April 13, 2015
Going Well Off Coarse: near Terni to near Norcia.
This morning it is quarter past eight when I finally stir from the comfortable sleeping-bag. There are no houses anywhere about, so there's no rush. The sun is well up and the tent dry. Breakfast is the last of the cornflakes with sliced banana and raisins mixed in and wetted with chocolate milk: a very filling, energy packed start to the day.
I am on the road at half nine. An easy relaxed and glorious sunny spring morning. The bike light after ridding out my food pannier over the weekend and it is all downhill to Terni, which would have consequences later, but for now I'm glad to see a hypermarket on the way in. I load up on shopping, calculating that I add about seven kilograms to the bike's weight; which include, three and a half litres of water, a litre carton of wine. The breakfast cereal aisle is a place of impossible decisions to make. There is as usual in Italian supermarkets, no porridge and all alternatives are expensive. The best value is cornflakes at two euros for a five-hundred grams box, but it needs a heck of a lot of pannier space, preferably at the top where it won't get all crushed and there's less danger the plastic bag will burst, causing a mess of cornflake all through the bag. In the end I settled for a packet of cerealas: an oatmeal biscuit.
Terni is a big town, a city even: a dozen kilometres of busy through route, interspersed with roundabouts with overpasses and overhead bright green signs on to parallel autostrade for ROMA and BOLOGNA and my way south, Rieti. But first I stop for coffee. The café I chose carefully, having had a look around the walls for electricity outlets before ordering anything, finding a power-point outside by a free pavement table. My camera battery is low, so I plug it in and linger over a cappuccino and my notebook for an hour while it's charging.
Another thing that stroke me riding through, the city is enclosed by formidable mountains, especial to the south. And so it is, I follow the main route out of town south until a dark tunnel mouth looms ahead with usual no-cycling sign. So return to the previous roundabout and after some map consultation, follow road 209 toward Visso, which is north east, but along a valley and hopefully there's no tunnel ahead.
This way isn't quite the way I wanted to go today, but this road 209, if it were on a Michelin map, it would have a green outline highlighting it as scenic. A deep passage through mountains below grey rocky crags; a small green river to the right of the road through lush valley with pine trees on the slopes and fruit trees in full pink and white blossom along leafy roadside verges sprinkled with buttercup and daisy.
The road as previously said is to Visso, but by five in the afternoon, I take a right turning for Norcia, which involves a steady climb, but not too severe. And it having been a warm afternoon and not wanting to drink all my water needed to cook dinner, I stop in a narrow village street and buy a cold coke from the shop, which is also a bar. Further the road levels out upon a plain of farmed fields and a sting of villages, but by dusk I come to a section of old road up above the modern road cutting and well hidden by saplings, where I set up my tent for the night.
Today's ride: 85 km (53 miles)
Total: 2,670 km (1,658 miles)
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