In Ferrara: along the Po

May 17, 2023

Expecting another rain-out, my plan for the day is to see the inside of the cathedral and maybe the castle, two obvious targets for a wet day. Rachael has an umbrella and hopes to fit in a walk, and then we’re likely to make lunch the main meal again today - we’ve already picked out the venue.

The unexpected happens though and it looks like we’ve got four or five dry hours to work with, ending around two. Rachael still takes her walk, but I decide on a bike ride west of the city, the one direction from here we’ve never seen before now. I quickly sketch up a route, Rachael loads it to the Garmin, and around ten I leave the apartment and head west.

Once I leave town I’m on a paved path following the Burana Canal for the next eight miles. Very quiet, peaceful cycling - I don’t think I shared the trail with anyone but a few walkers out with their dogs the whole way - and well surfaced if getting a bit rippled from the tree roots. I’m also on a spur of Eurovelo 8, though I didn’t realize it at the time. A branch of it splits south from the Po here to pass through Ferrara before returning to the river on the other side of the city.

West of Ferrara, on an excellent if undramatic spur of the EV8.

The view south from the bike path. Many of the fields are flooded, and in a couple of spots I had to lift the bike over giant hoses pumping water from the fields into the canal.

I liked the colorful homes here, but I see I also captured a pair of mallards.

For no obvious reason I found myself on this rocky path for a short way, when the pavement is over on the other side of the canal.

I could keep riding the EV8 west to Andalucia, but that would spoil the suspense for our plans for the fall; and besides I don’t have any cash or credit cards along this morning except for my emergency €20 in the underbag, and that won’t get me far. So when I come to another large canal I leave the bike path for a minor road bordering it and follow this larger canal north to the Po. It’s quite good sized and I mistake it at first for a river, but it’s the Cavo Napoleonico, a canal Napoleon had built in 1807 to connect the Po to the Reno River flowing in from Tuscany. It’s not navigable, but was built for water management to provide a spillway to control flooding on the Reno by emptying excess water into the Po.

I’m not really sure about this road or today’s conditions either as I bike north for the next few miles. There’s no shoulder on this small road, a few large trucks surprisingly pass me, and it’s starting to shower lightly. There’s no shelter here, and I’m tempted to turn back the way I came and accept the shelter of the trees along the canal for a possibly wet ride home.

North along the Cavo Napoleanico. So is that the beginnings of the Dolomites in the distance? I hadn’t thought about it before, but with all this rain the mountains should still be pretty white when we get to Lake Garda and Trento in a few weeks.

Zooming in. This is in the direction of Vicenza and Bassano del Grappa. Nothing’s high enough this side of Vicenza, so this must be the beginning of the Brenta Dolomites.

The end of the Cavo Napoleanico, where today an abundant flow is spilling into the Po.

I continue on though, and by the time I reach the great river the rain has stopped. The next ten miles east along the Po are a beautiful ride, nearly the entire way on a paved path on top of the dike fifteen or twenty feet above the river and flood plain. I don’t see another car or even a bicycle for the next hour as I bike past stands of poplar and enjoy broad views from my elevated position.

Big river. That spike in the distance is the bell tower of the church at Steinta, five miles away.

Just the bike and me out here this morning.

Ravelle, a village on my side of the river.

#155: Cattle egret. From a distance I assumed they were little egrets at first, but they don’t really behave the same and the sandy coloring distinguishes them if you’re close enough to see it.

The route I’ve mapped for myself continues east of Ferrara for a couple of miles before angling back toward it, following the other end of that spur of the EV8 I was on at the start of the ride. This looks like a fine path too - paved, nicely separated from the traffic - until it suddenly proves unrideable because the next eighth of a mile is completely flooded.

So I leave the path for the road, which is uncomfortably narrow and busy. It’s no wonder they built this path here really, for safety reasons. I bike the road for about a quarter mile, just enough to get past the flooded section, and return to the path at the first opportunity. That lasts me maybe a hundred yards, when I come to another flooded section as bad as the first and have to just backtrack and return to the road.

Being a slow learner and an optimist, I return to the path again when that second flooded stretch ends. The next one I soon come to though looks to be a full quarter mile long, and that does it for me. I stick with the road and its traffic for the next mile or two until my route diverts to beneath the walls, which I follow until the gate nearest our apartment. Here too though there’s the occasional water trap to be evaded.

It’s zoomed in and foreshortened, but I’m pretty sure it’s about a quarter mile to the far end.

Beneath the walls. I’d show more photos of them here, but Rachael’s already got that well covered.

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Ride stats today: 35 miles, 700’; for the tour: 1,218 miles, 59,400’

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2023 Bird List

155. Cattle egret

156. Ring-necked pheasant

Today's ride: 35 miles (56 km)
Total: 1,213 miles (1,952 km)

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Rachel and Patrick HugensWe hear about all the flooding in Northern Italy. What are your plans for fall??
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1 year ago

Scott AndersonI’ve been reading about the flooding also. Some of the worst hit places - Ravenna, Faenza - aren’t far from us at all. We’ve really been pretty lucky.

Fall is still on the drawing board (well, except for the flight to Bilbao that we bought a few months ago), but the plan is a three month tour of Spain beginning in Bilbao and ending in Valencia, followed by a month in Cyprus.
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1 year ago

Suzanne GibsonYou got a pretty long ride in considering the weather! Overcast came make for great moody pictures, too. Still, sorry about the extreme rains. Cold here in Toulouse but relatively dry, today anyway.
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1 year ago