To Palazzo Adriano: Wrestling with the winds

May 21, 2016

About one or two in the morning I am wakened by a loud bang. A forceful windstorm has developed, and one of the shutters near ou room is apparently unsecured and is banging against the hotel wall with each new gust. I'm not the only one disturbed by the noise - I can hear the voices of others below us talking. The intermittent slamming continues for the rest of the night, making for a poor sleep.

At breakfast, the macho group is clustered around the front desk discussing their options. Their destination for the day is Palermo, roughly 90 miles away. Their ride begins by dropping to the coast near Cefalu (straight into the fierce winds) and from there along the coast. Other than the wind issue, it's by far the easiest route from here to Palermo. There is obviously some discomfort in he group about their prospects for the day, but eventually they steel themselves up and start slipping out the door.

We have a fairly long ride ahead also - over sixty miles - but it is generally westward so the north wind should be less of a problem for us. We decide to hang around the hotel for awhile and hope that the winds will die down a bit, but finally at about 11 we set off too.

We don't make any great progress at first though. We start with the steep descent to Petralia Sottano that we took yesterday. It was difficult yesterday, but this morning with the teacherous winds buffeting us on the steep switchbacks, it feels borderline unsafe. We feel that we set some sort of personal record this morning, by taking a half hour to drop a thousand feet in four miles.

Today's ride began like yesterday's, by walking down the steep back road into Petralia Sottana. Today though, we are also fighting treacherously gusting 30 mph winds. In the first half hour we covered only four miles even though it is all downhill, dropping 1000'. We are both worn out already from wrestling with gravity and the wind for control of our bikes.

The view this morning into the heart of the Madonie. We were really lucky with our ride to Piano Battaglia yesterday - if it had been like this then, I'm sure we couldn't have done it.

Finally, not far past Petralia Sottana, we round a bend and begin heading primarily west in a fairly consistent direction. The winds remain quite strong but at least are consistent and not adverse. All the way to Valledomo we fight against a crosswind that is stable enough hat we can settle into a steady cycling rhythm. We roll along through patchwork pastureland, transfixed as we go by the clouds and their shadows. They are blowing so fast across the sky that shadows in the old speed away from us as we chase after them, and patches of land sunlit by breaks in the clouds return to the shadows again in a seeming instant. Occasionally we pass batteries of long-bladed windmills spinning so rapidly that I imagine them breaking free from their standards and taking sail.

When we reach the small town of Valledomo, we can't take it any more. We find a semisheltered spot in a small plaza, break out lunch, and enjoy a respite from the wind for a few minutes.

Polizzi Generosa, the town we stopped off in yesterday to warm up after our descent from Piano Battaglia

The sky was amazing all morning, with fascinating cloud formations that raced across it. It made photography a bit tricky - patches exposed to the sun would be thrown back into the shadows about as fast as I could focus the camera.

At about the midpoint of the day's ride, and the winds are still quite fierce. The blades of the windmills were completing a 360 rotation in under two seconds.

When we started up again, it all seemed much different. It was primarily sunny, the wind had died down significantly, and cycling was much more relaxing. It was getting fairly late in the day and we still had aboutt thirtyfive miles ahead of us, so we needed to keep a good pace, but the wind for the next hour or so was almost a pure tailwind so we did well.

The road dropped for several miles before finally bottoming out in a broad valley, and then climbed back up the other side to the top of a ridge. Near the top it turned excruciatingly steep - in the 15-20% range. I had fallen behind again to take some photos, and looked far ahead to see Rachael slowly pushing her bike halfway up a long hill. With her aversion to walking hills, I knew this was going to be an awful one. I think earlier in the tour either of us might have put up more of a fight against it, but we're starting to wear down - we are both ready for a few days off, and are finally starting to look forward to the end of the tour - and are choosing our battles carefully.

Once on top, the road turned and followed the crest of the ridge as it slowly continued upward for another ten miles. This was a gorgeous stretch of the road. We have it to ourselves, and fly along buoyed by the colors in the fields and along the uncut margins of the road. We aren't far from the country we cycled through and fell in love with early in the tour, and are happy to be reminded of how wonderful that first week was for us.

Finally, we top out and begin a long, fast descent to Palazzo Adriano. We make great time, which is a good thing because it's getting quite late - we don't arrive in P.A. Until well after six.

By midafternoon the wind abated somewhat, and the skies began to clear up.

Once again, we are on empty roads lined with dazzling wildflowers. It's nice to return to the same area where we began our tour a month ago - it reminds us of just how wonderful that first week was.

Now this doesn't look good. Rachael, who has gotten a bit ahead of me here, is pushing her bike up a long grade. Rachael hates getting off and pushing even more than I do, so I know some pain is in store for me. The climb is longer and steeper than it looks here - she is quite far off, about a quarter mile or so - and I'm zoomed in on her.

Near the end of the day, east of Prizzi - another mosaic landscape.

Palazzo Adriano is a village that will likely look familiar to foreign film buffs because it is the location where Cinema Paradiso was shot. We loved that film when we saw it years ago, and if we had been less tired or it was earlier in the day we probably would have explored it a bit. We need to get to our lodging though - a restaurant/hotel another mile and a half out in the countryside, and another five hundred feet up. When we arrive, it takes a minute for the owner - who doesn't know a speck of English - to understand what we're doing there and acknowledge we have a reservation. We know barely enough Italian to confirm this, learn that the restaurant is open, and begins serving at eight. That's all we need to know.

Dinner is a different affair. This is a good restaurant, and obviously well appreciated by the locals because it is a quite full dining room even though there are almost no overnight guests. The owner is the server though, who you'll recall speaks no English - and there is no printed menu. She just blurts out what's on offer in one long run on sentence, at great speed. We pick out a few key words that we recognize, but not enough to build an order from. A problem.

By rare good fortune, there is one other guest at the hotel tonight - Chiara, from Rome, who works as a free lance tour guide and speaks excellent English. She intervenes, translates for us, helps us establish a meal plan. What a savior! We'll have more to say about Chiara in the morning, but for now we just want to eat and head for bed.

Rachael's video clip Really captures the feel of today's ride well.

Total elevation gain: today, 5,200'; for the tour, 104,700'.

Palazzo Adriano, the town where Cinema Paradiso, an old favorite of ours, was filmed. When we get back home we're going to rent it and watch it again with different eyes.

Most of the streets in Palazza Adriano's core look like this. We followed this one (pushing, because it was a fairly steep uphill and so rough-surfaced) because it was going our direction but also because of a sign pointing toward a landmark from the film. We must have missed it, but it was too late in the day and we were too tired for us to care - we just kept going on to our hotel for the night.

Today's ride: 63 miles (101 km)
Total: 1,280 miles (2,060 km)

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