In which your Doughty Duo finally admit that “Romin’ Around” might try to trace the footsteps of previous visitors to Rome.
This trip was originally inspired by finding that there was a route Francigena – a pilgrims’ route from Canterbury to Rome, which entered Italy over the Grand St Bernard Pass.
Our constant and avid reader(s) will remember that we mentioned the Francigena in the Tour de Kent, which we did before we moved to Salisbury. This route which runs so elegantly south-east from Canterbury to Rome, gets a bit distorted once you start from Salisbury and start to work your way around rather than through Paris, as you might have noticed already (our route map is here).
But the Grand St Bernard Pass, where at 2500m you pass from Switzerland to Italy, remains a key point on the route. Here is the profile of the route from yesterday at Beaune to the Aosta Valley (on the other side of the pass):
So here is our plan (remembering that no plan survives first contact with the enemy, etc):
Today: Beaune to Lons – across the Rhone/Saone valley. A lovely transfer day with some brilliant backroads found by cycle.tracker completed successfully before the thunderstorms set in this evening.
Tomorrow: first part of the climb over to Lausanne – a short day because the combination of height and distance were too far to do Beaune to Lausanne in two days. Also there are very few hotels on this stretch so we had to book this one ages in advance.
Monday: second part of the climb, down to the fleshpots of Lausanne and Lake Geneva. With the Swiss Franc strong and the no-longer-Great British Pound terribly weak, Doris is averting her eyes as she clicks on the hotel booking sites.
Tuesday: along Lake Geneva, and we start a small part of the climb away from the lake and up into the hills. Maybe time for some lakeside sight-seeing because again the distances are short to allow for the climbs. There is a chocolate factory tour on offer in Montreux but we have a small and dwindling hope that the summer heat may prevent us from wanting to take chocolate with us.
Wednesday: climb all day, get to Bourg St Pierre which is where all the pilgrims collapse before the big push to the summit. We have already booked this hotel about a week in advance and adjusted our plans by one day, to get one of the last available rooms. Look forward to our reports about either hordes of pilgrims in the bar or a whole town full of closed hotels and scallop-shell-embellished rucksacks strewn around in the streets.
Thursday: a truly vicious start to the day, 900m of climb in 12km of road, we are not sure what the road surface or weather will be like, and chances are there will be some Pushing. After that it is literally and not metaphorically downhill all the way to the Aosta Valley and our final pre-booked hotel in Pont Saint Martin.
We have been talking along the way about whether or how this trip is truly Epic. We are very comfortable touring in France and Italy, but to be brutally honest the Epic part of this trip (especially for me, Doris) is just getting back on our bikes and making my legs work day after day after those fat, sedentary, car-touring, Covid years.
Will it work? Will the bicycles survive, will the weather smile on us, will Sid and Doris still be talking to each other after the grimpeurs become grim-peurs? Watch this space…
Some of us are still doing car-touring trips…albeit in Italy and not especially sedentary.