It’s only going down they (I) said

In good mood with left the hotel after a nice Italian breakfast. I was a bit worried about my rear wheel, but it rolled and we wanted to keep going. this time a long stage was ahead of us, however the height profile showed it was basically only going down no significant uphills througout the whole stage except maybe some climbing to get to our destination in the very end of the stage

This interpretation was wrong!

The first 15-20 kms were great and as expected nice downhill not steep and we made quite good progress, however once again the wind was against us which was already a bit of a bummer. But the real mess started when we rode into the first uphill, totally unexpcted. Not long, but still 50-100m climbing…. ok somhow I must have missed this, I thought at first… then looking at the height profile I noticed there were a few more of these… So the ride looked like this… downhill, a bit flat then uphill, steep downhill, flat, uphill, and so on… I can’t recall how many times we did this, and of course all paired with a nasty head wind. Not that much of joy, but what can you do….

The landscape was actually really nice… and hilly (ha ha)

On my road bike with no luggage and tailwind I can imagine that I’d probably enjoy riding a bike a lot there.

I also noticed that the damage on my rear wheel was actually worse than I initially thought it was. The rim was a little bent and the tire actually showed a bulge and sealing milk was leaking there. Still today I am curious what could have caused this, since this looked severe and I can’t recall exposing the bike to any other bumps than usual.

Our desination town this time was really just chosen because going to the sea was too far and there was nothing else on our way. We booked a room in the only B&B around and equipped ourselves with food for dinner since there was no restaurant there either. We actually stopped at Lidl and found a Brezel. Anouk loved the little taste of home.

Once again it showed the least you expect something special the nicer it gets when you arrive. The B&B was located in an old renovated stone house and was really nice and actually the cheapest on our whole trip. It was located right next to the town square where they had a pavillion with a bar and a super nice view for the sunset. What a great place to chill and relax after that long ride. Later also some kids showed up who Anouk played with. We stayed there long and enjoyed the atmosphere.

Before going to bed I put a tube in my tire, to stop it from losing air. That also magically removed the bulge in the tire.