Cycling Europe

We snuck out of our cheeky camp-site at the earliest moment of daylight and continued along the well maintained bike path until, about 5 Kms later, it ended abruptly and we were forced onto the main road with little-to-no siding for us to cycle on. As the cars whizzed past us on our left, on our right was beautiful Italian coastline of the Riviera di Ponente region. It’s a mixed up area with steep cliffs that drop off into the Mediterranean separating flat areas of coastline where small towns have popped-up to support the summer-time rush of tourists, but this was winter. The summer-time tourists of youthful people and families have been replaced by octogenarians sitting on the seaside benches getting their twelve minutes of sun chatting about who won cards last night. Many of the shuffling characters stopped, stared, and muttered a few words to themselves as they past our bikes leaned up against sea-wall, but they dared not talk to us like they might catch a disease. Maybe it was because we had commandeered one of the precious seats in the sun to eat our breakfast or maybe it was just because they’re old! None-the-less, we enjoyed the beauty of the region. In each cove was a town, a little piece of magic squished in-between hills that pushed out into the sea.
As we peddled on we were starting to realise that we weren’t going to reach our target of Imperia. We stopped for another brilliant Italian espresso to chat about our options. We got talking to the waitress, Flavia, who confirmed that Imperia was too far away from our current location in Savona. The coffee stop turned into a beer stop and we dropped the idea of getting all the way to Imperia. With very little hope at finding a camp-site that was actually open we looked for another area to set up our tent, but the coast-line was sheer cliff. With some amazing luck we ran into a caravan park that promised a shower and a warm bed. We cooked some food, charged our necessary items and got to bed.

We were glad we decided to take the caravan last night – gee was it cold! Today, however, is looking a little better. We warmed up pretty quickly as we tried to keep up with “Sunday riders” on their fast road bikes. We climbed up and over each hill dividing small towns with perfect blue skies and a warm sun, it was a wonderful day for riding. Keeping up with fit men on expensive road bikes was taking its toll and it wasn’t long before we had to take off the thermals. There were plenty of riders out today. If you counted up the collective value of the riders bikes – Bianchi, Colnago, DeRosa, Pinarello, etc – it would rival the GDP of some countries.
Considering the hilly terrain we had travelled a good distance in a relatively short period of time so we stopped for a short break to finally fix my gears. The clicking and clunking was annoying and I wanted to fix it up for good! But my skills on the computer keyboard don’t translate as well as I had hoped to bike maintenance. The result of my tinkering ended up breaking the shifters for the rear derailleur. I was now left with the two gears on the front crank – three, if I pull the wire that run underneath the top bar of the frame. It was not quite the desired result I was after.
The hills continued for the rest of the day, including a steep 15% grade hill climb over a mountain that seemed to rise directly out of the Mediterranean. The pass was 300m above sea level and less than a kilometre from the shore. But the effort wasn’t without its rewards. When we came down off the mountain we dropped into a beautiful small fishing village called Rapallo. The temptation to stay was great, but Simon’s long winded synopsis of a B-Grade movie made Sam and I look for any opportunity to leave the area.
The sun was setting, we had nowhere to stay, and we had no food. Lavagna was a very small town with barely any open hotels, let alone open grocery stores. We had to find a campsite before nightfall, after that time it would be almost impossible to find a suitable place to sleep. With our minds racing back to the illegal campsite in the construction site a couple of days earlier, we were determined to find somewhere safe and legal. We a small house just out of the middle of town with a large front yard. We knocked on the door, but got no answer from inside. We stood in the yard and debated if we should stay or leave. It was now almost dark so Sam decided to go back down to the house for one last effort to see if the owner was home, if no-one answered we would move on. But on this occasion we were lucky. The owner was home, and better still was able to speak French with Sam. He agreed to let us stay in the front yard for the night. Within 10 minutes we had setup the tent and started cooking some pasta we found earlier in a small local store.

We packed up the tent and headed out of the yard we had stayed in last night. When changing Sam’s front tyre, Simon remarked how dangerously loose 2 of the spokes were. Sam decided not to fix them at the moment as it was another cold morning and we hoped to get going soon. We shared breakfast of pasta left-overs. Sam dug in first, leaning over to eat from the bowl and dripping some fluid from his nose onto the pasta. Simon and Lachlan went hungry.
We were heading through Sestri Levante, when we joined up with a group of cyclists who appeared to be racing on their expensive Italian racing bikes. Not one to let a challenge go by we jumped on to the peloton, the group seemed happy to have us there as we chatted with them and kept up with the pace. Soon enough we arrived at a tunnel just out of town. The 15Kms of coastal road was mostly single lane tunnels between 1Km and 2Kms long. It had traffic lights at either end of the tunnel to allow traffic to run at certain times of the hour. We had just missed our green light so we waited with the few cars that were parked. The lights went green on the 5, 25 and 45 minute mark and push bikes were strictly forbidden. Pushbikes are supposed to take a mountainous road around the tunnels. Some of the cyclists that we were following before approached us to tell us, in broken English, of the dangers of riding through the tunnels. Doing some rough calculations we could only spend 8mins (max) in one direction before we needed to find safety and at the start of each tunnel we would have to wait for all the cars to pass us before we set off. It was decided that we were going to take our chances, we just needed to peddle our legs off.
The green light was on and the last car entered the tunnel. With adrenalin pumping we jumped on our bikes and sped after the red tail lights that were slowly shrinking into the distance. We rode flat out to try to keep the red beacons in our sights but, with the tunnel over 2Kms long, they were gone and it was just 3 blokes on bikes riding for their lives in a poorly lit tunnel. As the cars were slow to enter the tunnel at the start it had reduced the amount of time we had to make it to safety and with less than a minute remaining we burst out of the tunnel into beautiful sunshine. From then on we decided to limit the distance in the tunnels to under 2Kms.
After the short sprints through the tunnels we arrived at Levanto. The coastal roads ended here so we had to take a short train ride to the start of the Cinque Terre trail. We had hoped to cycle the trail but they are strictly walking paths with many steps. We had a choice to catch the train to the next village on the Cinque Terra trail or cycle to the top of the range and then drop down into the final two towns. With the thought of adventure we took the challenge to cycle. On the first hill out of Levanto we had to peddle up a 19% grade road. It was a difficult climb, but worth it. The amazing view of the coastal towns was everything we had been told about. Late in the afternoon we rolled into Riomaggiore to watch fishermen at their trade as the sunset into the Mediterranean. It was a beautiful finish to an exciting, but tough day… or so we thought.
We caught a train out of Riomaggiore and arrived in Massa late in the evening. From the train station we headed into the city to find a suitable place to stay, but there was nothing in our price range. A few locals pointed us in the direction of a hostel by the shoreline but it, like most things on this trip, was closed. We were lucky to find an hotelier with a soft spot for Australians. He offered us a great deal on a room for the night and even asked us to share coffee and chocolates with him and his wife. A mixed up pizza order and a sneaky kebab (sorry sambo) later we really were done for the day. A soft warm bed in an old three story mansion really was the grand finish to a grand day.

It almost seems like every major city in Italy is dedicated to tourism, and that you wouldn’t run into people that actually live there. Massa was no exception, with half the hotels closed for the winter and the rest hors de prix. It was just 40km to Pisa with the road as flat as a tack, with hardly a whisper of wind, and a double kebabie pitstop, perfect. Yes, that’s right, two kebabs each, in less than 15 minutes.
We stumbled upon the piazza del duomo more quickly than we expected to when we pedalled into Pisa. A legion of souvenir vendors detracted somewhat from all four of the beautiful buildings in the square - “Those guys? Yeah, I think they’re allowed to sell that stuff here”. Simon, trying to prop up the tower with his massive quads was an instant hit with the Japanese tourists. We also ran into a surprising number of bicycle tourists. Okay 2 others independent of each other, but we found that’s still a lot in one place at one time in the middle of winter! We enjoyed the warm sun while it lasted, and followed the river east out on the way to Florence.
As the sun set, we tried knocking on a church door hoping to pitch a tent in the back yard but got a shrugging, head shaking move along. We found a spot near the river and set up the tent on a pile of cut cane. It was Lachlan’s idea of DIY insulation from the cold, wet ground. A bastard bloody dog threatened to expose our hiding spot, barking up on the rise for 2 hours, but we got away with the campsite and after cooking the first pack of pasta in the tent we ate the second packet raw, it was just as tasty.