October 12, 2023
Day 37: Frascati to Roma
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My great idea was to include the Appia Antica on our route today. It's a linear park consisting of the last 10km of the Appian Way, along with aqueduct ruins, and a whole lot of other neat archeological stuff. It's overwhelming, really.
Our checkin at the campground was 2pm, and as you can see above, we had 41km to cover leisurely, so we took our time leaving Frascati.
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I assumed that Komoot could handle getting us from the outskirts of Rome to the inskirts. It could not. The crowdsourced mapping data sometimes can't distinguish between a public road and a private driveway. In this case, it was worse: the private driveway literally ended at a brick wall with no possible exit. So we turned around, went the wrong way down the street we climbed to get here in the first place, and on my own, found a more circuitous route that did the job.
Luckily, the rest of the ride to the Appia Antica was uneventful. One thing I forgot to mention is that Eurovelo 7 follows this ancient road, and is in fact how I became aware of it in the first place.
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We got a map to refer to later, but for now, we just wanted to ride and let serendipity take over.
It started out as dirt, went through a very narrow and low railway underpass, then emerged as very rough cobblestones. I don't think these were original. Bits and pieces of that would appear later, much to our delight at first, then much to our chagrin.
We rode the singletrack desire trails for a while, but then the stone path became much smoother. We could finally move our focus to the surroundings.
Here's a good shot of an original road fragment. I read somewhere that the cracks between the stones were actually filled with cement, so it was a pretty decent surface. Furthermore, you can see the deep ruts that formed over repeated use. So in this state, no, a touring bike isn't the right tool for the job.
We had lunch at this spot, which would have been perfect if not for the presence of many many small house flies. You can see how thrilled I am about them.
More and more ruins were popping up around us, when out of the corner of my eye, I spotted a... goat? Then another, and another. The road was soon lousy with goats. Then the herder dogs arrived, followed by the herders themselves, all trying to round up the stragglers. It was a real sight to see, in a very unexpected place. Talk about serendipity!
The amusement turned to hilarity as a huge cluster of leisure bikers approached the herd. It was a big face-off. Eventually the goats filtered around the riders, and the riders were able to carry on, but we were still stuck behind the goats! So the leisure bikers had the last laugh after all.
I routed us off this road, and on to a real one. I detoured us about 1km ahead. When we rejoined the Appia Antica, we were at the Catacombs of Saint Sebastian, and things were crazy. The road was still cobbled, but cars and scooters were everywhere. It was pure chaos! This was the infamous Roman traffic everyone warned us about!
We knew at this point we'd have to give up on our dream of triumphantly riding the ancient road into central Rome, and instead just work on getting to the campground. Oh, and also not becoming roadkill. Understandably, we had little desire to snap photos.
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Traffic improved a little bit as we approached the campground. Finally, we arrived, dog-tired and mentally frazzled. Fortunately, everything went smoothly, and we had no difficulty securing a site. It's near the highway, but I'll take that over some of the mosquito-infested swamplands we've visited on this tour. There are mosquitos here. Just not at our campsite. I'm very happy about that.
This is our base camp as we explore Roma on foot for the next three days. We still don't have a game plan, but we'll be ok. We may even get bored and spend the second or third day on our bikes. It feels great to have that level of freedom.
Today's ride: 41 km (25 miles)
Total: 2,134 km (1,325 miles)
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