We pushed again, biked again and again. At the end we chose enjoyed the chaos of the adventure. We arrive at an AirBnB appartment at 21h30, order pizza happy to be “home”

The next 2 days will be logistics.

Not an easy morning – need to talk about the fact I have a love hate relationship with cars. But there are many reason to hate cars, and they are a great symbol of our poor prioritazation and destructive behaviors.

We end up biking on a very terrible plant, 3 flat tires in 3 min. It completely changes our plans, but what a pain ! A fun adventure, Bianca got new pedals and the hotel and location is awesome.

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, another  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.

A slow start enjoying the late checkout and breakfast at the hotel.

Crazy day with a good start. The traffic so so and a little cheat to get to Siena. Amazing dinner

Difficult start of the day but then the roads became amazing. Wild beach and fun. Very difficult day overall tho

The start of gravel which is fun because less traffic.

Tour of the walls of lucca

Amazing pasta at night

We wake up hearing children, we are next to a school and it is their first day in school here in Italy.

Then we hurry to the train station to take a train to siestre levante, we are skipping the first few mountains, to only do the cinque terre ones, already big enough for us.

Climbing is difficult, but rewarding, we end in la spezia, a very cool city. We eat a lot.of food again

Easy to glamorize life on the road. But it can be really difficult, between the half homelessness and the physical effort to manage, things can go wrong quickly.

We start the day slow, even if we woke up at 7h30, we only managed to leave the camp spot at 10h. I am not surprised, it is the first time we repack all the stuff on the road, it is definitely a process to get everything on our bikes.

Once we are in the road, we start pedaling like crazy people, sometimes stopping to adjust our gear, and biking position. Always worth it to stop before than later.

Sadly after barely an hour, Bianca’s knee starts hurting, behind, most likely because too high on the saddle, so we try to lower it, it works for a bit. But the pain keeps coming back.

The day is long, we keep going, and the road is difficult with all the traffic from the cities. But it is so beautiful, we also enjoy some nice bikepaths, but the whole coast is not yet covered which forces is back onto the road. It is Sunday as well, so there is traffic. We finay arrive in Genova.

Getting into and our of the city is a bit crazy, after crossing the whole town, and center, we stop in a cafe to take a rest, we had picked up Voltaren so Bianca rubs some here knee, while I am zoning our in the sun, we order a sandwich and a lemonade. Tonight, we are going to Recco, so time to get back on our bikes.

That last bit is quite exhausting, but we make it, and then there is the routine of supermarket, small apartment, cooking fresh raviolis, got some foccachia de recco, and then time to sleep!

We wake in the night train after a light night if sleep. Sharing a small 2x3m room with 6 bunk beds. It always feels like half a night, or just the continuation of the next day, quick bathroom break, then a snack, and we now have to walk 3 train cars to reach our bikes and get them ready.

The train started dropping passengers starting at 6am, and then a stop every 15 min until 9:10 am. So we took the time to see the landscapes trough the windows, and enjoyed the early morning sun and lighting.

We will have to take another train to go to Italy. Only 1 hour ride, but it is more logistics again, we need get the tickets, and get the bikes in a packed train.

The Nice -> Vintemille train is quite popular on Saturday morning because it follows the sea side and stops in all the beach locations. Even Monaco !

We start riding with so much excitement, get some food, eat some Italian stuff.

The road is amazing

We end up riding 83km, quite a lot for a day started at 11am and with a weird night

Starting a km 50, it starts raining, making the conditions slightly harder. Not a lot of rain, just enough to cool us, and make the road slippery, but not enough to stop us.

The camping is ok, definitely not the best spot, but we feel safe, and it is quite cheap.

We went to eat pizza, the beach are privatized, probably one of the most annoying thing in italy.

Then Gelato, fix the bikes, charging our phones. And then let’s go to sleep in our brand new tent.