That’s it folks! Or very nearly.
Our plans to explore further south, flying back on the tenth, have been sunk by a forecast that basically assumes incessant rain between now and the ninth, so we’re banking our winnings and heading back to Blighty.
*sigh*
It’s a shame, but realistically it’s our only option. The whole point was to let Jens get a look at the south, and you can’t see the south (or much else) in the kind of rain in prospect, and cycling in the rain just ain’t our idea of a holiday.
So today we crested the last pass. Around 700m up, at the end of a long, long climb, which to be fair we’d deliberately chosen, so’s to avoid what would have been a much easier ride straight down the valley, but on what promised to be another road from hell.
In truth, tho’ I know Jens is very disappointed to miss the extra week, personally I’m less distressed. With all due caveats about arriving at sweeping generalisations based on limited evidence, I have to say thus far the south isn’t really doing it for me.
The landscape we’ve seen is so so, a come down from the delights of Tuscanny and Lucca. The roads are poor, the driving less considerate. It’s not outright hostile, just not courteous like up north. You don’t feel people are actively out to get you, just that a bit of maiming wouldn’t put much of a crimp in their day. And more generally, in the same vein, the people just don’t seem friendly, or even contented, the way we’ve become accustomed to. Again, they’re not overtly hostile, but when you get a cappuccino, that’s what you get; not a cappuccino and a smile, or any expression whatsoever of any interest in you as anything other than a source of cash.
Maybe I’m just tired, after three weeks of incessant hill-climbing, but like I say, I’m not that cut up about the prospect of a guaranteed comfy bed, a glass of red, and Match of the Day on the telly.
Of course the fat lady has yet to sing. Jens is booking tickets to Naples as I sit here prodding my phone. Still a few days to go. And no more hills! Huzzah!
PS Another timely caution against snap judgments clouded by fatigue…just had a brace of delicious pizzas in a little local pizzeria, cooked and served by a couple who could not have been nicer (or more genuine – no faux ‘friendliness’, just really nice people, scoffing his pizzas and glugging the (excellent) local rosso while they prepared for the evening trade). It was a full on ‘experience’ – the pizza man continuing his faux haranguing of a woman at the door, complete with exuberant gesticulations, entirely ignoring our attempts to order; a wizened auld feller staggering in with an armful of sticks for the oven while we were waiting; the pizza man indicating with fingers that this was one of his two pizzas for the evening. The eventual tab was a bonkers 16 euros all in. Including a bottle of the rosso. Cheers!