Sermide

August 9, 2019

We leave early to beat the heat

It was a really great hotel cool, comfortable and attractive with wonderful service from the couple who owned it. With the thought of yesterdays heat in the back of our minds we were down to breakfast promptly and onto the track by 7.30

It was an easy ride again on top of the stop bank of the Po. At this time in the morning there were quite a number of walkers and cyclists out. What a lovely easy way it must be to have your training ride - some of the cyclists looked very serious. We are very well away from Tourist Italy, this is where the work gets done and I am sure where a lot of the nations food gets grown. We saw beans, sunflowers, apricots, grapes, hay and maize that was being chopped for silage. What we didn’t see were any grazing animals. There must be cows somewhere but they must be housed, When we saw a huge truck full of chopped maize Ken contemplated following it to find the cows. He didn’t The little towns all looked rather more prosperous than those of yesterday but we didn’t go down into them at this stage we just powered on.

Image not found :( — A little dead owl on the path - we saw two of them

Clock towers are still very much part of the towns

We were beginning to see small boats in the river

Sermide is on the right side of the Po so we needed to cross from the Sinistra Po to the Destra Po. The Po is wide and lazy at this point and there are few river crossings but the one we went over wasn’t too hair raising. We had a choice to make we could go through Ferrara our stick to the river bank. We choose the river bank, the route is a lot shorter and avoids us having to find our any through a big city.

The GPS wanted us to climb this ladder with our bikes to get on the bridge. No thank you

We had been riding without a stop for about 4hours and Ken was getting a bit frustrated with me, it might be because I have electricity and he doesn’t! Anyway we came down from the stop bank to a dear little town, I think it must have been Felonica. We sat in the shade in a bar in the square drinking lemon sodas and watching. There was a small market one place selling cheese and the other fruit and vegetables. We watched as the locals arrived by bike, pushing prams and by foot to buy these goodies and often to stop for a coffee and chat with their friends. Ken bought some cheese and very good it was too - just as good as Mercer Cheese.

From here it was less than 5 km to Sermide and another cool hotel.

The church at Sermide and yes it has a clock towers too

Why has he got a pig at his feet not a dog? Who is he?

This looked like a memorial to World War 1 aviators

Today's ride: 53 km (33 miles)
Total: 761 km (473 miles)

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