Day 26

Sleeping location: The world’s loudest campsite, about 10km SE of Pescara
Distance (km today/total): 147 / 2975
Estimated climb (m today/total): 1100 / 21900
Time to do 40km of descent: 1hr 05
Day in three words: Top to bottom

After packing up we headed into the nearby village in search of coffee and food, and found a great little cafe/bar/corner shop run by a very friendly lady who took a shine to us. We got everything we needed for breakfast and lunch, plus wifi, toilet and device charging. Matt was originally impressed by her enormous peaches* but she said “very big, but no good” and pointed us to the excellent apricots also on offer. I was similarly impressed by the largest courgette I’d ever seen, which she proudly told me was from her garden.

After this we climbed quite serenely up to the highest point of the Italy section of the trip, 1380m, where there was a giant reservoir that we had a nice little swim in. And after this, the descent. In terms of cumulative joy it was the best descent I’ve ever done. Others have had better sections but this was amazing for 40km; nice gradient, lots of sweeping bends, smooth surface, no cars, down a beautiful steep sided river valley. The Apennines in general have been great, there’s a real sense of wilderness and they’re almost totally empty and untouched by tourism.

After the descent things flattened out and we had another 40km to get to the sea. Getting to the Med (well, the Adriatic) means I’ve sort of crossed Europe top to bottom, although I still have about 1300km to go until I actually leave it, so I’m not sure it counts yet. We committed to bashing out another quick 30km in order to lighten the load for tomorrow, and it was all totally crap as we went past mile after mile of identical tourist beach. This area seems to be where Italians go on holiday, and lots of them, although it’s a totally mystery to us why this is.

Because it’s so built up around here we’ve been forced into a campsite, which is still buzzing with Eurodisco and insanely loud children well past 10pm, so sleep might be difficult. At least we will wake everyone up when we leave at 7am.





*Not a euphemism

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