Italy 2017 Part I

We had an evening Ryan Air flight from Malta to Pisa to start our Italian journey. We enjoyed a full day in Pisa. We started the morning with the tower. The carabinieri would chase the tourists off the grassy area, then disappear and the tourists would then move into the grassy area to take fun photographs until the carabinieri arrived again.

I had arranged to rent carbon-fibre bikes with back racks and panniers from a company based (rentalbikeitaly) in Livorno. We caught the train for Pisa and a bus to collect them on the outskirts of Livorno. With no alternate accommodation along the way, our first day proved to be one of the longest of our Tuscan ride (75km with 700m of elevation gain). We arrived in Volterra before evening showers.

We had two nights in Volterra. Glenn went off on a 61km ride (1100m elevation) ride to Castel San Gimignano while Sheila explored Volterra. Castel San Gimignano was heaving with tourists, while Volterra seemed moderately touristy, in a good way. Volterra has a long history and proved to be a nice stopover.

The following day, we had 50km ride from Volterra to Siena with some interesting towns along the way.

We had a kitchenette in our room (Residence Le Meridiane) and we had plenty of time in the afternoon to visit the atmospheric centre of Siena. There were a lot of tourists wandering around like ourselves. We picked up some groceries for dinner and breakfast along the way back to our hotel.

The Crete Senesi is range of barren hills to the south of Siena. We rode through the Crete on our 60km ride to Montalcino which was a pleasant stopover.

It was May Day and we had a short day of 30km to Castel del Piano. In planning the route, it didn't look like there were many accommodation options before Pitigliano, hence the shorter day. We stopped in at Abbazia di Sant'Antimo but it was not open for viewing. There was a market going on at Castel del PIano when we arrived, but once it shut down at 12:00pm, the town went quiet.

The staff at Grand Hotel Impero were especially welcoming. We had a nice room and we had a look around town for restaurants and decided to eat at the hotel that night. It was a good choice.

We had some uphill riding from Castel to Pitigliano, 65kms away. Although the traffic on the Tuscan secondary roads had been light, as we went further south, it was almost non-existent.

Pitigliano was light with tourists. We stayed in the old part of town in a quirky studio that had been dug out of solid rock. We managed to trip one of the fuses and that took a while to sort out because the fuse box was out on the street.

It was an 85km ride to Orbetello, but much of it was downhill to the coast. It was excellent riding.

We changed direction and rode north, sometimes near the Mediterranean. We had some lovely sections and after buying groceries in Vada, we rode through agricultural lands to a nice self-catering set-up, that even had a beautiful swimming pool.

We closed the loop on the final ninth day, riding into Livorno (30km). There were not many options so we rode on the SS1 for about 10km, sometimes without a shoulder. We were happy to reach the outskirts of Livorno and get off the SS1 for the waterfront. We dropped the bikes off at a predetermined house, caught a bus to the main station and went to Lucca for the week-end.