Sid and Doris Bonkers and their Epic Journeys

Day 69 Poggio to Rieti

In which Sid and Doris visit earthquake hit Aquila and enjoy an early end to the day in Renaissance Chieti.  The breakfast room at the Hotel de la Poste is full of cyclists about to set off on 100 k days and big climbs. And us. We will do 73 k and 663 metres of climb, a breeze. Appropriate Breakfast…

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Day 68 Chieti to Poggio Picenze

In which Sid and Doris drop a lot of height, enjoy a long honest climb to a Hotel de la Poste in earth quake land. The Appenines crossing goes on.Getting across the Appenines will take a few days of determined cycling. This is not the holiday riding we are promising ourselves. Soon, though. Breakfast was comically unsuited to cyclists. The…

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Day 67 Vasto to Chieti

In which Sid and Doris use old railways to make progress up the Adriatic coast, passing fishing platforms and old battle sites before climbing to a faded grand hotel.It is Saturday morning and very quickly we are passed by a Wiry Old Gent on a thin bike. This is good news, all day the traffic is sharing with cyclists. We…

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Day 66 Borgo Celano to Vasto

In which Sid and Doris whoosh away from the hotel, elect for country roads, visit a necropolis and see the quarry where the marble comes from. Today’s mission was 102km and only 427m of climb. For the first ten minutes we climbed to the top of the village, then turned left and dropped all the height we had gained to…

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Day 65 Planning in Borgo Celano

In which Sid and Doris plan to make a new plan later, passing the day with animatronic dinosaurs and quite a lot of eatingToday is a day of planning. After admiring the monumental (and pointless, because we are just going straight back down tomorrow) view, our first attempt was to work up a route over the Appenines to the Mediterranean…

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Day 64 Barletta to Borgo Celano

In which Sid and Doris ride with flamingoes, lunch in a holiday camp, ride across a mighty hot plain then up a mighty hillclimb to reach a resort hotel with no swimming pool.This felt like hard day at 87 kilometres and 781 metres of climb, approx 80 k of flat and all the climb packed into the last 7k. From…

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