In which Sid and Doris find the Appenines have almost been crossed, with splendid mountain views, vile roads and the excitement of crossing the Tiber. We can be on the West coast tomorrow.
We start the day with some more repairs to Doris’ saddle. In her defence, this saddle was transferred from the previous bike and has done all of our previous Epic Journeys, this is more than one summer’s worth of wear. Anyway #thanksAlex in Amsterdam for insisting that we accept his gift of a roll of duct tape.
Stuck back together, it took a few k to clear Rieti and then we began a holiday climb which took about an hour at a steady pace, on empty roads. We know these pictures do not work but took them anyway. At this point Doris says to Sid “You came from over/down there.” And it always is quite surprising how far you’ve come, like from the horizon. This is one of the benefits of bike over walking. Sadly no dramatic col picture as the highest point of the first climb was in the woods.
On our way down to Cottanello we stop at this chapel, PIC the Hermitage of San Cataldo. Originally built in the 10th century it has seen some alterations over time. In the 12th century someone painted some frescoes. Some time later they went out of fashion and were plastered over. To protect their retreat in 1944 German sappers blew the bridge on the road. The shaking knocked the newish plaster off so now the chapel is newly unfashionable but historically significant.
We find pretty villages en route PIC and exhaust their supplies of Jammy Dodger Italiano. Jammy Dodgers: This is July 23rd when the Conservatives will announce who their 160,000 members have chosen as their leader and the UK’s PM. In the first cafe we find a regional newspaper with the easily-translated headline “Ignoramus Boris and the Fantasy of Brexit”. Even up here they have a better idea of reality than the Conservative membership.
We cycle on down. The road surface for the next 60 kilometres varies between mediocre and shocking. The irregularity knocks speed back and puts shock after shock into the Sid and Doris. This is tiring, not helped by apparently riding through a pizza oven. Even moving does not guarantee cooling as there are waves of hot hot air.
Around Tarano we find an excellent brocanterie. At last we can give our avaiation fan(s) something to see, if only an underwing jet-fuel tank. Also on offer many machines for inserting corks into wine bottles when making your artisanal vin de pays.
The little albergos that we stay at do not organise themselves, so here is a picture of Doris hard at work on the phone on a baking garage forecourt. The romance of travel, eh?
We have some serious discussion about where to stop. We are clearly able to get beyond Civita Castellana, our minimum target for the day. (Translate, we can still move our legs and do not have the sense to stop.)
Should we go to the “Almanuda Naturist Hotel”? Is Google Translate confusing Naturists with Naturalists? [The hotel’s Booking.com entry has since been updated to include some pictures of actual punters – when we were looking at it, it just showed some gloriously luxurious rooms and pools – D.] Our bodies are nothing to be ashamed of, and the Austrian naturists we saw on day 21 seemed to be having a comfortable, pragmatic time. In the end it is the ‘not dressing for dinner’ that swings the vote. Sid fears ordering the cannelloni with a lascivious leer. And remembering never to catch anyone’s eye while eating a banana, or cucumber, or carrot, or courgette… It seemed too fraught, though we would have been able to wash all our clothes at once.
Instead we opt for The “Antico Boro di Sutri”, a 4* “golf hotel”.
To get there we set off around the Civita Castellana bypass. This has a frightful surface and about as much traffic as a Cuban motorway. Somebody has dropped a neutron bomb and only those with the Bonkers Gene have been spared. It is a lost world, like the Kelvedon Secret Nuclear Bunker.
We bash on around Nepi with its fine walls and aqueduct, grinding out the last few kilometres of hideous roads powered by Kellogg’s quick acting nut bars. These roads are prime bonk promoters; God bless you Mr Kellogg.
Arriving at the 4* Antico Boro, we still appear to be the only two humans alive in the world, apart from a receptionist and her friend. The building has sweet grounds and is obviously well set up for weddings, with huge (empty) function rooms, huge (empty) terraces decorated with white ribbons, and huge (empty) bar areas, as well as a wedding chapel. We say we are happy to pay extra for a nice room and are given a little house with two bedrooms and veranda.
Wandering back up into the echoingly empty building past the empty bar we ask if we can have a beer on the terrace before dinner and are told to look in our mini bar, which contains a single tiny bottle. After some discussion they retrieve from behind the scenes an open bottle of another beer and we agree we would indeed like some of that. After a long pause we are told that there is no more available, but they could bring us two bottles of Moretti, if we insist. We do. In fact, we insist on four bottles, which raises all four eyebrows. The empty bottles and glasses are still there when we check out in the morning. The hotel also turns out to have no dining room but only a huge (empty) kitchen [obviously the Italian definition of 4* is different to the international one – Grumpy Doris] so we are being collected by a local restaurant in a car. We have not been in a car (as distinct from minibus) since a taxi ride in Prague. Life is full of variety.
Life has more surprises for us than we can guess. Creeping back in from the restaurant before 10pm, Sid and Doris were their usual tempestuous selves at bedtime and were soon asleep in the usual post cyc-lic coma. And at about three o’clock they were hurled from their slumber by an earthquake. Or as we soon discovered a leg had fallen off under Sid’s head, and in fact the whole bed had been badly damaged structurally by some previous guest rehearsing for a Haagen-Daaz advert, and propped back up by a creative chambermaid.
Good job we had two beds. On check-out the receptionist suggested that the price of two of the beers be knocked off the bill as recompense. Sid and Doris held out for a better deal.