The Cinque Terre in Cinque Days (21-28 September 07)

After spending few days in Genova it was time to move on. The city is the home of pesto, and after having fresh pesto with gnocci, pesto on foccacia and pesto panini we have become pesto experts. Hmmm, this one has too much basil, not enough olive oil etc. But they take their pesto seriously, and you can even buy fresh stuff from vending on the street side, if you ever need a midnight pesto hit!!

We rode for 5 days from Genova to Pisa and we both agree it is 'the best' riding we have had for the whole trip!! The road hugged the coast providing spectacular views and then it would become narrow and wind through tiny villages. It was quite challenging with some big climbs and it was extremely popular with recreational road cyclists who would often yell 'vai vai vai' (go, go, go) when they past us on the big climbs.

We would often come across names of italian cyclists painted on the road, indicating we were riding on a stage of the Giro d'Italia or the tour of italy. So we thought we picked our roads pretty well.

Nick taking a breather on a coastal hill climb

Nat powering near the top of a 14km climb

The highlight of the ride was the day we rode through the Cinque Terre (lit means five earths) which is a group of five villages on the NW Italian Coast. They are all remarkably placed in small narrow valleys on the rugged coastline and are a huge tourist draw card. Most people ferry between them, but we of course we took on the road. Only residence cars and of course bicycles can get down to them as the main road stays high up on the cliffs. We choose to descend the 500m to one of the villages which was packed with american tourists, who would often point at our Trek bikes saying, 'look honey, they ride treks like lance armstrong..' which made us cringe.

On the way back up to the main road from the village we hit a road which was at the best laughable. It was a 3km climb, and we ascended 400m which is an average of 13% gradient. Some parts were well over 20% gradient, which is ridiculous to try and ride let alone with panniers and 40kg of gear. But we struggled our way up, resting every 100m. We were in our lowest gears, out of our seats and putting as much weight on the pedals just to get moving.

After riding the rugged coastline for 3 days, we had 2 days on the flat to rest the legs.

We had already been to Pisa so we stayed only overnight, then the following day jumped on trains to get us down to Sicily. Nat did some fantastic research to find us all the train connections that we could take our bikes on. But 2 days and 5 trains and one ferry later we were on Sicily.

Finding campgrounds in Italy is no problem, they are everywhere and we have a great map with their locations but we are now encountering the problem that they are all closing because it is out of summer. We are often the only people their, but the plus is they are getting a lot cheaper.