“Tomorrow will be a doddle.”
After crossing the spine of Italy, we were quite looking forward to a day of long, gentle descent to Ancona. No real climbing, no serious lumps on the wiggleometer, not even any great distance. Probably there not long after lunch; plenty of time to explore what Jens’s friend Paulo said was the best town in this part of the world.
Barely an hour later, the increasingly disconcerting BikeMap had guided us onto a road that claimed to be a big road, but was feeling more and more like a Very Big Road. If this wasn’t the autostrada, it was doing a damn good impression.
Gosh but those lorries set your fillings rattling. There may be more unnerving experiences than having a double-trailer artic pass you close at 70 mph sounding a cheerful five second salute on its INCREDIBLY LOUD HORN, but if so I must somehow have missed them somewhere along the way. Which ‘way’ seemed likely to conclude at any moment.
We pulled in at a petrol station, which was when I noticed the bullet-headed cop climbing out of the Caribinierimobile. “I say you chaps, what do you think you’re doing?” he asked. Or at least I think that’s what he said. This was not the road for us, he informed us. It was really quite dangerous. Really?
With the help of his mobile, he asked us where we were headed, and when we said Ancona he led us to the back of the forecourt and pointed to a road 25 metres down a scrubby slope that was noticeably lighter on monster trucks. After a scramble and a fence-climb, we got on our decidedly shaken way.
A moment’s pause here to salute our saviour. The Carabinieri have a rather dubious reputation, but ours could not have been nicer. He probably could have slapped us with a 100 euro fine, but instead he went out of his way to be kind and helpful. As Jens said, our age probably helped: he doubtless regarded us as like those old men you hear of being pulled over going the wrong way up the motorway.
Another bullet dodged. Should be plain sailing from here. Hah! An hour further on, having given up on BikeMap, which kept trying to put us back on the motorway, Google guided us unerringly to a road that suddenly had a rickety barrier right across it, and an ominous looking sign saying no going on without authorisation. Naturally we ignored it and pressed on, in hopes that a landslide had made it impassable for vehicles, but not for doughty cyclists such as we. Only to be confronted half a k on by a wall of concrete, which might as well have had “We mean it” inscribed across the middle. Finally, acknowledging ‘one of those days’, we made our way to the nearest station, which happily turned out to be barely a mile away. Six euros apiece and we were on our way to Ancona.
Which has proved to be a fine city, with a hard-working port (and shipbuilding yard, by the looks of things), a dignified if surprisingly austere cathedral overlooking the port, and a rambling old town, with vast, crumbling churches on every corner, and narrow, cobbled paths climbing precipitous chasms between tall, elegant buildings.
Tomorrow we head back for the hills, after using the train to bypass the coast road, which is by all accounts an unrewarding torrent of tourist/industrial traffic.
What a day. Tomorrow’s sure to be hell, hem hem.
