After the deflating dramas of yesterday, it was good to wake up and squeeze Nae’s rear and find it was still hard as a rock! Maybe that last shock of air finally got the tyre flange onto the right place on the wheel rim! Usually with tubeless tyres…. if they hold pressure for a day….they are good for a long while! (I have only needed to give my own tyres a bit of air every 1-1,500kms!!) Fingers crossed!
We left Matera fairly early, knowing it would be a biggish day….and left this most wonderful of cities – still buzzing about the place – with a glorious run downhill into a beautiful wide valley, gold with harvested and harvest-ready crops.
And it was a lovely ride on down to the South coast, slightly downhill, and with a slight breeze in the right direction for once. Well over 50kms into our day in just two hours, when we stopped for breakfast! A breeze of a day, we thought!
So to the very sole of Italy’s boot!! But actually a bit soul-less. Well, its all relative I guess…but not a lot to write home about!
And how wrong we were about that breeze of a day! There is really only one main road along the coast, parts of which were cycle-less autostradas. And we were – as usual – endeavouring to avoid it.
But we could not! So we opted to jump onto the motorway…and as we approached the on-ramp, there sat the carabinieri with lights flashing? Classic really. Nae and I just exchanged a look…and carried on! They did not seem bothered!!
Generally however we tried to keep on side roads and service lanes…but a full FOUR times…we were cruising along fully-formed/sealed service roads etc…for them to grind to a complete halt at a dead end! One wonders what the guys think when they are building them, and finishing them so perfectly…when they go absolutely nowhere at all!!
Usually it is just a small stream or something in the way…meaning one has to back track…return to the big road, across the one and only bridge in the vicinity…and then re-find another service road. Repeat! Repeat! Repeat!
For a country so besotted with cycling…it is surprising that the road engineers themselves – particularly here in Italy’s instep – are not in step with cyclists needs at all!!
So it turned into a very frustrating long hot day, 20kms longer than planned with multiple unplanned stoppages!
So it was 5pm….with just three kms to go…when we arrived here!!
Aaaaagh! Three became seven as we back-tracked another two kms!
Knackered once again!
Slightly odd apartment in a slightly odd seaside town…(I loved their message…. “Ok troverete la chiave sotto lo zerbin”, keys under the doormat, and they were!)…….but only a hundred metres or so from the beach…..so it was not long before we were heating up the sea!!
Ice cream shop for beers….and we broke out and went to a ‘trendy’ burger bar for dinner! Over-priced, with lots of staff failing to serve their only customers!! The fries arrived long after the burgers were finished etc etc! Ho hum….. That’ll teach us!!
