I filmed the entire 8 mile descent on my GoPro camera, but when I got to the bottom and looked round, no Rob. So I waited, and still no sign of him. I rang him, and he had a puncture. I waited 15 minutes in the soaring heat and eventually he rolled down. About 40 minutes after that, another puncture. This time we'd noticed a slash in the tyre. Again. So we called up his Dad, gave him our coordinates, and waited. After about two hours we were rolling again. New tube, new tyre.
And from this point, everything went terribly wrong.
Morale was low, energy was low, heat was high and so was the traffic. We climbed up and down and up and down until we hit Florence. And that's when the traffic started. My god, London is so much less hectic. Today at least. Bearing in mind we were both fatigued, the traffic tipped us over the edge. It took almost 2 hours to get far enough out of Florence to find normality again.
I'm going to digress slightly here and say we found the most gorgeous spot over looking Florence from a few hundred feet up which was obviously a popular place with the tourists. You could see mile upon mile of terracotta roof tops and cathedrals, buildings, landmarks, all surrounded by greenery and mountains. Just behind framing the view we had, were the Apennines mountain range we'd spent several hours climbing over the day before. Wow.
Anyway, we soldiered on, and slowly. Fatigue and stress can seriously bring your bodies battery life down rather considerably, and it didn't recharge. The climbing didn't seem to stop, the heat didn't die down, and the clock didn't stop either, it was getting late. Traffic, punctures, split tyres. It was becoming too much.
We maintained our hourly ritual of stopping for a refill of water etc, but we weren't making much progress. The mileage counter was coming down as slowly as a slug on glass and our legs felt like lead. We kept saying "Why did we do this?" "Why are we doing this?".... It was all in jest, at least now it seems, but at the time, we wanted out. It's amazing how far you can make your body work for you when you have motivation, determination. At home, we would have given up LONG ago, but we had a check point to reach.
Slowly but surely, it began getting dark and we were fearful we wouldn't make it to Siena. In fact, we didn't. We had to call the rescue team (Robs dad) to come and get us. 13 miles away. We had only one hour, maybe more of cycling to do and we would have been home and dry, but it was half past £@#*^ nine at night and getting later and based only on the fact neither had our front or rear lights fitted, we succumbed. Had there been no traffic, and had we not encountered a two hour wait for a replacement tyre, we'd have easily made it.
If you're thinking, "Ah, just an hour away, you should have kept going", try descending down a mountain swerving round switch back after switch back in the dark, with no lights, and lorries and cars and motor bikes and scooters every 5 seconds, then you'll know what was going through our heads.
I'm sensing a little tension in my writing here as I feel a little bad for missing that last hour, but we're getting taken by car, back to the very point we were picked up, to finish the ride to Siena.
We've called for a day off tomorrow as its now 1am and an early start tomorrow just a few small hours away to begin cycling over more effing mountains is not my idea of fun. We need rest. We NEED rest.
I've been mentally challenged today (no jokes, puns or similar please) and have never been forced to do something so hard in all my life. It wasn't the weather. It wasn't the terrain. It wasn't the saddle sore. It wasn't the dehydration..... It was fatigue.
Today just wasn't meant to be.
The plus side was our next rest day was supposed to be Sunday in Rome. But it will now be Monday we spend in the capital city, and we will have been paid. Or at least Robs dad will be and we'll have our cash flow temporarily replenished, so we can make the most of being in one of the worlds most famous landmark cities.
Don't get me wrong, it wasnt 100% all bad today. Just 99%. The 1% came from the views, the experience and the feeling that we're doing something out of this world. I'll probably never cycle Italy again, neither will anyone I know now, or ever meet, so I'm not going to complain any further.
Tomorrow we go to the city of Siena, and I'm looking dead forward to having a well earns rest. As are all of us.
Check back soon
The ILWD team
Pictures:
Just for info, the two ladies photographed here are probably in their fifties, maybe more, yet have cycled all the way from Austria. I know zero German, but we shared a friendly word or two. Amazing people!
And the photo of my hand shows the tan mark I'm going to have to live with for a few months, caused by the one bit of skin the glove doesn't cover. Just shows how bloody hot it is here.
G'night!
Ciao
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