Lesina

April 16, 2025 to April 17, 2025

Wednesday

Today’s short ride to Lesina looks like one of the easiest moving days we have planned for the next half year: fifteen miles, almost entirely on roads we expect to be essentially car-free, almost no elevation gain as we drop slightly to our sea level next destination. And on top of that we expect a significant boost from the wind. We should virtually sail down to the coast, on paper at least.

At some point during the ride though, Rachael proposes that bike rides should be classified in the same way that weather conditions are classified: today it’s 50F but feels like 40 because of other considerations (typically wind velocity and humidity).

Today’s bike ride is fifteen miles, but feels like 25 because of the unrelentingly rough, irregular road surface that keeps our speed and momentum down as we dodge potholes or brake for gravelly or sandy spots. And today’s rough miles come on top of the last ten of yesterday’s, so that by the end Rachael has some real issues with pain in her hands and feet and is looking forward to our first layover day tomorrow.

But other than that the ride was fine. We’re out the door by not long before our checkout time of 10:30 with a minimum of confusion as we continue to get ourselves better organized with each day we’re on the road. And it’s appealingly scenic crossing this open, empty space with the wind bending and flattening the vegetation around us. We don’t make many stops for photos, so we’re grateful that the video crew is up and running today.

Leaving San Severo. That’s our hotel in the back. If I’d taken shots in other directions we’d see the train station just to my left and buses queued up to my right. We’re in the center of the transportation hub of this small town, which we’ll be thankful for soon enough.

It’s an evocative, empty scene that would be better shown as a video that shows the movement of the grain blowing in the wind or the audio of our bikes chattering on the rough-surfaced road.

The view northeast toward the Gargano peninsula.

And the view straight ahead, on one of the better stretches of the road.

Sound track: Mistral Wind, by Heart

This is our third visit to Lesina, a small fishing town on the southern shore of wide, shallow Lesina Lake. We generally know our way around so we head straight to the waterfront to check out the few eating possibilities there. The first one we come to is a gelateria, and neither of us can think of a good reason not to have dessert first while we sit indoors and out of the wind for a few minutes.

Afterwards we continue along the shore until we stop at La Terrazza, which from my research looks like the most attractive restaurant in town. We check out its menu posted in front, Rachael notes with approval that it includes a grilled salmon dish, and while I lock up the bikes she goes inside and secures the table just on the other side of the glass.

By the time I sit down to join her she’s looking for her phone so she can bring up the menu from the QR code posted on the table. She can’t find it for some reason so I try mine but it won’t respond to the QR code and we end up using our server’s phone instead to make our choices. An alternative I suppose would have been to step outside the door to look again at the menu board posted there, since the choices are the same.

In any case, we both got the salmon and shared a mixed salad and were pleased with our meal. It’s a nice enough place that it’s a candidate for tomorrow’s main meal also.

After placing our orders Rachael returns to hunting down her phone, which she can’t find in the one pannier she brought inside, the one she keeps her purse and other important items in. I call her phone using mine but there’s no ring heard; so presumably it’s out with the bike somehow; so I go outside and call again and there’s still no sound. In fact, it’s not with us at all.

Fortunately I have my phone and we have a WiFi connection so I look up the phone number of last night’s hotel in San Severo. The woman who answers speaks at least some English, and before I can finish my sentence saying we were guests in room 207 last night she cuts me off and says telephono. It’s there. Phew!

She wants to know if we’ll be coming back for it and says they’ll just hold it at the desk for us, no worry. And while this is going on Rachael’s brought up the map on her iPad to see what it recommends for transportation choices in case we decide we’d rather not bike back up into that headwind to pick it up. And there’s good news - there’s a bus service that stops right in front of the hotel and runs at least several times a day.

So we’ve at least got the start of a recovery plan. I call the hotel again to inform them that we’ll be back to pick it up tomorrow, and then we get on with the day. We check ourselves into our lodging for the next two nights, the Lou Palazzo Ducal, a small B&B just a few blocks inland from the waterfront that’s the best lodging in town. And later in the afternoon we go out again for an evening snack and end up enjoying slices of focaccia sitting on a bench in the square in front of the community center.

Our street. Our B&B is just behind my back. All of these inner streets look similar to this, surfaced with wide-spaced, irregular slabs that are colorful and atmospheric but aren’t particularly safe surfaces to bike across.

We started our snack-quest by returning to the waterfront, but ended up back in a square just two blocks from our B&B.

Here’s the square where we’ll enjoy our meal. While Rachael’s inside a shop checking out what’s available, I’m tracking the swifts buzzing around above hoping some will get close enough to be within camera range.

Heart

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Thursday

We’re agreed that Rachael will take the bus to get her phone since there’s not really a a hike here that looks appealing and she wanted a day off anyway; so the issue is how to manage it to reduce the chance of another fiasco. Who takes the phone, for example? I think Rachael should have it because she has difficulty with directions and it’s a little scary sending her off without a map. She thinks I should keep it with me in case I run into issues on the ride I have planned, and so we can get in touch with each other when she’s back in town.

In the end, we come up with the right solution. I keep the phone, but I walk with her to the bus stop and stay with her until she’s gotten on the right bus. After that she’ll be fine - it’s a nonstop that terminates right in front of our hotel, and after that she’ll have her own phone again. We tentatively plan to have lunch at La Terrazza again, and I’ll call her when I’m nearing town so she can walk down there to meet me.

And the plan works. It could easily have gone south though if Rachael hadn’t asked a man there how much the fare was and he went with her across the street to the shop where she needed to buy her ticket in advance. It sort of turns my stomach to imagine her trying to board the bus and being disallowed and needing to catch the next one, with us unable to communicate with each other of the situation she’s in.

It’s startling to be reminded of how essential a phone is now, and how reliant we are on each having one. For years we travelled without even one phone between us.

Waiting for the bus to arrive. I’m not leaving until I see her board and it pull away.

A view off in the other direction while I wait. It’s very windy again today, but otherwise it looks like a fine day to ride.

So we’re set. And in the interests of keeping more or less current with the journal I’ll zip through the rest of the day and let the photos do the rest. My ride plan was to bike the fifteen miles to to the eastern end of the lake where there’s a bird refuge, take the mile long unpaved road or track past it to the northern side of the lake and then either backtrack or circle the lake by riding the filament of land between the north side of the lake and the sea.

The ride didn’t go exactly as planned, mostly because the unpaved road or track past the refuge was only theoretical. I scrapped it when it was obvious that going forward would be foolish or worse and just stuck with the pavement until I reached the sea. By then it was apparent that if I wanted to make it back in time for lunch I needed to just backtrack. Circling the lake would be two miles shorter but undoubtedly much slower since it included nine miles of unpaved trail of unknown quality.

It’s a nice ride but ends up being a birding bust with one exception - a flock of about fifteen sacred ibises, a species I’m delighted to see again. An African species, they’re just beginning to make a few inroads north of the Mediterranean. This is one of the few spots where I could hope to see them.

At the other end, Rachael had no trouble getting her phone back and boarding the bus back to Lesina again, although she had to wait an hour for the return departure. Her main issue was that she was really cold and was sorry she hadn’t taken her coat.

Once we were able to contact each other again the rest of the day went smoothly. We met at La Terrazza again, shared our meal, and then she walked back to the room while I biked along the waterfront first before returning home myself. After that we just relaxed around the room for the rest of the day, snacking for dinner on a pair of takeaway antipasti trays we took home with us from the restaurant.

It’s grey and windy at the start of my ride. I didn’t notice that the sky was filled with pigeons when I took this shot.

The land north of the lake (just visible in the distance) is almost completely flat. For several miles I biked past fields planted or plowed for row crops of some sort,

Further east, and past the agricultural zone.

Her’s the start of the track to the bird refuge. I’m pleased at first by its easily bikeable quality.

Until I come to this point, where it seems pretty clear that I should turn back.

Looking across the Adriatic, at the natural spot to turn back. I think those must be the Tremiti Islands out there.

Among other things, this is a pretty good shot of a barn swallow.

Brackish Lake Lesina is one of the largest lakes in Italy and the second largest in the south. It’s roughly fifteen miles long and a mile and a half across. The tree-lined strip on the far side is a narrow sand bar separating the lake from the Adriatic just beyond.

The lake is very shallow, with a maximum depth of about six feet. Fishing it’s large ell population was the traditional industry for the town.

Heart

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Today's ride: 50 miles (80 km)
Total: 184 miles (296 km)

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Graham FinchI'll be getting a phone to take to the UK.
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1 week ago

Jacquie GaudetWe use our phones a lot—in fact, I used mine to read your post and write this comment.

We also used to travel without a mobile phone, but since returning to bike touring away from home territory in 2015, we have found them more and more useful. It’s hard to remember travelling without the Internet and information at your fingertips.

Now I tour in a cycling jersey instead of a t-shirt so I have pockets for my phone and wallet, items I prefer to keep on my person. Early in a ride and soon after every stop, Al and I both touch our pockets to make sure the important things are there.
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1 week ago

Scott AndersonTo Jacquie GaudetI’m the same way - my phone is always in the back of my shirt (or the pocket of my coat if I have it on now - whatever’s most accessible if I want to stop for a photo with it). The pockets on Rachael’s bike shirt aren’t as deep and she’s worried it will fall out so she carries it in her purse in her pannier. It’s a mystery to both of us what happened that we left it behind, but I think it had something to do with one last loo stop for the road.
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1 week ago

Jacquie GaudetTo Scott AndersonI have a couple of old jerseys with shallow pockets and rarely wear them anymore because of those pockets. My newer ones are much better and pockets are now a feature I check before purchase.
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1 week ago