Day 7 - Vicenza to Mestre (Venice): I was honked at by geese - It's Italy not Macedonia. Oh well. (2015)

September 24, 2015

Day 7 - Vicenza to Mestre (Venice): I was honked at by geese

Bah! It's impossible to find a place to sit and have a quiet end of the day drink, without being surrounded by smokers. Totally gross. But anyway...

Today's ride was planned for me by the trained mice at google maps. They did pretty well really. It was a pretty direct route between Vicenza and Mestre, but with a good mix of quiet roads, bike paths near busy roads, greenways, suburban streets and the odd section of busier roads (unavoidable) linking it all together. Although I was occasionally in the country, most of the way it was one smallish town after another, with enough suburban and industrial sprall to basically link them all together. There was obviously enough density of population to support regular parking lots with newish shopping centres attached ("We have 22 shops and restaurants" one proudly advertised), car dealerships, kitchen showrooms, and other such stuff.

I didn't get away until close to 10am after a long phone call back to Austalia and then a chat with the B&B owner and another guest. As it was raining, and forecast to ease, this was actually a good strategy as it turns out. I had a few hours of drizzle and light rain when cycling but it was pretty much all over by lunchtime - although the sun never really came out and the time/date/temperature signage on buildings kept confirming that it was only about 14° for most of the day. There was nothing really standout interesting on the ride, but it was pleasant enough watching people have their lives as I went past. School pickups; road workers; the old farmer in a field; chickens and and honking geese 'grazing' on the grass verges; local industries like dairies, cement factories, plant nurseries, garage door fabricators and auto repair shops; lots of old people and teenagers getting from A to B by bike; a couple of roadies; squealing kids outside a gelato shop; and lots of signs for upcoming (or recently past) local festivals. Interesting enough, but nothing very photogenic...

I didn't pass so many nice old things today. La Torre Rossa was the exception. Everything in the town was named after it, except the town. So they were obviously also quite excited by it!

... and way too much of this sort of rubbish. Bike paths blocked to make it difficult for cars and bikes with panniers.

I had lunch in a town called Asego, choosing between the two available cafe/bars on the basis of the age of the buildings, hoping that newer building would equal better bathroom?!? I don't know if my theory holds more generally, but certainly the bathroom was new and clean! I had a generic ham and cheese toasted sandwich, on that scary white bread with no crust that NEEDS to be toasted. The man running the place was completely freaked out by the idea of travelling by bicycle - he'd never heard of it before. Also the idea that I, an Australian and tourist, had somehow ended up in his cafe. Fair enough I guess! He was very excited by it all and wished me well.

Close to here, I passed a cross street - via K. Adenauer. I wonder what prompted this?

There was one section of road near a small place called Scortegaretta, where the road was really too narrow and too busy. Nominally only 50km/h (ha!!), but narrow with no shoulder and dropoffs to drainage ditches on both sides of the road. I was not the only one to have noticed the issue. Houses on both sides of the road had placed old bikes to hang off their fence, or attached them to spikes near the driveways, and there were handpainted fabric signs calling on the local government to provide bike paths on their road. I hope it happens for them - it was pretty bad.

A lesson I learnt today is that when there are lots of complicated oneway street systems in the areas you need to cycle through for the day, accidentially plotting the GPS route from your destination to your departure point (instead of the other way around) is really annoying.

In the late afternoon, after checking into the hotel in Mestre and washing myself and some clothes, I spent some time wandering around. Most impressive is the town planning which makes many of the roads in the area one way, giving over the other side of the road to two-way bike paths. In any case this looks like a fine place to have a base for Venice over the next couple of days.

A poorly photographed example of the great bike paths. It was getting late.

Today's ride: 69 km (43 miles)
Total: 301 km (187 miles)

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