine looking stone-built town and stopped briefly to buy water before heading south again across flat land covered in vines. We left RN6 at Chalon and took to D roads almost free of traffic. The miles came and went easily, and we were in good shape when we took lunch at Cuisery with 52 miles down and 30 to go.

A new ingredient appeared in the pot. Chicken. Lots and lots of chicken. Posters depicting chickens. Big sheds full of chickens. And, on the way in to Bourg, the most magnificent, whoppingsome, upright cock you’ve ever clapped eyes on. The cock of cocks.



Bourg-en-Bresse is a plug-ugly town. We stopped for supplies at a supermarket where foodstamps were exchanged for packaged gunk consisting in equal measure of fat, sugar, air by volume and water by weight, and repaired to the MaccyDs for a Bourg-en-Bresse chickyburger.



And then we went to the cool sanctity of the Mercure, supped beer and laid ourselves down to sleep.

https://www.plotaroute.com/route/174433

 

[hatler]

Neat ! Only just stumbled onto this thread. Sounds like glorious fun. Looking forward to the next instalment.

 

[StuAff]

Day 5. A load of cock.

We’d settled up with the hotel the previous night, allowing us to creep out at six in the morning. The routiers were out in force, and, for all the miles we’d done from Paris both the road and the surroundings were pretty much as they’d been for the last two days.

We struggled a little. There are days when your legs aren’t quite across the task, and this was one such. I reckoned that I was always one tooth down from where I should be at the back. On the plus side the trucks were as generous as ever as they passed, the temperature was just perfect and the tarmac was a joy to ride on.

We’d set upon Cagny for breakfast, and it was turning in to a bit of a slog. And then......having climbed just under seven hundred feet in fourteen miles we dropped a thousand exhilarating feet in the next eight. That might not seem a great deal, but eight miles in twenty minutes with barely a pedal turned is sets one up for a baguette and coffee like nothing else. And, on the way down that south-facing slope, we’d gone by Chassagne Montrachet, home of last night’s vintage. The world was treating us kindly.

We pushed southward. We’d heard the first crickets at the watershed the previous day, but they were a near continuous accompaniment. The poppies that had lined our ride through Normandy continued, but we also had bougainvillea and palms. We crossed the river at Chalon-sur-Soane which is a fine looking stone-built town and stopped briefly to buy water before heading south again across flat land covered in vines. We left RN6 at Chalon and took to D roads almost free of traffic. The miles came and went easily, and we were in good shape when we took lunch at Cuisery with 52 miles down and 30 to go.

A new ingredient appeared in the pot. Chicken. Lots and lots of chicken. Posters depicting chickens. Big sheds full of chickens. And, on the way in to Bourg, the most magnificent, whoppingsome, upright cock you’ve ever clapped eyes on. The cock of cocks.



Bourg-en-Bresse is a plug-ugly town. We stopped for supplies at a supermarket where foodstamps were exchanged for packaged gunk consisting in equal measure of fat, sugar, air by volume and water by weight, and repaired to the MaccyDs for a Bourg-en-Bresse chickyburger.



And then we went to the cool sanctity of the Mercure, supped beer and laid ourselves down to sleep.

https://www.plotaroute.com/route/174433

You could have had Bresse chicken! The motorway services on the A39 (which does seem to be bike-accessible) is the world's biggest retailer of those rather special birds.

 

[dellzeqq]

Day 6. Hills

There's been some ups and downs along the way, but nothing one could describe as a hill. To be sure we'd reached a height greatly in excess of anything we rode up on LonJog, but we'd got to an altitude of 1800 feet almost imperceptibly. Day 6 would be the first test of the granny gears. But first....more of the same.

Sometime in the night my two day old rear inner tube exhaled gently. My pneu had pnunctured. I pulled it off and found what I'd failed to spot outside of Arnay-le-Duc - the newfangled plastic rim tape, (standard on cheaper Shimano wheels but, hitherto kept away from Dura-Ace wheels which have been furnished with proper woven rim tape), had a slightly different outline at the hole in the rim formed for the tyre valve. Cue cut around the base of the valve. Help was at hand at the Mercure front desk. They lent me scissors, I cut out a piece of the ruined tube and fitted it around the valve of a new tube as a kind of pnuncture prophylactic and pumped the tyre to a modest 100psi. It held.

The road out of Bourg was wide and flat, with a well-scrubbed verge for cycles. The routiers were their normal congenial selves. Fortified by the excellent Mercure breakfast skimmed along for 21 miles before cutting southeast to the little town of Lagnieu where we happened upon a La Post sorting office. I was determined to exorcise the memory of Avallon and went in with some more IGN maps and our base layers. We took the box from the rack, handed it to the woman behind the counter and she did the whole darn thing with a smile in under two minutes. All smiles we went to a sweet looking tabac where we were served tea and ginger cake. Boom! All was right with the world! And thus we took to small D roads alongside the France's greatest river, the Rhone, making our way southwards as it flowed north intent on turning left and left again before becoming the mile wide monster we'd crossed in 2013 on our way from Barcelona to Nice.

To our right, then, the wide alluvial plain of the river. To our left hills pressing against the road and becoming steadily higher and steeper. The road, of an almost dreamlike smoothness wandered through stone villages that were looking just that little bit Alpine. And....more cock!



Tranquility on a bike.....and then WHOOOSHHH! ZZZZIIPPPP! VAVAVAAVOOOOMMMM! a sight both thrilling and gladdening - the (or, rather, an) AG2R team, out on a jaunt putting in a bit of team time trial practice. They hurtled northward in a line, each front wheel inches behind a rear wheel, travelling at a some unfeasible pace, every rider frozen from the waist up but whirling like mad things from the waist down.

We wandered on, a little dazed, until, turning east we came to the bank of the Rhone and stopped, 50 miles done, to take a picture. And here's what happened next. Our new-found AG2R friends, their day's work done, returning. And, yes, they gave us the thumbs up. I'm just going to let your envy flow around the cockles of my heart....


To lunch! The rule in France is this... Follow the electricians! They are the aristos, the gourmandes of the working class. Their vouchers entitle them to a four or five course lunch with wine for about 12 or 13 euros, which sets them up nicely for an afternoon swinging from the high voltage network that takes France's nuclear power to every part of the homeland Vauban encircled. And so, having crossed the Rhone and headed south on the delightful D125, we spotted a small roadside cafe with electricians sitting down to dine. There was no menu, just a succession of bread, salad, steak and dessert. We said no to the wine and drank water, which was, naturally, and extra expense, but, for 30 euros we ate long and well. Which was all to the good, because, as the profile on Plotaroute shows, the D916 toward Chambery climbs at 7% to a height of 1900 feet, drops to the small town of Novolaise and then climbs at 7% rising to 9% to the Col de L'Epine at a little over 3000 feet.



As we went up the first slope thunder rolled around us, the sky darkened and rain set in. The road ran with water. Climbing in the wet is not a tragedy, but descending on skinny tyres and rim brakes isn't recommended. How convenient then that the rain stopped as we reached the first peak, and the road down to Novolaise dried almost instantly. Once again we set off, drinking in the scent of wet pines, checking the view over a blue lake to our right, hoping that the second descent on the single lane switchbacked D3 would be dry. Which, happily, it was, and we crawled down in to Chambery, brakes on more often than not and found (there is a god) the Mercure right in the centre of town.

We put our bikes in the store, showered and went out to find a cafe. The heavens opened. Rain drove people from the streets, and we were drenched crossing the road back to the hotel. Wondering just what we'd done to be this lucky we knocked back a bottle of Burgundy and took to bed, knowing that our time on the flat was over and a new adventure had just begun.

https://www.plotaroute.com/route/174075

 

[dellzeqq]

Day 7. Just the one hill. All day.

I'd no great hopes of this day. The last forty miles were on a D road that ran beside the river, the railway and the Autoroute. We'd been along this valley in both directions by train the winter before last, and I knew that on the approach to Modane the road, the railway and the Autoroute, packed in to the narrow valley, snaked around each other in a kind of concrete and steel delirium. Then again, we saw hundreds of cars stranded in snow on the D road, and that wasn't going to happen in mid-June, so, provided it wasn't too hot or too cold, or wet I was confident we'd manage what was one of the trips shorter stages.

People write cruel things about Chambery, and they're not altogether wrong. It's an unlovely town made just a little more unlovely by roadside bike paths that do the LCC thing, stopping, starting, running behind bus stops and generally convincing you that cycling is a bad idea. We kept to the highway and had just the one roadrage outburst to contend with as we made our way out of town and on to dear old RN6 once more. This took some eight miles before we took a right turn, crossed the Rhone and went on to the D204, a charming slow ride through countryside that had the Julie Andrews Seal of Approval all over it. We saw little Alpine churches, cows with bells around their necks and, (here's the good bit) snow on the mountains ahead. We saw a sign saying 'road closed' and had, therefore to divert pack to RN6 which was a deal quieter and took us to Aigubelle where, some 24 miles done we stopped for coffee.



It was around about here that we saw the first signs for Torino. Ah, the excitement! And, oh, the gradient which increased from 1% to about 3% which is enough, after ten miles or so, to become tedious, although not quite as tedious as the Autoroute that came so close to us we could exchange greetings with the drivers.

There's not a lot to say about the rest of the day. It was dull and hard work. We got in to Modane and found the Hotel du Commerce, which was every bit as cheesy as the price tag suggested. There was a short tussle with the proprietor about the bikes, which she wanted to lock in a room that couldn't be opened before seven thirty in the morning, a tussle that we won with ease, and, with the bikes in our bedroom we went out for a drink, picking up cheese, ham and stuff for the first part of the next day's ride.

 

[dellzeqq]

Day 8. In Hannibal's footsteps.

Modane is about 3500 feet up. The road to Lanslebourg adds 1200 feet in about fifteen miles, and then the dear old RN6 turns right and takes five 7% switchbacks to the Col du Mont-Cenis which rises to a tad over 6800 feet - high enough to keep it closed until mid-May.

So....we left the hotel just over six and ground our way out of town with the air temperature at six degrees, which isn't great if you've not got gloves. We were perished by the time we got to Lanslebourg, which is a whole lot easier on the eye than Modane, and sports several decent looking hotels, one of which gave us breakfast. Here, then, is a tip - if you're touring and starting early, hotels are usually open to non-residents for brekky, and, since they're not used to charging for it you can oftentimes fill up at the buffet table reasonably cheaply.

Fuelled up we took the turn and slowly, slowly, slowly, stopping to admire the view, made our way out of the valley, the air temperature rising even as we went higher. Lanslebourg re-appeared from time to time, looking more and more like a Google maps page. An aeroplane flew down the valley, well below us. And, we saw snow - not in the far distance, but, reaching the top, to each side. And then.....the top. A sculpture dedicated to cyclists and another to Hannibal. Happiness is Col-shaped!



There's a cafe beside the road, a place that's seen happier days. That, and the wind sounding like it was post-sunk, put us in mind of the opening of the Good, the Bad and the Ugly. And....an elderly couple, he walking slowly as if in need of a cane, and she holding her hair out of her face, came out to tell us that an Englishman had built a railway, long since abandoned, over the Col in 1868. We thanked them and they went back inside, and we spent another little while taking in the lake, the clouds and the snow...



And onwards, beside the lake for five miles or so before the descent, began, first to the French border post, then into a series of switchbacks so tight that our brakes were on more often than off, then over the unmanned Italian border and off the end of RN6 on to SS25 which descended through cypress, straight at first and then around scores of bends to the town of Susa, some five thousand feet below....

 

[hatler]

A proper trip this. Loving it.

 

[wanda2010]

Hello? This is no time to take a break I've put my work aside to read this

 

[steveindenmark]

Lucca is a nice place to visit. Home of Puccini. We rode from Pisa to Lucca. Whichever way you go there is a tunnel on the top of the ridge and then its downhill to Lucca or Pisa. The tunnel is not long if you pedal fast :0)

If you stand with your back to Cafe Doumo facing the Tower, you will see a building in front of you to the right with a high hedge. It is worth getting some lunch and going in. There is a great garden and balcony out the back where it is cool and quiet with an excellent view of the Tower. It a little known secret place,

 

[dellzeqq]

Moncalieri to Gavi: Day 9 - Traffic, trafficking

Saturday June 11, 2016, 73 miles (117 km) - Total so far: 685 miles (1,102 km)

One can obsess about a route. The exit from Moncalieri had occupied happy hours of Plotarouting, and our evening shopping trip had been, in small part, a cover for a bit of sneaky on-the-spot recceing. That's not entirely about vanity - there are few more frustrating things than getting lost at the beginning of a day's ride and I'd already messed up coming out of Auxerre, and hadn't entirely distinguished myself leaving Bourg-en-Bresse, so.....in the event we turned left at the church, slipped down an alleyway, bridged the gap in the Google Maps coverage and slipped out on to the SR29 to Poirino without too much fuss.

The road, and the SR10 that followed was two lane with a strip at the side. The tarmac was badly broken up along the lines taken by truck tyres, and we found ourselves steering in the gap between busted tarmac and grass that was usually about four feet across, but narrowed to less than twelve inches in places. There were weight restrictions, and those trucks we saw had anything up to five axles at the back, so I imagine that somebody had put two and two together and worked out that the more axles, the less destruction.

It wasn't the trucks that bothered us. It was the cars passing at a moderate speed but without going an inch out of their way to give us room. Not some cars - just about every car. 44 miles of pretty much the same thing does not a happy cyclist make, and worse was to come.

Beyond Asti the traffic thinned out. The road was fringed by bamboo. Every so often we'd see a small clearing in the bamboo, and, in that clearing, a young West African woman sitting on a chair or leaning on a tree. As we came in to view the woman would get up and do a little dance. There's a lot of people trafficking in Italy, and Nigerian women are impressed in to prostitution in numbers. This sad stretch of highway was where the traffickers made their money.

We got off the main road at Felizzano and made our way slowly across country. The roads were flat, the heat was intense and the afternoon just seemed to hang in the air. The last thirteen miles to Gavi were tough - the temperature was well in to the 80s. We made the hotel, walked around the town, found ourselves a meal which went down with some of the local wine, and went back to bed. Which sounds simple enough but...

Remember Psycho? Antony Perkins. The dead mother. Hmmmmmmm...... I'll say no more than this - if you're going to stay in Gavi, you might want to be a bit careful about where you book.

Gavi to Mattarana (sort of): Day 10 - Escape from Gavi, Thunderstorms, Great Food

Sunday June 12, 2016, 22 miles (35 km) - Total so far: 707 miles (1,138 km)

We were woken at five. Thunderstorms on three sides. Lightning crashed around. Rain came, rain went. Stuck in a scary hotel, shadows leaping around, the heavens giving it out like a good 'un, we did the sensible thing. We ran. To the bikes. And then we rode like the wind. With the wind behind us, not caring that we were going northeast, just so long as we found a town with normal people, and, dv, a train. To just about anywhere.

It wasn't quite that way. Yr.no told us to expect over an inch of rain and the railway was the sensible option. We rode down in to Serravalle Scrivia, about six miles distant, and boarded a train to Genova. The difficult bit was that the Ligurian coast is a bit like a scrunched up bit of paper - you don't ride along it, you ride up out of one valley in to the hills and down in to the next. We had planned to follow a river from Gavi down to Lavagna and then run along a rare bit of flat coastline to Sestri Levante before going up some 2000 feet or so to Mattarana. We'd have to go an awful long way up to get out of Genova and back on course, so, taking our life in our hands we rode across from Genova Piazza Principe to Genova Brignole and got on a train to Sestri Levante which had the twin advantages of going through a whole lot of tunnels and stopping every few minutes.

And this is what we saw.


We could have got off at Lavagna. Dear Reader, we didn't. We put our feet up and counted ourselves the luckiest people in the world, looking at the prettiest sea in the world, on what had, by that time, turned out to be the best day. Palm trees waved at us. Small children played on the beach. Sailboats and launches drew lazy lines across the sea. We got off at Sestri Levante, steered around women in big hats carrying small dogs and avoided men driving red sports cars, went down to the beach and ordered an Orangina. Which, let it be said, did not make us particularly welcome at the particularly posh eaterie. So here's a picture, and, take my tip, don't turn up in lycra.


Up we went, in to the Ligurian hills. It was hot, but we were, for the most part, in the shade of the forest to our right. We passed perhaps thirty or forty cyclists descending in the opposite direction, all of them tanned to perfection and riding bikes of impeccable breeding. Motorcyclists roared up and down, each of them passing by with the greatest courtesy. We stopped for another Orangina and took in the view


Stuff happens. And more stuff happened when we rolled up to the Hotel Antica Locanda, checked in to a charming room, repaired to the terrace and enjoyed an eight course tasting menu that cost us 25 euros - for the two.

And then we went for a walk in to the village of Mattarana, which is a collection of charming houses on a hill, arranged about narrow paths, all piled one on top of the other with a church that took our breath away.






And then, walking back down through the village, we heard this. Which, all on its own would have made the trip worthwhile. If you have tears of wonder to shed, now's the time....

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6aKbZacIcg


Mattarana to Pisa: Day 11 - Journey's End

Monday June 13, 2016, 64 miles (103 km) - Total so far: 771 miles (1,241 km)

This was always going to be the easiest day. A few miles in which to lose most of the height, then gently down the river valley to the beach, twenty miles along the coast to Viareggio, then across the flat marshland to Pisa. We thought we'd get to the Hotel Victoria in time for a late lunch and we did. So....here are some pictures.




I got us decently lost coming out of Viareggio, but, still and all, it was a low-key end to a long, long trip. We know our way around Pisa, so there was no surprise when we turned left off the road and saw this..


We made our way to the Hotel Victoria, which has changed little in the quarter century that I've known it, and less in the century before that, checked in, put the bikes in the undercroft and took ourselves to a room that might have been designed by Vittorio Storaro for Greta Garbo. We walked around town, just as we had before, and then went back to the hotel, dismantled the bikes, put them in the cardboard boxes I'd sent from home, attached bits of pipe lagging for handles, and then went out again for dinner. And the story of the boxes has to wait for the next day.


The Return: ...in which our heroes go to Venice, are rendered to a foreign country, and spend a fortune

Tuesday June 14, 2016

This is a cautionary tale. This is the how-not-to-get-home page. The page in which I blow it. Read on, and feel free to be amused at my expense.

I loathe planes. Never mind that the flight to Pisa takes under two hours and the airport is so close to town you can walk to the hotel, never mind that airfare is modest when you plan ahead....I had hit the stubborn button and I wasn't going to take my finger off that button even if it meant spending a day and a night on trains. This is the story of a dumbass possessed of a simple idea and no clue. So, Crazyguysandgals don't try doing this at home.

It's tough getting a bike across Europe by train. The fast trains say no. The slow trains are very slow. The night trains are no more. Except...The Thello. This is a collection of railway coaches from the early seventies that trundles from Venice to Paris, leaving La Serenissima in the early evening and arriving at the Gare de Lyon about half past nine in the morning. Job done....except they don't take bikes. Bikes are forbidden. Hmmmm.

I booked a first class, two berth coach from Milan to Paris for the princely sum of 304 euros. I then sent cardboard boxes, bubble wrap, pipe lagging, tape and a pedal spanner to the Hotel Victoria in Pisa, so that I could dismantle the bikes and put them in the boxes. That was plan A. And, as you can see from the picture below, I thought it had some merit.


Plan B was the child of panic. Suppose Plan A didn't work and they told us to put our bikes in the Grand Canal? So Plan B was Plan A twice over. I booked another first class berth from Venice for 290 euros, reasoning that we could put the boxes in one of the cabins and sleep in the other, or, have a box each in the cabins and leave the door open between the two, avoiding the use of the top bunks which are naff and frightening. Brilliant!

Plan B2 involved asking Thello if we could occupy the Milan compartment in Venice. Thello said no. This was stupid, so stupid that it was stupid to ask, but, in the end they said yes provided we paid the extra fare, which, you will have noticed is minus 14 euros.

So we took a taxi from the hotel to Pisa Centrale, took a train to Firenze Santa Maria Novella and another train to Venezia Santa Lucia, spent the entirety of our 45 minute stay in Venice on the platform and then scrambled the boxes on the train to discover that first class was empty and we could, had we so desired, ridden the bikes up and down the corridor all night. And so we enjoyed a delightful trip across the causeway at dusk...

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgyL01De5h8

All was good. We went through Bologna and Milan, and then dozed off. We'd taken the Paris Milan train both ways the previous Christmas, so I was looking forward to seeing the road from Modane down to Chambery, the road we'd travelled up the previous week.

I woke just as we were going through Domodossola, but didn't think anything of it. And then we found ourselves in the Brig. As in Brig Switzerland. With border guards looking for Muslims. Well.....there you go. No Modane, no Chambery, just some young men in uniforms shining torches in our eyes for 600 euros. Worse, I'd booked the first compartment in both our names and the second compartment in my name, so they were looking for two of me, and I could only produce the one. The other me is, presumably, now on some Swiss Most Wanted List.

The rest was straightforward. We took a taxi across Paris, jumped on the Eurostar, made it home by lunchtime. That, then, is our story, except for one small coda....

On our last night in Pisa we were woken by explosions outside the Hotel Victoria. It turned out that the Pisa football team had been promoted to Serie B. This is their song...

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BroSL7_uxp8