I'm rolling.
For real!

At last, on the road again! I consider myself now an expert train rider in Italy, but it was about time to actually start pedalling again. I took in the morning a train from Naples to Rome. Easy peasy. It was great to be in Rome again, and while it might seem for some people a little bit daunting to bike in Rome, it's actually good. Definitely helped that I spent last November there to know my way around a bit, even though I rode once in circles.

What I learned so far from staying at different accomodations, they can be hit or miss. It not always depends on the price you pay. Formello was great in that regard and in the evening I was driven by my host to a great local restaurant, where I not only had Cacio e Pepe, but a Carbonara as well. Actually couldn't fully finish it.

As the first day went great, I was looking very much forward to that one, hoping to not encounter any dogs. To my surprise, just outside of Formello, there were no wild dogs, but free ranging horses. A lot better! And It started with quite some steep hills. One thing that I learned, or rather accepted. There's no shame in pushing your bike up the hill. It's very different riding whether you go with a super light weight road bike or a fully loaded touring bike. It can be frustrating, but eventually one arrives.

I should get into a better routine writing the tours up. For the best of me, I can't remember a lot of the leg to Viterbo. Only that I got started pretty early and had a pretty lonely breakfast. My hosts went to the market in Rome to sell their goods and just prepared everything. The stay was certainly good, but I believe a lot more enjoyable when there are more people around.

That's a common theme right now. I'm most of the time by myself, no other bikers, no other tourists, just me. It's absolutely ok for me, I'm quite good with that. But I certainly look forward to see a bit more people around.

This is the part where I sort of fell in love with the Via Cassia. It is not a cycle path, but rather a small country road, at least in some parts. As mentioned earlier, I find the Italian drivers quite courteous, specially on these smaller roads. One thing that I now use as a rule of thumb. If the route is straight, try to avoid. Drivers will be fast and rush through. If it has many turns, take it. It's usually a lot easier to get up because of the turns and the cars can't go fast. That's just what I'm doing, but so far it works for me.

A fun day! Starting in the fog and abandoning the EV5 route again for the Via Cassia. I was sitting at the bottom of the climb to Radicofani for quite some time. Chatting a bit, smoking a bit and preparing myself mentally. And while it's always quite a big pain to go up a mountain, it's most of the time very rewarding once you made it. That was definitely the case here as well.

Looking at the widget below, it doesn't look steep. But it was a good hour of pushing the bike up. No way that I would be pedalling. And actually pushing is a solid workout as well. At least when your bike is roughly 45kg.

This was a day with a perfect start. A pushy middle. And a disappointing end.

It all started in the morning at Gallina. And here I decided to actually take the EV5 route, for some reason. I again went up a bit the wrong hill and then I came to Bagno Vignoni. That was wow. It's a little town with a hot spring. The hot spring was going down through the village and then down the mountain. A super special feature was a natural hot pool in the center of the Bagno Vignoni. Beautiful! The push up afterwards was definitely worth it.

Bad start, trying to get out of this car hell. Going through many smaller towns it's actually quite interesting on how they all work. The worst ones are certainly the ones that are just around a street, where cars are rushing through. Specially if there are not even sidewalks, the only option to move around is to drive by car.

Eventually the road turned calmer though and I was entering the area of Siena. Beautiful hills and neighbourhoods, a horse came by, people were walking and running.