Day 21 to 22 Start walking.
Train and taxi take us to a small village, Mornico Losana, where we are staying in an “Agriturismo”, a self-explanatory word. We are now at the northern edge of the hills of Liguria and will be walking south to the coast. Cultural note: Salami.It is no use coming to this part of Italy if you […]
Day 41 to 44 Accross Corsica
Get to Bastia at about 9:30, the hotel is next to the port luckily, find a restaurant – French Food – on which more later. Next orning I set off asap because I have a long uphill day. The traffic in Bastia! Dreadful, too many car and lorries, nt enough roads, the town is squeezed […]
Day 40 La Spezia to Livorno. More Med coast.
Today was a longer ride, over 100 km. So down to sea level and about 50km along the seafront, wind a bit against me so not much freewheeling, quite a slog. The sandwich and tart were excellent., the tart seemed to have a case made out of pasta – healthy idea. It was a grey […]
Day 39 Sestri Levante to La Spezia – following the coast southwards.
Day 38 Some rain
Two middle-aged Italian couples turned up the next evening for dinner, they were there for a long weekend’s walking in the hills, disappointed that the weather forecast was rain for Friday. They were cheerful and jokey, shared a bottle of wine with me. For a while I think that I may get away with no […]
Day 37 Ligurian Hills by bike
The final two kilometers are very steep and I’m tired, but there is no hurry, because I have arranged to arrive after 7:30, so I walk. pushing the bike uphill I meet a couple, each has two huge dogs on leads, the dogs look like wolves and are straining at their leads, the owners leaning […]
Day 36 on the road again
I saw Barbara most of the way to the station, at 7 am then returned to the apartment. I am planning to take four days to get to Livorno, then take a ferry to Bastia on the island of Corsica, cross Corsica on the bike to Ajaccio (napoleon’s birthplace) and get the ferry from there […]
Day 19 and 20 Start Walking
I left my bike in Turin, luckily I found a bike shop near our apartment rental. It was called “Bicycle garage”, just one room on the ground floor of an apartment, full of old bikes, run by an old geezer. He charged me 2 Euros per day, I had been repared to pay 5-10 so […]
Day 17 and 18 Torino
Turin is an elegant town, tall apartment blocks and narrow streets. Big open piazzas, busy but not crowded. It has two huge museums. We spent from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. in the Royal Palace. It hasn’t actually had royalty in it since about 1700, even then they were local, not Italian. But they were […]
Day 16 Turin!
And so my ride thrugh the Jura mountains and over the Alps to Italy comes to an end. I will meet Barbara in Turin for a few days of sightseeing and museum visiting, then we will head off for 8 days of walking through the hills of Liguria, south of here, and getting to the […]