We start the day excited, the hotel we are sleeping in is absolutely beautiful Agriturismo Percenna, in the heart of the Toscan hills with great views of the area (Val d’Orcia).
We eat breakfast with other bike tourist. They have absolutely crazy bikes, a gearbox set up with great accessories, and a super light electric mountain bike (13kg) Mostly ridden with the assistance off, but turned on when a boost is needed, genius idea, but very expensive !
At 11am, we finally leave before a quick adjustment on the bikes (with gears) and then the start of a brutal hill.
We chose an alternative route today to avoid a 12km steep climb on a busy road, but it turned out the fatigue was double. We know because we did it on a scooter yesterday (the magic of a motor). I had hoped for it to get wild quickly, but the first climb, very steep, actually has quite a bit of traffic. Finally we arrive at the beginning of a gravel road, we don’t know yet what is coming for us.
2h to do the first 20km, it’s gravel, heat, stones, slow on descent, slow on ascent, the views are beautiful but hard to enjoy because we are sweating so much, at least there is shade most of the time when we are the forest at first, but the last part is in the wine yards which are brutal with the heat. We finish after 1h40, after the first 20 min steep hill as “warmup” . What a slow and terrible pace.
We arrive at an asphalt road a few minutes later, we look at the road. Another trade-off, 800m of climbing or 500m ? 800m would make us go trough the asphalt road, sharing the road with cars (little traffic) but climb more. Or we go back for a second round of gravel roads. While eating chocolate bars, we think about it, let’s try the gravel !
The start is pretty fun, a somewhat smooth gravel road, downhill and facing the Toscan landscape. We see a water fountain and it is empty, so we stop at the house to ask for water. There are few houses, and even less with people, but it works. They ask us where we are going, surprised we are even here. After explaining our route, they advise against it. You will get lost in the forest ! We thank them for the water and keep going, we have a gravel wall behind us that neither of us wants to climb.
The path after the house is ok, but slowly gets worse, you can see that less and less traffic comes through. Then nothing, so we park the bikes and start looking, after searching a bit, an old path appears, it looks ok, so we start walking, impossible to bike now. The path gets worse, and then totally disappear, this time nothing, we have to cut through, we can see on the GPS that 600m away straight, there is a gravel road and a house. But we are walking in thornes/spines of plants, ripping thought our clothes. We get scratched everywhere, legs and arms are hit the most, but we keep going. The forest is getting denser, so the pace is now inexistant, we arrive on a dry river bed! Awesome, it has fewer trees, and we were supposed to cross a river, the houses must be close !
We arrive back to vegetation, a behind it we see a big river ! The house and the gravel road is on the other side, taunting us. The water is not deep, about ankle height, and the current weak, we proceed to go across 2 times, once with the bags, anotherĀ time with the bikes. Still not easy because it is about 50m wide, and there rocks everywhere.
We are exhausted, and we are now (time), and we are about to start our 3rd climb of the day ! The rock are loose, so we start quickly start pushing our bikes, we are once again walking today… now back down, the rocks are big, so once again, we have to be careful and slow. Not the best situation, this soul crushing, the heat beating us up as well. We are constantly drinking, and this is why we need to find water soon.
On the way down from that last climb, we stumble on a big farm, we stop and ask for water, and get some. Once again, they are a bit confused of why we’re here. We considered asking them for a ride, why ? Because we have another hill !
This one had a chiller warm up, but still on gravel which always makes it worse, but then, the road becomes asphalt! We keep climbing, and this one felt like it was never ending, but right at the end, for the downhill section, we are offered a freshly made road. I think it was made just for us, smooth, still no paint, and downhill, a bikers dream, longboarding paradise.
We then arrive at Paganico, another hills awaits us, but we give up, there is a train in 1h40 min leaving from here going to grosseto, so we stop and get food and sodas in a bar waiting for the train.
We start talking about life, why would we even do this? Why suffer ? Does it bring happiness? Is happiness really the goal? What do we learn when doing an effort ? Forcing yourself to repeat something difficult is not easy, but we often have to do it ? We could have done the easy route? Are we doing it for ego ? Not really, we would have just posted a picture on insta and gone home. What’s the point of biking across Italy, pushing and pulling our bike for hundreds of kilometers ? We don’t really know, we feel pain but at peace, eating and drinking in this weird bar on the side of the road. Not happy, but definitely not unhappy, just here, in the moment.
One big advantage of today is we met nearly no cars, we were alone, in the wild, dealing with hard problems. But civilization is awesome, and a good road makes everything faster, walkers, bikes, cars and trucks..
I wrote this while in the train, so more to come later.
