October 4, 2012
From Como to Malpensa Airport: The end of the ride after 3539km
It wasn’t a very long ride we figured it would be between 40 and 50km but we thought it would be difficult. Ken had bought a detailed map of the area and we had our GPS. The plan was in this densely populated part of northern Italy to pick off the route on smallish roads from town to town. There was an area in the middle that showed a fairly largish area of forest so we were unsure what this would bring.
We left early and as it was Saturday we hoped that the traffic would be lighter. We must be optimists. The road out of Como in the right direction was fairly steeply up hill, had heavy traffic of all sorts including many long articulated buses and this continues for over 10km. We were both beginning to privately think ‘Are we nuts, we should have paid the more than 100Euros a taxi would cost, no one in their right mind would do this for fun’. After that the traffic calmed a bit and we lost the buses, the mixture of GPS and map were helping us find some sort of a route but we still seemed to be going mainly uphill. I always thought large airports were on the flat not at the top of mountains! Then the GPS put us onto something it insisted was a road, maybe it will be one day. We couldn’t ride ,it was so rough but were encouraged when we saw a runner who said if we kept going we would eventually come to a road. We did and also came across a fairly sleazy bar where we had a luke warm cappuccino.
It was from here that we set the GPS for Castelnuovo, which appeared to be a village in the forest and things took a real turn for the good. It was a little up to start with but a fantastic road with light traffic and the best sight we could see, other cyclists who were out on training ride. The forest was lovely to ride through after the ugly towns we had been suffering. Being Saturday there were lots of people out enjoying the day collecting chestnuts and fungi in the forests. One very sad sight was four prostitutes tooting there wares along the forest edge – I don’t know who were the target clients. Out of the forest and the route still continued slightly down hill and did this nearly all the way. The towns now looked rather more attractive and although we had to be alert finding our way we had no real problems. As we approached Malpensa Airport the traffic got heavier but as we were on a secondary route it was never alarming again.
We were pleased to arrive at the Best Western Hotel at Cardano al Campo which is an airport hotel with a free shuttle to the actual airport which I believe is very close. The staff have been very good and have supplied Ken with buckets of water and a hose to clean up the disgusting bikes so they will satisfy New Zealand’s stringent biosecurity. My only contribution was to spill a large glass of apricot juice all over a chair in the room. We will leave the actual packing till tomorrow.
Stats. Number of days actually cycling 55
Distance 3539km
Ave per day 64km
Top speed 49 km/h
Time on bike(after we got our new bike computers in Germany) 188hrs
I will put on a summary of what worked and what didnt and a bit about packing up bikes
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Today's ride: 46 km (29 miles)
Total: 3,540 km (2,198 miles)
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