Chinatishire!

A small wee Hill

So we arrived in Chinanti”shire” at noonish, staying in a rather swanky Agritourism little number, weather was sop posed to be thunderstorms so hey we’re allowed a bit of luxury, turns out to be a small piece of Tuscan manner sent from heaven! I can’t describe quite how welcoming and idilic the place is….Well I can! And I will but that’s another post! Oh go on here’s a cheeky livener!

Bloody stunning

Anyway we check in and Sian says doctorate mumblings, ok yes if you think you can crack on all good I’ll go for a ride. All good.. So quick hack a route on RideWithGPS and it’s time to go….

The Alpes vs Tuscany

When planning a route in the Alpes and one comes across a 10 mile climb which gains 650m of altitude, one can plan for such a ride (90+ %) of the time, it will be gradual rise of x%, it may over a course of kilometres get steeper or less steep however will never unduly deviate from the general prescribed “upness” of the general local terrain. This is what a civilised non-Yorkshire based person would expect!

However the Italians seem to care less for such reasonableness! So my gentle 10 mile assault on “Valico del Morrelino’ was actually a massively bastardardly bugger of a climb!

Straight from the off there were up and down on Berkshire-esque tarmac of +\- 15%! Deep joy! Then the sun did it’s 2-3pm 30deg C thing, luckily all this toiling required some stoppage for photography!

Far to pretty for an imbecile to put into words!

Once I’d used all my excuses I settled into a nice routine of:

– too much sweat in my left eye

– stop coz of left eye excuse

– take bad picture with right eye

– ride badly, sweating lots

This joyful cycle of semi based torture occurred until, Hallelujah made it to the top! Can’t see out of either eye now but!….

Goat made it, not sure I helped?

Going down is easy street?

The above image lies!

What actually it should show is an inverted gradient on the downside of the chuffing dirty great up think (mountain/hill), I swear that is one the sketchiest downhills I’ve ever done on a road bike!

Full on potholed crap on 15-20% slopes with hairpins I couldn’t get the van round! Thank god I choose anti-clockwise (random guess/ cyclists intuition!, who knows!) otherwise I’d have had to ride up this Zoncolan seeming terror! Maybe I’ll take Sian up the other way tomorrow, muhaha! Err no..

Sharted myself so much I had to stop and take a pic of power station, as you do..

Ahhh nothing but some industry to break up the crap view!

Corner shops vs Tabbichi

This ones easy, so I’ve gone up n over the big mountainy thing, all good but what wasn’t planned was a random storm of quite large piss-it-down-ness! Well of course it wasn’t planned was it? No decent story comes out of planning man!

Anyway the chuffing sky chucks one!

Proper Irish rain

Now I could’ve ridden on but then I sort refuge under the shop window cover of a Tabbichi, it’s basically a corner shop / newsagent / tobacconist. BUT NO! SO MUCH MORE! It’s only a Rudy BAR too!

Salvation!

When it rains drink Moretti, rule 459

The rest of ride just happens. Thus ends today’s lesson in nothing useful 😜