As Jake might very well have said to Elwood: “We have two bikes, four panniers, three and a half lungs, one ceramic hip, and enough years between us to get back to Queen Victoria. It’s a thousand miles to Naples give or take – hit it!”

This, in the event, is the route we took, starting in Turin, ending up in Naples. The blue bits we rode; where the line is red, we followed some excellent advice on a cycle forum for those visiting Italy: “Think of the occasional train journey not as a failing or an admission of defeat but as a treat – like an ice cream!”