9 posts tagged “cycling”

We took the bikes down to Windsor Great Park this morning (recommended by A, and definitely a good call). Managed to find several entrances, after we'd negotiated the appalling traffic through Windsor and Eton, but none of them had any sort of information point where we could grab a map - we had to go back into Windsor and find a tourist information office for that. And pay £1.

However, the park was a lovely place to cycle - beautiful views, very few people and broad paved paths. We had lunch in an overblown garden centre then cycled on to find a totem pole that A had mentioned. The only photos I took today, and none of them worked!

We did roughly 20k in a very leisurely way the drove back into Windsor town centre for a brief wander around the outside of the castle (good gargoyles) and through some of the twistier streets. Mouse found a Games Workshop and bought himself some skeletons, so he's a happy bunny.

Mouse has been very cuddly today, much as I love him, it's a bit overpowering to be constantly bear-hugged, jumped on, leant on and generally overpowered - but it's better than if he didn't. I just feel a little bowed...

A&J took us out to their favourite Indian restaurant tonight. Mouse, I think, tried a bit of everything and ended up with something very hot with prawns. He is complaining that he was misinformed, but actually think he secretly enjoyed it.

 

Today was a day for cycling - we set off along the path to Fishbourne at the back of C&G's house. Altough marked as a footpath, C said that he had cycled it and it was perfectly ok - possibly true on a better bike than mine, I got a bit bogged down in the very muddy bits. We dropped into the Roman palace again, as Handsome had managed to leave his camera there yesterday morning and we had to pick it up.

From there we picked up a cycle path called the Salterns Way which took us by various meanders to West Wittering. We went down to the beach there, which was gorgeous and empty and windswept. C says that there can be thousands and thousands and thousands of people on that beach in summer, and the queue for the carpark goes back to the main road. I think we saw five other people (not including the horses galloping across the sands - well that was what my romantic imagination thought they should be doing, in reality they were pacing sedately). The bikes grounded a little in the sand, so we had to leave them on the dunes at the top of the beach.

Had lunch in a pub with the odd name of The Old House at Home - I need to google that and find out why it's called that, especially as there are two pubs with that name around here. (Did that, still no idea).

After lunch we headed back along the cycle path as far as Itchenor, where the foot ferry from Bosham (it rejoices in the wonderful name of the Itchy Bosom Ferry) comes in in summer. When it's running. As it isn't running just now, we sat and looked at the boats for a bit, then headed off to Chichester Marina where Handsome and myself did a geocache, and Luke had a puncture... There are a row of gorgeous houseboats along the canal there - not at all modern and sleek like the boats on the marina, but lived-in-looking and characterful.

Then we came back to Bosham for ice cream.

Sorry, too busy reading to blog (got it, got it, got it), and anyway, I don't want to remember the three hour cycle ride in the torrential rain last weekend

We only did it so that Handsome could try out his new bike rack...

Handsome's getting a bit serious about this biking thing - we have just purchased a new bike rack for the back of the car (the one that's normally full of boots and rucksacks) upon which he can stack the bikes (no, I don't stack bikes under any circumstances) so that they stay upright, not touching each other, and unwobbly. Apparently this is more difficult because I have the gall to have a woman's bike, which doesn't have a crossbar, so it hangs differently.

Or so I'm told.

And we needed an extension piece to turn the three-bike bike rack into a four-bike bike rack - even though one of those four bikes has actually left home. I suppose there's always the possibility that Hairy might bring his bike back 'specially to go on family bike-rides, or alternatively, Handsome might need to take both his bikes, in case the terrain was changeable. Oh, and we had to get a towbar put on the car to put the bike rack on, because otherwise there would be no point.

Handsome spent an evening playing with the towbar and then an evening playing with the bike rack... and then he told me about it. Honestly, how interesting is a bike rack? It's like having a conversation about fridges.

I think we might be going cycling this weekend, and I think we might have to force Mouse to come too, because there wouldn't be any point whatsoever in only putting two bikes on the bike rack!

Handsome cycled into work today - I was well impressed, it's quite a long way, and some of it's uphill. This is because he's getting his new bike on a 'cycle to work' scheme, where you don't have to pay tax on the purchase or something, thereby saving quite a substantial amount.

It's only a cycle to work scheme, so I gave him a lift back home (which is predominantly uphill), although to be fair, he did intend to cycle back too. I overtook him on the last stretch this morning, and he'd picked up a cycling-buddy. They looked proper professional taking the corners in perfect synchronicity!

 Mogliano to Vicenza to Padua to Vicenza again.

 Oooh train hell! Only a very few trains in Italy have bike compartments, so it was absolutely imperative that we got on the right ones. Mama spent ages yesterday sorting it all out with the nice man at the train station. So there we all were, lined up and ready to go, with seven minutes to make a change in Mestre that involved taking six bikes down the stairs, through the subway and up the stairs again, and no idea which end of the train the bike compartment was. And guess what? It all worked.

 So now the bikes are all locked up in a bike rack at Vicenza station and we're having iced tea and waiting for the train to Padova (which is what Padua is really called).

 We took a group photo of all the bikes in front of the entrance to the very posh hotel before we left today; they look wonderfully out of place, but somehow very fitting. (Added later – my photo hasn’t worked out very well – I’ll have to see if I can steal someone else’s and change it).

 Later: We got a double decker train into Padova, so of course we all sat on top.

 

Padova was hot, humid and sticky, and I'll confess I didn't really like it very much. Hairy got very, very grumpy (too hot, low blood sugar). I spent most of the afternoon attempting to keep him away from Handsome, occasionally I failed and they snarled at each other. Temperature and testosterone – what a combination.

 Got a double decker train back again, sat on top again! 

 Vicenza, on the other hand, looks as though it will be lovely in the morning - full of old twisty streets and different levels, and interesting looking corners. We've got a couple of hours here before we have to take the train to Mestre tomorrow. But we leave the bikes here to be collected from the hotel. I’m quite sad to say goodbye to my orange bike…

 Handsome (and everyone else except Hairy) finally got to eat spaghetti with clams tonight -  spaghetti alle vongolli – it was the one thing he said he wanted to eat in Italy, and this is the first time we’ve seen it on a menu. It was very tasty, if spicier than I had thought it would be. No-one told me it had chilli flakes in it! 

Solighetto to Treviso to Mogliano

 
Today we were taken by minibus to Treviso to start off. It took us a while to pick up the right route because the driver didn't actually drop us where the instructions started from. And then the instructions were a bit off - not a lot, but enough to make us have to ask where streets were a few times.

Once we found the right route, however, we had a lovely run. Almost the whole day was following the river Sile, and it was a beautiful river, full of dabchicks, ducks, herons and coots, with trees lining the banks and a lovely level cycle path to follow.

There was a barge cemetery, called the 'Cimitero dei Burci', where strikers in the 1970s sunk all the barges so that they couldn't be made to work anymore. From the look of the hulls that were left, they must have been huge wherries, but apparently they were still pulled by oxen. I think I'll have a look on the internet and see if can find out more when I get home.

(http://www.camillopavan.it/Sile_Piarda_di_Casier/Alcune_pagine/cimitero_dei_barconi.htm) added later – most of the sites I could find are in Italian, naturally.

We arrived at the Villa Condulmer in style tonight. sweeping up the avenue on our bikes. I think this is the poshest place I have ever stayed in. And it is absolutely huge. There's an outdoor swimming pool, with changing rooms and towels, so practically the first thing the boys, Mama and me did was swim. It was lovely. Handsome came down too, after a while, but he had to wait until Hairy went in, 'cos he'd forgotten to pack trunks so they had to share! Me and Mama swam, then dried, then swam again. Heaven. And we're here for three nights, so assuming we get back from Venice in time, we can swim again.      

Around Solighetto

I got bitten last night (probably by ants) on my right foot, so l will have to be more careful as it was particularly uncomfortable cycling today. I felt as if my ankle was on fire by the time we got back.

Breakfast this morning was lovely with plates of fresh fruit including huge redcurrants still on their 'string', pomegranate juice, some gorgeous pastries, as well as all the usual stuff - oh and cornflakes for Sam who has been suffering from food-recognition deprivation syndrome.

He had two bowls.

We had a short run today just fifteen k, which is just as well, as it was very, very, very hot. In fact sweltering. We went from the hotel at Solighetto, through La Bella to Follina, where we stopped for iced tea and cokes. I got twenty questions (in Italian then Pidgin English) from a group of Italian cyclists, who obviously wanted to know who the mad buggers on bright orange sit-up-and-beg road bikes were. I'm not sure I managed an understandable answer, although I did try.

Then we had a wander around the abbey there (Basilica Abbazia di Follina) which is a very pretty Cistercian abbey. There was a wedding or something going on while we were there, so we couldn't go all the way through, but there was still lots to look at in the cloisters and gardens. After that we had a bit of a long uphill push to Miane, and then a wonderful long downhill no-pedals-required bit almost all the way back.

We took the boys across the road for pizza once we got back, and then me and Mama went for a short walk to find the restaurant where we're booked in tonight.

Later: After a very humid and stuffy afternoon, we've had a big thunderstorm and it is currently raining heavily. Mama and I went across to the main entrance to the hotel and 'borrowed' two of their umbrellas. But as we have about 500 meters to get to the restaurant tonight, along a main road with no pavement, and it is still raining heavily - I think we are going to get wet. However the air is much clearer tonight.

Later yet: Cracking thunderstorm on the walk back from the restaurant, with lightening streaking across the darkened sky repeatedly. Handsome and Mouse went back out with their cameras after we got in, I cowered in my room and tried to shut out the noise!

Marostica

Set up the bikes, and took them out for our first day - a circular out of and back into Marostica. Mama wasn't feeling too fit this morning so she and Papa turned back fairly soon. She says it's only getting accustomed to the heat, I hope that is the case. That left me as the main recipient of Mouse's jokes, particularly the "look at all that corn, isn't it a-maizing" one, which he made at least fifteen times and then got grumpy because I wasn't laughing any more.

We had lunch at Breganze even although we'd only stopped for cokes! Today's learning curve is we need to carry more water with us - Mouse had drunk his share and mine before elevensies time, it took a while to rehydrate, so we did it gradually over a long lunch. There have been some scary junctions where we have to cross the main road, but on the whole, the route is very quiet, Small pretty roads running through fields of maize and cherry trees and vines. There are lots of very big houses.

Marostica is an ancient walled town and every year they play a game of chess on a giant chess board right in the middle of the town square and all the pieces are real people dressed up. The story goes that back in the 15th century there were two suitors for a girl's hand. Rather than have a traditional duel where one of them would die, they had a game of chess and the winner got the girl and the loser got the sister!

All the afternoon cycling was on the plain so thankfully mostly flattish which was good, because I was really starting to have a sore bum! Got back to the hotel (Albergo Du Mori) and dove for the shower - very necessary, cycling in 30 degrees is a sweaty business. Found Mama and Papa in a cafe in the central square so we joined them for drinks and bought the boys proper ice creams (gelato) which I then pinched bits of until they protested. They had chocolate mint and strawberry, and they were gorgeous.

Had a wee daunder around town to see what could be seen, and just now I'm sitting at a table at the back of the hotel enjoying a little bit of a breeze and about to play cards with the boys.

Later: Had pizza sitting around the square tonight. They close it to all cars from 7:30pm and the whole of the middle is taken over by small children running around and playing games and generally being tired out by their parents. It all feels very relaxed.