April 11, 2015
Sights On The Way South: Somewhere (lost) to Panicale.
I hear snap of twigs and panting dogs approach. Then looking out see two Old English Sheep Dogs sniff their way toward my tent. With aluminium water-bottle which serves as my teacup in hand I get up out of the tent opening and stand to attention to greet the dogs' owner, a red faced gentleman about seventy in smart green tweeds. He huffs and surprize flushes his face on seeing me camped here, but instantly grins, muttering something in Italian and calls back the leading dog, now into my tent, sniffing out my food.
In his hand is a short shafted tool with shiny metal triangular head. The dogs resume leading the way, sniffing the ground on toward pine trees on the edge of my campsite. One dog pauses and claws at the leaf-mulch. The old man says something to the dog as he stoops and digs the spot, bringing forth something in his hand. He straightens up and waves me over and puts in my hand a small white tuber with grains of earth clinging to the skin. I realise it is a truffle as I turn it in the palm of my hand. Handing it back, the old man intimates to keep it, motioning to clean it off and putting fingers to mouth to taste, which I do. It doesn't taste of much.
I am on the road shortly after nine. The narrow strip of asphalt continues to climb through the pine trees. Then at a bend there's a right turnoff toward the morning sun and as it seems more like the southerly direction I want to go, I turn along it. A little way in the asphalt ends and onward is consolidated white gravel. The place on the sign said Roselund 3km and the way is high up around the hillside of a deep valley until said place, a hilltop hamlet where half the houses are padlocked and derelict with weeds growing up along the lower walls, but on the way in is a nicely kept garden and renovated house with a Netherland's Volvo parked in the drive. A few of the other lived in houses have the look of being weekend retreats too.
There is a church closing off the end of the street and it seems this is road's end, until I reach the front and see the road turn right along the side of the last house and immediately plummet down into the valley below.
The gravel is looser and I descend carefully with the rear-brake squealing. Rounding a final bend brings me down a gentler slope levelling out across the valley floor with horses in woodland marched paddocks either side, out to a tee with a straight road against a wall of woodland.
I turn left as it looks to be southerly by the sun glinting through treetops and to be down valley. But a kilometre on I cross a bridge and the way goes up across the side of the valley, then round a hairpin bend back on itself, the first off many. And it become hard to keep riding on the gritty loose gravel as the slope steepens. It looks like I'm turning back on myself as the sun which is covering over with cloud coming in, is behind me. Eventually I climb to a tee with a tarmacked road. I turn right and uphill. Soon realising this road is the same I camped off and turned off earlier.
Monte Lucia, the sign says as I approach another tee on a hilltop with a huge skeletal mask with satellite discs thereon rising high above the pine trees to the left. The right turning is signposted "Arezzo" which is something: a city Susana back in Genova said is worth visiting. The way of coarse is sharp downhill. The first village I drop through is full of vans parked by the side with cycle branding on the side and young men fixing chunky downhill mountain bikes at the rears. And groups of riders with expensive fully swung machines in between, looking more like motor-cross riders with their padding and full face helmets than cyclists. Further down the downhill coarse transverses the road and I'm marshalled to halt while two competitors pass.
I don't hang around long in Arezzo, stopping for a coffee when I get there around three, as I need to trash out a good hundred and twelve kilometre-day if I'm ever to make it to Southern Italy.
I ride toward Puglia to after sunset when I'm in an area with houses popping up everywhere making it difficult finding a camping spot. But eventually come to a somewhat reasonable place in an overgrown unproductive olive grove, far enough from the nearest house.
Today's ride: 111 km (69 miles)
Total: 2,467 km (1,532 miles)
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