October 8, 2011
A Trip to the Mountains Aborted: We are in Venice
Today wasn't our smartest day of cycling. We set of in the morning for the hills. It was cold. The map seemed impossible to follow and we were getting colder and colder until after about 5km both of us were shivering uncontrollably. We came to another dead end looked at each other and said 'why the hell are we doing this' so turned around and back to Treviso. We had a booking for Sunday night so had to go back to the Centre of Family Hospitality to cancel before we made our way to Venice. The lady seemed to have a little difficulty understanding this but I got the message across eventually but of course there was still the problem of 'Mr Antony'. I was to ring him when we arrived on Sunday so asked the receptionist to sort this out. All this did was trigger a torrent of calls from Mr Antony to my mobile phone. We communicated very badly on the phone as both were lacking in linguistic skills (he was Chinese that didn't help). I seemed unable to get the message to him that we wouldn't be there on Sunday. Eventually in frustration I turned my phone off and when I turned it on later I noted 4 missed calls from Mr Antony.
We went into a café ordered a large capachino and a pastry and rooted around in our panniers for all the warm clothes we could find. Then we set off. The Sila river south and east of Treviso is a maze of wonderful cycle tracks winding their way through the swap land and the various braids of the river. They weren't labeled with directions though seemed if they were labeled to go to Casole sul Sila - however they went in all directions - we made an executive decision and followed Route 6. Lovely it was too and eventually after many circles we got to Casole. This was indeed progress and we could see on the map a road that would take us to Quatro which was on our cycle route. At Quatro the route split one arm going to Venice and the other to the ancient Port of Altino where the Via Claudia Augusta ended. We were of course going to Venice so we took the well marked cycle track and ended up in Altino. What to do? We could go all the way back or be really brave and get on the main road. We chose the latter and went as fast as we could and before long we were where we hoped to stay in a bungalow at Camping Alba D'Ora. Only problem the place had shut down. Back on the terrifying road and on we went until we saw a sign pointing to a Band B. It was absolutely beautiful and the lady, who spoke no English went out of her way to make us welcome. However it is out in the country a bit and difficult to walk anywhere, too terrifying to bike and we began to feel more and more like caged birds. I booked in for one night then off we went on foot - walked about 5km and found an impersonal hotel in a small suburb on the bus route just before Venice and have booked in from tomorrow night - all we have to do is ride 5km on the terrifying road tomorrow.
A walk up the said road took us to a wonderful Pizza place for dinner and who should we meet but two couples from Dunedin who had been on a cruise. One of them, who was a builder, actually had known our brother-in-law Ian Finnie - small world
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Today's ride: 55 km (34 miles)
Total: 3,818 km (2,371 miles)
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