Sipping a spritz in Venice

Map & Pin: Casteggio, Lake Iseo, Monte Isola, Lake Garda, Verona, Vicenza, Venice.

I'm in a delightful cafe in the backstreets of Venice, sipping an aperitif and taking the opportunity to bring you all up to date.
So much for promises of more regular blog updates – the latest problem has been electricity, rather than simple wi-fi access, so I’m going to desist from making any further hollow promises about more regular coverage. We’re not actually staying in Venice, but just on the mainland at a campsite, in fact. Everywhere between Genova and here has been brilliant. Mostly. Because I am so rubbish at getting regular posts to appear on the blog, I have broken this latest update into chapters for ease of reading or so that you might avoid those bits which seem potentially unappealing or dull (so it’s a lottery – try to guess by the headings).

I love Milan, but that’s not why I’m still here

Rather surprisingly, Milan had a very good campsite, up near the San Siro, for about €25 a night. For Italy, this represents reasonably good value – everything is more expensive here, from accommodation to booze, food, museum entrances and even our rare forays onto public transport. I liked Milan more than I expected to, which of course says more about my pathetic pre-formed opinions than anything else. It does have a fuckload of cobbles, though. Really, really annoying ones – about an 8.5 on the cobble-twat-o-meter. The city’s cathedral is an absolute beaut, though, and the city generally, even well out into the suburbs, is well designed, nicely executed and clearly cared for with all due love and attention. The San Siro is stunning (from the outside) and the giant Da Vinci horse is awesome. We only spent a day in the city, which isn’t anything like enough to do it justice, but a return visit would be welcome, albeit after I have sold Neil into slavery to fund a long weekend with a decent hotel and meals. We met a nice local cyclist and a friendly fellow tourer from South Africa, as well as having an excellent Italian barman at the campsite to offset the bunch of Irish twats giving all of Britain a bad name.

Unfortunately (have you noticed that there is almost always an ‘unfortunately’ in these things?) all the joy of Milan was almost undone by the absolute motherfucking debacle of trying to get out of the place. FOUR HOURS AND THIRY KILOMETRES. I swear to you on the name of all that is unholy that I am not exaggerating one minute or millimetre for comic/tragic effect. We spent four hours and rode thirty kilometres before I broke down and begged to be allowed to go to visit an internet café and consult the google map oracle to discover the secret of our true path. Which we did. Having eventually escaped the city, we then rode another 70-odd kms in baking heat to collapse at a campsite on the shore of Lake Iseo.

Italian Lakes – the depths and shallows

Our first night I wouldn’t even have known there was a lake there, to be frank. I drank a bottle of Becks, ate our emergency pasta meal (four cheese packet pasta for €1 – highly recommended) and went to sleep. The next day we moved on to Monte Isola (island), which was nothing short of superb. Big claim coming up – it was the best campsite yet and I think it unlikely to be surpassed on this trip. For those of you who don’t know, Monte Isola is the largest lake island in Europe (obviously everyone I am acquainted with will know that, but there could be other readers who found the site googling for a description of the drivers of Vigo, or somesuch, for whom such trifling titbits of information are a godsend). Cars are banned (although scooters are sadly still allowed but in fairness I think you’d only get them off their Italian drivers by prizing them from their cold dead hands – a not unattractive option) and we were ferried over with our cycles in a small boat. There is only one campsite on the island and it is almost completely full of permanent cabin/van sites, but as we were only staying one night, the owner gave us the perfect site right on the very edge of the lake and looking out over ??? – a monastery built on a tiny rock island in the water. Mountains parade across your horizon while ducks and ducklings provide a peaceful diversion from the potentially pleasant monotony of a mesmerising liquid gold sunset reflected in the mirror of the lake. Occasionally, fish break the surface to taunt small fat fisherman chugging quietly by in little wooden boats, oars trailing in the water as the outboard throws up a gentle wake to add the kiss of lapping waves to the evening soundtrack.

It’s disgusting and there should be a law against it. There were loads of families there and the children could swim in the shallow edge of the lake until about eight o’clock in the evening. A kindly Dutch couple dropped by to give us some tealights and couple of glass lamps that they were going to throw out but thought we might like to use. Interestingly, as the kiwis move ever closer to the leper colony of Angela’s utopia, the Dutch are steadily climbing the charts. In truth, the more Dutch people I meet, the more Dutch people I like, which bodes well for cycling in Holland.

We cycled around the island in the afternoon, about 10km in all, and then chilled for the rest of the day, swimming in the lake before enjoying a camp dinner of salad and these really crap-looking but strangely delicious spinach and mozzarella pancake things. The campsite was about €25 a night – go stay there, it is a soul-cleansingly beautiful and peaceful place.

In the lakes there is no ‘unfortunately’ but there is Lake Garda, which is just about everything that Lake Iseo and Monte Isola are not. To begin with, we planned our most ambitious day’s climbing to get from one lake to the other – a 700+m peak straight out of the town in a climb covering about 10km. In truth, we may have done more difficult climbs, but we haven’t * meant* to. The other 60km-odd was going to be a gentle downhill slope from the top of the mountain to Lake Garda. It’s got a vaguely pantomime feel about it, hasn’t it? I’m sure you’re wryly chuckling already and resisting the urge to shout ‘it’s in front of you’. The path we had chosen did in fact include not one but two 700+m mountains. We thought we rocked when we’d finished the first one. We * were* the kings of the mountain as we soared down the other side through magnificent mountain landscapes, stopping for our pre-prepared celebratory nice big lunch in a strange and ugly industrial estate that sprang out of nowhere like a wart on the countryside. Then, oddly, the road began to climb. And climb. And fucking climb at gradients easily twice as steep as anything we’d already done. We were traversing like cross country skiers in reverse through 35+c heat and I was feeling as sick as a bastard. Never have I regretted the lunch of triumph so much. Things were so bad that I had to buy and drink cold water before the top of the hill while Neil had an ice cream (the bastard – I swear, he doesn’t eat, he just makes food ‘disappear’).

Finally, we reached the top and coasted through a massive downhill, complete with extremely cool (in both senses) tunnels, and was it worth it? Was it fuck. When we reached the bottom, two motorcycle cops escorted us and made us take a shortcut around a tunnel. I’ll be honest, they were slightly scary – it really felt like they had been waiting for us, even though they assured us that the short cut was ‘for our own good’ and ‘safer’. And they waited at the other end to make sure we came out. Later, we arrived in Salo (in my head, Nick Cave is narrating this now over eerie carnival music) where there were NO campsites, despite little tent marks on our map, and the world’s unfriendliest tourist info office person who resented us for interrupting her cigarette break, begrudgingly gave us only sketchy information and told us we could ride on a path that was not for cycles thus turning the local population against us.

The first Lake Garda campsite we tried was full – yet gleefully told us that even if it wasn’t, they would have charged us €36 for the night. The next one… well, it wasn’t full. It was around a long, windy, hilly road (that was an alternative to another direct, largely flat road that we would have taken had the road signs promising ‘other campsites’ not directed us otherwise) and was going to be about €27 a night. Still, we were knackered and agreed begrudgingly to pay the price for a site with car, caravan and two people. I mean, although it wasn’t on the lake, it did at least have a pool – which I eagerly approached to refresh my much-abused body. Only to discover, and I cannot possibly prepare you for this, that in order to use it, you needed to wear a bathing cap. You will probably be shocked to learn that this is not something I packed. In fact, it’s not something I have possessed since I was a child pawn in the games of sick adults that thought squashing school children’s heads into rubber sheathes and forcing them to thrash their way up and down water filled pens was character building/entertaining (delete as you feel applicable). I don’t think it is too much to say that I felt bereft. They all had them, didn’t they – the children and adults already using the pool. I was left with no option but to trudge off down the road hoping to eventually find my way to the lake for a swim. Which I did. And it was good. In fairness, the Italian-speaking campsite owner did charge us a reduced rate in the end – I think she’d just been shocked that two skanky, bici-riding, non-bathing cap types had unexpectedly washed up at her door.

Lake Garda is over-developed, over-expensive and over-used. My advice would be to pick another lake or go in winter: maybe it’s nice then. I’d go for the majesty of Iseo and Monte Isola, even though it’s smaller, over the shallow attractions of Garda every time.

V for all very nice really

Since the day of hell climbing, it’s all been terribly pleasant. From Garda we headed to Verona, with which I fell shamelessly in love, enticed by every bauble and trinket on offer. It’s so terribly, terribly picturesque; so full of character and antiquity; so in love with itself that you can’t help but love it. It out-Milan’s Milan in the ‘god aren’t we all horrifically stylish’ stakes, but why shouldn’t it? The opera was in town, although tickets were but a dream, and the Roman amphitheatre was dressed for the Barber of Seville. Everywhere Verona is arresting: the frescoes, the sculptures, the towers, crypts and altars – every inch of stone in the old town of Verona carries its weight in creating a flawed yet perfect place that is the past now. I can’t think of anywhere that so effectively combines respect and admiration for the old with every day life.

And, the Verona Card, people, is a bargain. You’ll go places, and they guide books they will tell you to purchase the ‘day this’ or the ‘museum that’ or the ‘adventurer bollocks whatnot’ and they will claim that they give you good discounts on access to important things that you actually want to see when in fact all you get is entry to the exhibition of 14th century monks’ toenail clippings and the great knots of Europe maritime display. The Verona Card actually gives you entry to everything you want to see for €8 in one day. I sightseed like a demon and I didn’t finish the card – you know what it’s like, you get a card with bits to get crossed off and you have to go for it. And you get bus travel thrown in (although the centre of the old city is a pedestrian zone and most of the ‘sights’ are there, so I’m not sure where you’d go).

On top of all that, the campsite we stayed at was possibly the second best campsite so far – on the hill below the castle looking over the old town. Steps straight down the hill to Pietr Ponte and into the town in 10 minutes, lovely shared terraces with tables for cooking, eating, drinking and chatting, lots of tent pitches shaded by grape-laden vines, magnificent views, friendly staff and reasonably prices (although slightly warm) beer. In short, if you’re in the region, go to Verona. If you go to Verona and you like museums and churches, buy the Verona Card and definitely stay at the castle campground.

I've no idea what Vicenza is like because we just rode through it really. We stayed at the crappest campsite on the side of a motorway with absolutely nothing in or around it, went on a failed mision to find ice and ended up finding a good pub where we sat around for too long drinking pints of Tennants (there has clearly been some serious Scottish infiltration in this area) and 'chatting' to the locals, including the people running the bar who were off to a beer fest in Earl's Court.

Venice so far has been very good indeed, but I don't have time for an in depth update yet. My ice is melting and I'll probably need to take to the canals again soon to make sure I get home in time to cook dinner - we've got camp light problems again, and Venice is waaaaaaaay to expensive to dine out in. I'll try to get some pictures up on Flickr if my connection holds up and will hopefully update from Trieste in a couple of days when we have made a final decision on the rather compelling 'coast of Croatia v across Slovenia' question.

Ciao for now (even older blog update below...)

12 July 2007

Today was the type of day to remind you why this whole cycling thing didn’t seem the stupidest idea ever. Started with a 10km-odd climb out of Genova – challenging but not crushing, which is just how we like ‘em. The riding was beautiful, along a windy mountain road beside a small trickling stream crossed by crumbling stone bridges with the occasional picturesque village breaking the ‘monotony’ of the beautiful green countryside between. We were almost always in sight of a fantastic railway line, the kind that makes you wonder how people ever fell out of love with train travel: lots of long tunnels and narrow sections of rail climbing across ravines on tall, elegant stone arches.

Then, what seems like it must be a miracle. From the top of the mountain pass, which was about 25km from the start of our cycle, the next 80km seemed, ever so slightly, to be downhill. That is of course not possible. There was a great descent straight away, of course – about 10km straight down (I clocked 48kph on the gentle slope at the bottom, according to the speed gun thing on the side of the road). We stopped for caffe freddos and then headed off again. And the rest is history. I’m sat at the Hotel Albergo D’Angelo about 50km south of Milan (Neil has just been ‘chatting’ – pointing and miming – with the manager and he informs me that both Pantani and the Juventus team have stayed here) having cycled more than 100km and feeling grand. I hasten to add that we are not staying in this delightful 4-star hotel. We are sleeping rough near the railway tracks up the road, but we need to wait until it’s a bit darker to bed down inconspicuously, so we’re having a beer here.

The countryside makes a refreshing change after so much Spain. It’s green, with actual rivers and lots of dare-I-say-it stereotypically beautiful Italian churches and town halls.