On Friday morning I woke up and my head didn't move which as you can imagine was slightly disconcerting; a neck injury that had been quietly lurking for some weeks chose yesterday to return with a vengeance. This combined with Chris' suspected slipped disk, provided a sudden stream of last minute business for Amanda, our brilliant local sports physiotherapist. Anyway injuries not withstanding, after an evening of packing bikes we were all set and at 04:30 this morning Chris collected each of us for the drive to Gatwick Airport. For reasons better known to themselves Harley and Graham were adorned in interesting hats, indeed Graham was looking for all the world like he'd just stepped from the pages of 'A room with a view'
The flight was reasonably uneventful save the usual delays. Its funny how you get an impression of the national character as soon as you get to a place, immigration seemed distinctly uninterested in our passports and the hotel bus driver on discovering that all our bike boxes wouldn't fit into his bus, forced them in and tied his back door shut, It concentrated the mind beautifully having several thousand pounds worth of bikes protected from the Italian traffic by nothing more than a thin piece of string. The hotel is serviceable and much as expected. On arrival we each disappeared to our rooms to rebuild the bikes. A period of jogging from room to room with tools, pumps and various lubricants followed- all of which resulted with four perfectly formed bikes and strangely no bits left over.
This evening we went into Venice to find the same restaurant at which we celebrated the completion of our last trip. It provided another excellent meal with several bottles of wine and a heated debate about the merits of private education, somewhat topical as whilst we are off having fun, several of our children are in the middle of their GCSEs.
We then went for a wander through this beautiful renaissance city, returning to the hotel by water taxi. The plan is to leave the hotel at 05:00 tomorrow morning at the start of our 160 mile ride to Montegridolfo. Also tomorrow, Jack, Harry and the band are in the semi-final of the national 'Live and Unsigned' competition in Reading, if they get through they'll be in the final at the O2 in London - Good luck chaps!!
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