July 15, 2018

After a very restless night waking up every hour with the church clock clanging each hour and my dearly, beloved husband snoring gently beside me, I managed to get a few hours sleep between 3:30 and 7:30.

The breakfast served at the hotel was really good. A variety of bread, cheeses, meats, cereal, cakes and muffins, fruit and yogurts. We definitely had a good start to the day.  There was another group of touring cyclists staying at the hotel.  We think they were from Austria (by the accent) and riding e-bikes.  We met up with them a couple of times during the day.

The route today was fabulous. I knew it was going to be a good route and that is another reason I wanted to stop yesterday when we did. Yesterday with the weather and our moods we would have blown by all the great sites.  We would have missed seeing this very large snail, it would have fed a family of four 🙂

The scenery was stunning and we lost count of the amount of tunnels and bridges we crossed.  On one section we came out of tunnel onto a steel bridge and then into another tunnel – we did this three or four times – tunnel, bridge, tunnel, bridge. My two sisters Wendy and Nikki would have hated that section, but I loved it and so did Ralf – the bridges were amazing.

Most of the tunnels had lights on as we went through. 

One tunnel the lights were activated as you cycled through.  However, there was one tunnel the motion sensor was really slow and at one point we were in pitch dark.  That would be the time that my front light decided to stop working.  We had to cycle really slowly so the sensors would activate the lights.

The longest tunnel we went through was 950 metres long and the temperature dropped by 3 degrees inside the tunnel.  It was very foggy inside and quite eerie.

The route for the most part was gently downhill, a few pedal strokes and you were coasting for the next 500 metres.

Of course, we had earned this downhill from all the climbing we have done over the past few days.

This section of the Alpe di Adria Route is the only section that is on an old rail-line and is very easy to follow and very kid friendly.  There were a few areas where you could get off and go into a Town. However, this old train station had been converted into a cafe and rest stop – it even had a small work-station.

As we cycled through and above towns we could see the difference a by-pass makes on a Town.  We have noticed this phenomenon many times around the world.  The Town-folk want to detour all the trucks. However, by putting in a by-pass you also detour the cars and the town slowly dies.

Past this derelict train station is a multi-highway intersection.

There were a few little hiccups to the day. One set of stairs we had to climb and push the bikes up the gutter and an umleitung (detour) at the end of the route. This took us on gravel paths and back up hill. Oh well you cannot have everything.

 

We arrived in the Village of Venzone at about 12:30, time for lunch. We stopped at a small bar and I managed to order two panini’s with formaggio and proscuittio (cheese and ham) in Italian. Of course she had to throw a wrench in it and asked if I wanted it cooked. I asked for one cooked and one not cooked. It turns out she was asking if I wanted baked ham or prosciuttio ham. I got what I wanted, Ralf wanted Prosciuttio and I wanted baked ham.  I knew that Fanta and cola were ridiculously expensive and I asked if she had non-alcoholic beer. She looked at me dumb-founded. I laughed and said “yes what is the point” we both laughed.

We then cycled over a small bridge and entered the wonderful historic Town of Venzone. It is the only medieval walled city in the Friuli-Venezia Region. The Town dates back to the Celts 500 BC and the Romans who came after them. In 1976 the Town was devastated by an earthquake. The rebuild took many years, any remaining structures were reinforced and restored using anti-seismic consolidation methods. The ruins were rebuilt – putting the surviving stones together like one giant jigsaw puzzle.

The square is made up of marble stones – it would have been dreadful to cycle over that yesterday in the rain. It is nice to find these wonderful little towns along the route.

We are camping tonight in Gemona, a small camp site that is about E20, free hot showers. Internet is only available at the bar near reception. At the moment there is thunder rolling around the mountain and the clouds are very grey. We prepared our pasta and as were getting ready to eat it, the rains came. We rushed to the tent and ate in the tent, the first (and last) time for everything.

The storm passed and we tidied up and went down to the bar for a drink.

A decision has been made!

We have given up on the camping – the rest of this trip is going to be hotels or warmshowers – the budget has already been shot to pieces, if we are going to continue on this trip without taking the train, we need to be comfortable at night.

There are a million different reasons not to continue camping and only a couple to continue camping.

Reasons not to camp –

• it makes us miserable,
• showers – after having a shower you are then in a tiny cubicle trying to get your clothes on.
• you have a nice shower and then you get hot and sticky again because you have to sit outside in the heat
• you have to eat outside
• sleeping on an air mattress in a tent is not comfortable, no matter how hard you try to get comfy.
• I can go on…

Reasons to camp –

• It is cheaper than staying in a hotel
• In the other places that we have been to everyone talks to each other especially other cyclists, this hasn’t been the case so far in Europe.

Despite sleeping on a slope, with the decision that we have made tonight, I think I might get a good nights sleep.