June 13, 2025
Day 64 - Orta San Giulio to Somma Lombardo
Squaring the Circle
We tied the two ends of the string together today, finishing up where we started 64 days ago. It’s been a great trip and we actually had some time to reminisce about it as we cruised down the Ticino river along the same bike path we rode for our ‘new bike shake down’ ride on the 10th April.
Another short day with only one moderate climb right at the start, which about halfway up we realized we didn’t need to climb at all as we would loose the elevation we gained just to rejoin the main road out of town that we had turned off … the one that went along the flat lake shore …. with very little traffic on it!
If you look close on the map you’ll see a short little spur near the start. That’s it. We’ll just chalk this up as a little bit of exercise that we probably didn’t need. It’s a good thing we got that out of the way early in the day (not that early as we didn’t start to ride until about 10:45!) as it turned into a very hot one.
Not much to say about the day. No drama really, a stop in Borgomanero for a salad, some shade and some cold fizzy water; this stop also elicited another classic encounter with a group of older Italian men…. While we were waiting for our food to arrive, four elderly gents (elderly even by our standards) who looked liked they’ve occupied the same table for generations, were having an intense and animated conversation about our bikes. As always, this resulted in a ‘tour’ of the bikes and an in depth conversation about planetary gear boxes and belt drive systems. We’re getting pretty good at doing this as it’s a regular thing in Italy…. With old retired guys!
After this lunch we were back on the road where the only thing that could pass as drama was a short section of rough ‘stony trail’ where we had two tractors pulling ‘organic fertilizer’ spreaders to avoid. After this is was back to the gentrified program with some quiet country roads; another water and gelato stop in Sesto Calende on Lake Maggiore and then some great bike trail along the Ticino river to finish the day …. And the trip!
We pulled into Agriturismo Sant’Anna and were warmly greeted by Margaret, gave Buddy the Dog (his name was Zen, but to me he was Buddy) a belly rub, and had our post ride sweaty bevy. A fine end to the day and the trip.
The creatures of habit that we are saw us return to Castigo for dinner, the same place we ate at twice when we were here in April. Happy to report that the third time was just as good as the other two!
Tomorrow is ‘packing’ day but it will be one of the easiest we’ve had as everything we need has been stored away in Margaret’s garage for the last two months.
This will be the last ‘regular’ post. We’ll probably put in some travel / transit updates and will certainly give a trip recap and ‘best of’ post, but not until we’re back at home.
As always for me, the trip isn’t over until the bikes are back in the garage in Canmore … and sometimes that’s a few days after we actually get there thanks to AC or WestJet baggage handling! So the scheduled ‘trip over’ date is 6 July but we’ll see what happens. In the interim, we’re still going to be doing some touring around in Europe, but by car, not bike … so that won’t make into this cycling journal!
With that, thanks to everyone who followed along and gave us comments along the way. As we’ve said before, the main driver for doing a journal is so that we can keep these long trips straight in our own heads, but it’s nice to be able to share the experience with others, and we thank all of you who shared it with us.
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SOTD
For most of this trip I carried around a lot of ‘expectation baggage’ from my 1982 trip, and it all paid off in the last few weeks, so here’s a classic from 1982 (and I can vividly remember hearing this playing in a SPAR in North Yorkshire while I was picking up some food), and I think the chorus is a good way to end this…
More Than This, Roxy Music 1982
‘More than this
You know there’s nothing
More than this
Tell me one thing
More than this
No, there’s nothing‘
Every generation had their “Lounge Lizard’ music, Bryan Ferry kinda filled that in the ‘80’s.
Actual comment from this video on You Tube:
“I love their music it's always so sleazy somehow, all those nights clubbing in the 70's & 80's, can smell the perfume and beer“ …. Say’s it all!
Today's ride: 53 km (33 miles)
Total: 2,731 km (1,696 miles)
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