September 18, 1993
To Codogno
We awoke this morning agreed that we needed to find a way to shorten our planned trip. It's becoming apparent that the only way to keep to the original itinerary is to bike longer days and give up free time. Both of us are regularly too tired at the end of the day to see as much as we should like as it is, so we don't think lengthening our days makes much sense.
Two possibilities seem reasonable to us - to take the train from here to Firenze, or chop several hundred miles off the end of the tour on our way back to Paris. The first would eliminate what looks likely to be fairly uninteresting terrain crossing the Po River basin; and the latter would eliminate Chartres and the Loire valley, for this trip at least.
We decided to take the train from here, and so we headed to the station after breakfast, only to find that we cannot take our bikes from this station (or at least so we understood through our virtually nonexistent Italian). Opting for Plan B, we headed south out of town after first stocking up from the public market and eating breakfast down by the water. The market itself is a wonder - the square is filled with dozens of booths and is jammed with shoppers. About ten of the booths are cheese vendors, selling huge wheels of parmesan cheese that look like yellowish car tires. Also on sale are vegetables, fried chicken, clothing and much more.
Our ride south from Lecco follows the Adda valley. Slightly hilly at first, it gradually flattens out until by day's end we are cycling through almost featureless terrain. Much of the morning's ride (actually, afternoon - we didn't leave Lecco until nearly 11) is accompanied by fast, heavy traffic and much confusion over directions. Italy so far makes me appreciative of how well marked both France and Switzerland's road systems are.
We passed through several attractive and colorful communities in the northern Adda valley, featuring impressive duomos, campaniles and villas. Gradually though these give way to a broad, flat farming region where the primary features are corn fields and farm buildings.
About midday we thought up a third, better alternative for shortening our tour - and almost immediately changed the course of today's ride as a result. We decided to head from here due south to the Italian Riviera, find a place to stash our bikes for three or four days, and take the train from there to Firenze, Sienna and back again. This would chop out about six biking days, give us an extended rest from our saddles, and hopefully still leave us enough time for the Loire Valley at the end.
As a result, we continued south all day, making great time across the flat farmlands. We arrived in Codogno about 6, not terribly tired after a 100k day; and after finding our room walked off to the town center to fill up at a pizzeria.
Today's ride: 102 km (63 miles)
Total: 1,105 km (686 miles)
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