Day 21
Sleeping location: By a river in the middle of the north Apennines, Italy
Distance (km today/total): 134 / 2407
Estimated climb (m today/total): 1700 / 15200
Heart rate after initial climbs: 1000bpm
Day in three words: Faff and fury
Last night’s creature in the trees turned out to be (Matt swears) a wild boar. He never saw it, but its snuffling noises kept him awake and scared for a few hours whilst I slept safely and soundly in my tent. It rained on my face a bit at about 4am, but it felt quite nice so I ignored it and went back to sleep. When the rain came back a bit heavier I gave up and went out to put the tent’s outer on, at which point the rain stopped for good.
The first 50km was along boring and busy roads. We somehow took until 2pm to do it, despite waking up at 6am, because of loads of interesting and complicated types of faff. This meant the rest of the day was quite squeezed, which was bad because it involved a lot of climbing after we left the Po delta and went up over the Apennines towards Tuscany.
Some of the early stages were brutal with ramps up to 20%. The Alps were longer but nowhere near as steep, and it took a bit to remember how to climb this kind of gradient on a loaded touring bike - ie tack like crazy. Initially I tried to just power up like you would on a normal road bike and it absolutely destroyed me. After one climb I was so frazzled I forgot my sunglasses and only remembered about a km down the other side. It was almost nice going back to get them as I left my panniers behind for the round trip, I’d forgotten what it was like to ride a bike that doesn’t weigh a ridiculous amount.
We slowly climbed up to about 900m, some of which was through the clouds (very atmospheric) and then enjoyed a technical but fun descent down to the valley bottom, with constant beautiful views. As we’d lost too much time to faff we couldn’t get to the lake we’d earmarked for camping, so we found a midgey bit of grass and trees near the river and set up in the dark.
Distance (km today/total): 134 / 2407
Estimated climb (m today/total): 1700 / 15200
Heart rate after initial climbs: 1000bpm
Day in three words: Faff and fury
Last night’s creature in the trees turned out to be (Matt swears) a wild boar. He never saw it, but its snuffling noises kept him awake and scared for a few hours whilst I slept safely and soundly in my tent. It rained on my face a bit at about 4am, but it felt quite nice so I ignored it and went back to sleep. When the rain came back a bit heavier I gave up and went out to put the tent’s outer on, at which point the rain stopped for good.
The first 50km was along boring and busy roads. We somehow took until 2pm to do it, despite waking up at 6am, because of loads of interesting and complicated types of faff. This meant the rest of the day was quite squeezed, which was bad because it involved a lot of climbing after we left the Po delta and went up over the Apennines towards Tuscany.
Some of the early stages were brutal with ramps up to 20%. The Alps were longer but nowhere near as steep, and it took a bit to remember how to climb this kind of gradient on a loaded touring bike - ie tack like crazy. Initially I tried to just power up like you would on a normal road bike and it absolutely destroyed me. After one climb I was so frazzled I forgot my sunglasses and only remembered about a km down the other side. It was almost nice going back to get them as I left my panniers behind for the round trip, I’d forgotten what it was like to ride a bike that doesn’t weigh a ridiculous amount.
We slowly climbed up to about 900m, some of which was through the clouds (very atmospheric) and then enjoyed a technical but fun descent down to the valley bottom, with constant beautiful views. As we’d lost too much time to faff we couldn’t get to the lake we’d earmarked for camping, so we found a midgey bit of grass and trees near the river and set up in the dark.
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