To Spotorno - From Paris to Paris - CycleBlaze

September 24, 1993

To Spotorno

We went to bed last night hoping for bikable weather after the storm front passed; but we awoke to find it raining very hard and the sky uniformly dark grey in all directions.  There was obviously no scope for biking anywhere today.

After some discussion we decided to check out of the hotel and take the train for about a day's ride west, past Genoa which we didn't particularly want to bike through anyway.  While we waited, we found a paper and read the weather report - rain is forecast throughout Liguria, both today and tomorrow.  Most of the paper was dedicated to reporting on the situation in Genoa, which was flooded after receiving an astonishing 30 cm of rain yesterday.  The worst rain in 37 years, it had washed out a bridge, killed two, an generally created havoc - as well as we could tell anyway, being unable to read much Italian.  We can really pick the right times to tour!

Taking our bikes on the train proved to be no big deal at all - and at 1 PM we were on the train heading west for Savona, following a lovely but very wet stretch of the Ligurian coast.  To our delight, the skies gradually lightened as we travelled west, and by the time we arrived in Savona it was dry and bikable, with a few blue patches breaking up the cloud canopy.

We biked another few kilometers west to get to a smaller, quieter community and ended up in Sportono, a pretty, small seaside town.  After settling in (and after soliciting the proprietor to help in returning last night's room key, which I had neglected to turn in) we walked about a half mile to town and a pizzeria, and then walked along the waterfront in the dark back to our room.

Today's ride: 10 km (6 miles)
Total: 1,314 km (816 miles)

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Keith AdamsI like that not every day has to be an epic event.
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1 year ago