June 13, 2023
Castra to Montecatini Alto
We woke too early and to rain on the tent so no one was in a very good mood. Luckily there was a covered area around the toilet block where we could have our breakfast and by the time we were done it had cleared up. It was enough to wet the tent though, which is never a good start to the day. Nor is Tobias posting our wee chopping board between the planks of the deck and James having to spend 20 minutes trying to chopstick it out with the trailer flag.
After all this it didn't seem surprising that at 10am when we were finally ready to leave it started pouring down with rain again so we had to hurriedly get all the wet washing away, wet weather gear out, and Tobias into the trailer. He fell promptly asleep and we could focus on the short climb out of the campground and the long descent into Vinci. I flagged this as a spot to stop for a coffee and lunch supplies without giving it much thought but after walking around a bit James determined that it is actually the birthplace of Leonardo da Vinci which I guess makes sense. We had coffee and plenty of snacks (we were hungry after yesterday's climb) at a cafe with the Trek-Segafredo rider Natnael Tesfatsion. We spotted plenty of very serious cyclists on our ride today with some very scary looking calf muscles.
It was threatening to rain but there was barely any shelter so we had our lunch under shelter outside a church on the main road. It didn't rain, so we would have been fine at any of the exposed park benches, but packing up mid picnic is a pain. The sky was a bit brighter in the afternoon so we carried on on some "Slovenian flat" roads with lots of sharp but short ups and downs through the country side.
We stopped for a coffee in Mastromarco then tried to convince Tobias that he wanted to go to sleep in the trailer again which he thought was a silly idea but humoured us and stayed in the trailer while we rode through the increasingly industrial area near Montecatini Terme. We knew we had a steep climb before our stop for the evening which is good because it was a tough one. It started off okay, but for about 1km the gradient was 15-20% and the sun had finally decided to come out so it was incredibly hot. The road was narrow and I was too heavy to keep a straight line so anytime a car came near us I had to pull over. I was completely out of breath and struggling to talk to Tobias about all the things he wanted to mow or weed-whack or use his imaginary leaf blower on.
When we finally reached the campground we had a very tired kid, two tired adults, and a thunderstorm brewing down the valley. James took Tobias to the playground while I raced against the weather to get the tent set up and down to the bar before the rain set in. I found them having beer and chips about 5 minutes before it got very wet. We had food for dinner but no energy to cook it in the wet, so we opted for dinner in the restaurant and by the time we were done the rain had eased.
We're sitting outside the toilet block now because everywhere is wet. We have a couple of days off here but without much indoor space it's going to be challenging in the weather. We've felt like it's been really wet, but we thought maybe it was just because we have been existing outside all the time, though after talking to others it seems like the whole of Europe is just having a very wet spring. Not ideal for cycle touring, especially now we are further west and the campgrounds are costing us almost twice what a one bedroom apartment was a few months ago. Hopefully it will dry up soon, though I imagine when that happens we will get very very hot.
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Today's ride: 34 km (21 miles)
Total: 1,540 km (956 miles)
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