You’re right, Mantua is a magical place - as are nearly all the major historical cities in this part of the Po. Enjoy Verona!

Thanks for reminding me of this song, which I listened to many times long ago. The album came out while I was still in high school, and may have been my first folk music album. I was surprised to see that the lyrics are the English version (rewritten by Rod McKuen!) of the French original by Jacques Brel.

Oh, and it helps when we're in roughly the same time zone!

One thing I've noticed is that we often read each other's journals while on tour. Yet another opportunity to connect with other people during those stretches when we feel like we're the only ones foolish enough to travel this way. Thanks for sharing! Looks like you're just getting started on your Spain adventure. Buena suerte!

Very well said as to why you go through the effort of posting a journal. We are enjoying following you two. Your posts have been informative and reflect well the joys and challenges of bike touring. Safe travels!

Great to see the maps for your rides now!

Thanks to you I've figured it out. I've e updated my entries. Pretty awesome! As you say, it's clunky, especially on a tablet, so I might just do them in batches on rest days. We'll see how it pans out.

Wow, I wasn't expecting that! Thanks!

Tobacco

https://www.facebook.com/wilsoncountyces/posts/the-more-mature-tobacco-in-the-county-is-beginning-to-flower-growers-will-soon-b/2231137120463086/

I wish we could give you more than one like for your writing of today's adventure. Oh my gosh, what a day! Here's hoping the rest of your trip is a bit less adventure and a lot more fun riding. And no more canyons or donkeyburros!

The only thing you could add to make it worse would be a strong headwind, our 3 H trifecta of misery- heat, hills and headwinds.

I, too,use Komoot for planning and navigation. It does take a few minutes more to embed the map than if I were using RWGPS, but it works for me. Komoot has a feature that allows you to download your route as a gpx file. Once it's on your phone or computer you can import the gpx file to RWGPS. At first it was a bit fiddly and you might not want to bother, but once I got the hang of it, it didn't take much time at all.

I am enjoying your discovering Italy, so keep up the entertaining journaling and don't worry about the maps.

Good call on avoiding the Via Francigena. On our 2019 tour (CPH to Lecce https://www.cycleblaze.com/journals/lecce/) we also abandoned the VF for the EV7, perhaps later than we should have though. The VF seems to be more suited to the ‘on foot’ pilgrimage crowd.

Here's hoping you did not pee in the lake, er, reservoir. Too bad you feel you cannot put your track into your blog, it helps so much with context, we find. Steve takes our Osmand track and puts it in the blog as RidewithGPS. If you are interested perhaps he could tell you how he does it. I (Dodie) am not technical, but it seems to take him only a few minutes. Maybe it would work with Komoot?

Ah yes, Jacquie, melatonin! Great suggestion. I'll add it to our packing checklist for next time.