A more challenging day I think it would be fair to say! The plan was for a shorter day today of just under 100 miles but we intended to make up for this slacking by completing 10,000 feet of climbing through the mountains of the Polllino National Park as we headed south towards the ‘toe’ of Italy.
We left the hotel at 06:30 and after 35 miles of shorter climbs we stopped by the sea in Sapri for breakfast. A wonderful balanced meal of bananas, ham paninis and strange tasting pastries. Then it was back to work for the serious climbs of the day.
The elevation graph for the day shows a series of long climbs and they were; a succession of long slow ascents up empty mountain roads through this spectacular Italian wilderness.
The day went pretty well but just as we had nearly completed the last big climb, the fatigue (a ‘bonk’ in cycling parlance) that had been stalking me for a couple of days arrived with a vengeance so at this point let me pass the pen over to Graham to take up the story..
Our knowledge of the topography of our route overall was somewhat sketchy, limited in most instances to a ‘total climb’ figure from
Bikeroutetoaster which we were given good reason to query on many occasions. This, to my mind, was a good thing. Our blissful ignorance of ‘what we were about to receive’ meant that we got on with the job generally in good heart, generally underestimating what was coming and subsequently travelled some of the most outstanding scenery and conquered the most gruelling challenges that undoubtedly became highlights of the expedition, highlights that otherwise we might well have avoided, missing out big time. Even near the end of day one when we first hit the hills, we got to the top of a rough minor road that must have been (or felt like) a ‘1 in 3’ or ‘1 in 4’ in places (I know – but I’m THAT generation!) and all of us had to dismount to recover. All had to pour chocolate, gels and bars down our gullets, all of us were shaking uncontrollably for 5 minutes or so as we surveyed the fantastic undulating terrain spread out before us. Italy, as we know now, is just like that!
So it was on day 5. Mid afternoon and we’d already completed 3 massive climbs. We swept down and down and down, down even further than I thought we could go – it wasn’t like going into a valley, it was more like a pit! When we eventually hit the bottom and crossed the bridge it was hard to see how the river got out of there. Pleasant meadows in a valley bottom – ‘hey guys, the rest of the day could be a doddle – straight down the valley’. Chris meanwhile was keeping uncharacteristically quiet and it wasn’t long before we realised that we’d ‘turned off’ and a gentle climb started to steepen and ‘oh boy, here come the hairpins!’ Then slow realisation that the distant ‘hill fort’ thousands of feet above us on the sky line was our next town – that’s how good our topographical foresight was! The place sounded inoffensive enough, but then perhaps that just goes to illustrate our limited grasp of Italian, something I still don’t know for sure. Bitter experience had taught us what ‘Monte’ meant. We’d learnt that word quickly. We weren’t heading for ‘Montemormanno’ however, just good old plain ‘Mormanno’ that we all hoped meant ‘a quiet pleasant place by a tranquil river’.
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| Top of another big hill |
It wasn’t that Sam was less fit than the rest of us and he’s certainly nearly as strong as the three of us combined, it’s just that he didn’t have any fuel. Since day one his digestive system had been in rebellion. He didn’t complain – he just got on with the job – but we were unable to miss the tell-tale signs, some of which were extraordinarily loud and explosive and in any other Company would have been deemed exceedingly offensive! Not even the complete annihilation of my plenteous stock of ‘Rennies’ did more than offer temporary relief. His food intake had diminished steadily over the days, until he had got to the point where he must have been burning 7 to 8,000 calories daily on an intake that couldn’t have been much more than 2,000, and then 2,000 that probably wasn’t being processed and converted correctly. The body, like every other machine, can’t do that for long.
So it was that Sam was ‘nursed’ up that climb to Mormanno, a very deserted road zigzagging across the wooded mountainside, long made obsolete by a new Autostrada. Progress was slow but there was no way he was going to be beaten (and quite honestly there wasn’t anywhere else he could go!). A mile or so short of the ‘hill fort’ that still towered above, the road passed through a derelict old factory of some description – could have been a wood or flower mill as I can’t see what else might have been perched on that hillside in the middle of nowhere. This spooky and somewhat depressing spot was where we stopped once more for fuel, water and recuperation. Sam was shaking and as white as a sheet – i knew he couldn’t go on and was concerned that his dogged determination would ultimately hurt him badly. Dr Prietzel took charge and prescribed ‘2 gels now! Don’t think about it! Forget your bloated tummy – just get them down your throat!’. Poor Sam, desperate patient that he was, obediently took his medicine and visibly turned a whiter shade of pale while Chris, not for the first time, made elaborate misinterpretations of contour lines on some map or other that he seemed able to ‘conjure up’ on his mobile phone.
Somehow Sam made it up the last steep road to ‘civilisation’. As we still climbed through the high street of this one horse town all of us were dreaming of the road on the other side, sitting in the saddle with the wind in our hair as we whizzed all the way to the front door of our hotel without turning a pedal! Ah such dreams, such frequent dreams on our journey to date, but this one perhaps the most important and poignant of them all. If this dream, unlike the others, was a dream that came true it could be our salvation – the team would arrive in tact at Morano Colabro.
In spite of his condition Sam remained the main ‘on track’ man. His remarkable ‘red dot’ (like Chris’s ‘contour map’, a Harry Potter like trick to my generation), had, among other things, got us through the maze that surrounded Naples without a hitch, in spite of brand new rail terminals built across the route, mad Italian dustmen and young Sirens at petrol stations. Even at the limit of physical exertion Sam’s brain was still focussed, and at the top of the town the ‘red dot’ delivered the final blow. No we didn’t go straight on – we turned left! Not a word from the man – his wheel turned left – he blew his way 10 yards up what looked like an interminable ‘1 in 6’ and he stopped.
This is where you really start to understand some of the challenges associated with unsupported cycling, there we were in the mountain village of Mormanno, Sam needed to stop and the rest of us still had the energy to make the destination, what to do? Well we learned from a helpful lady in a village shop that a bus would be there in an hour to take Sam onto Morano Calabro so on this basis, we took the decision to part company. We went on our way leaving Sam at the bus stop where he cut a rather pathetic figure, shivering and shaking in anything and everything he could find to wear as darkness fell. Needless to say the bus didn't turn up and Sam tells us that feeling rather dejected he wandered into the centre of the village where he found a small, empty cafe and wandering in was greeted by a very warm middle aged lady who took one look at him and immediately produced a huge mug of sweet, hot chocolate which he reports was the best thing he'd ever tasted. After five minutes of frantic gesticulations the message was received and understood that a hotel room was being sought and following a couple of phone calls an attractive girl appeared and escorted him to the ‘Royal’ bed and breakfast where for the princely sum of €20 Euros he tells us he was provided with a small room, a small towel and probably the best night’s sleep he’d ever had.
For the remainder of the crew the rest of the day wasn’t the same. In three such trips we’d never had to separate before – it was unknown territory. The ‘1 in 6’ did prove interminable, perhaps more so than appeared from the bottom, but at the top the road crested a forested mountain and plummeted even more steeply than it rose through rough surfaced hairpins into further habitation and a quiet main road where we turned left – uphill! (What is it about left turns?) Late as ever we had to get a move on – 12 miles still to go and all three of us tired and a bit despondent, wondering how serious the consequences of the split might be – had we lost Sam now? Would he be OK? Had we done the right thing to leave him on his own? Should we be taking him to see a Doctor? Luckily the hill wasn’t too serious for once and turned into a gentle ascent up a high pastoral valley, 14 to 16 mph peloton stuff, calling on the services of ‘the Bell that pulls us through when times are tough’ to drag us up to the final dark tunnel. Half way through, the road dipped and the gaping bright mouth rapidly grew and spat us out into an extraordinary new land. ‘Oh Sam – how did you manage to miss this?’ Like a scene from ‘Lord of the Rings’ a high plateau was spread out far below us with our medieval fortified destination perched on a rock above the side of the plateau like Minas Tirith in Gondor, spectacular but still far below us. It seemed that the snow patched scree and grass covered mountains surrounded the plateau on every side with no obvious way out. Unlike the other side of the tunnel (the Shire in comparison) a fierce cold wind was blowing hard against us, forcing us to moderate speed and stop for layers as we took the descent, sweeping round hairpin after hairpin for thousands of feet with the fortress growing nearer and nearer until it felt as if we could drop a pebble onto a buttress.
So it was that we came to Morano Calabro, three of the four, knowing no bus had overtaken us so we’d made it before Sam, made it to the outskirts of the fortress anyway, before we took the wrong road (right uphill as it happened – it had to be wrong!) and, missing the red dot, had to take guidance from 2 admirable Italian 12 year olds on their choppers (the modern equivalent anyway!) who were very polite and acquitted themselves very well in class room English words, leading us at breakneck speed through cobbled streets and the dusk to the rough area of our ‘B and B’.
When finally Cinderella greeted us at the
Villa San Dominica she confirmed we were the first and we settled into our nightly routines with one ear open for a bus arriving in the plaza outside. The bus never came. Unfortunately what was to my mind the best meal of the trip with the best local red wine (probably because it was a set menu and we didn’t have to randomly point at unknown words on a card) was a solemn affair, full of concerned debate about the recent past and what we should do now, interspersed with text and phone communication with Sam, reassuring at least in passing the knowledge that he was safe and in bed which was where he needed to be.
Horror of horrors Chris then insisted that, in the absence of Sam, I had to do something useful like get involved in the navigation. Cinderella came up trumps yet again, providing us with not only a PC but also a printer, and by midnight we’d reached some sort of agreement on the route for the following day.
97 miles
Average speed 10
Calories 7850
Feet climbed 10,000
Chris’ peddle turns 46,000
