Hell

Another day another stage, we started the day with our usual routine, and left the nice lake. And set our way for what seemed to be an average stage, approx. 70kms, no big climbs, no big deal. the route was set to get around in quite some distance to be not affected by the traffice there. After some days of camping a stay in a town in an appartment was waiting for us. Tivoli has actually 2 ancient villas which are unesco world heritage and also while planning it looked interesting so I was really looking forward to get there.

For the first hour we made decent progress, however already in the morning we did not really have sunshine it was cloudy and warm. Over the time it got warmer and warmer, also from the scenery we could sense that we had left northern Italy, everything looked a bit run down including, also the road conditions were not what they were in the beginning around lago maggiore. For some reason this tim eI also had issues with the GPS which was until then super realiable which made us take some wrong turns causing us to utunr here and there which slowed us down.

Around noon the heat was way above 30degrees and with no wind and a lot humidity it turned the ride slowly into hell. I realized something was going wong when the soles of my shoes started to heat up, turning every push on the pedal into pain, which became worse and worse little by little with every pedal stroke. That something was drastically wrong I noticed soon later when I had emptied my whole water supply (3liters!!!) in 2 hours. By then with terrible pain (I actually had a burnt blister on my left foot) we stoppedd in the next town at a bar. Before ordering something to at and drink there we actually emptied a whole bottle of Lipton Ice tea (1.5litres) and a can of Lemon soda. In the bar we ordered some sandwhiches and had each 2 big glasses water with mint siroup. After that we felt okay once again – except my feet, but taking off the shoes for a while helped quite a bit.

Once we felt that we could survive if we continued for the last third of the stage.

Which did not get a lot better once we realized the city lies actually on somewhat of a mountain top with 200m of climbing on a dusty road with lots and lots off traffic.

In the end we also got this one up and first stopped at a playground under trees where stayed for quitesome time to let Anouk play and we took some time to recover.

We got into our appartment, actually the fist time we had to carry bikes and trailer inside, the stare of the owner was once more priceless when we explained where came from and what we are up to.

The city was actually nice to visit. Luckily in the evening it rained which cooled down everyhting and stopped the pressing heat which otherwise would have probably made us look for other oprions how to continue the ride.

Note: This was and actually still is the first time that I ran out of water in any whatsoever tour I did so far.