Leaving Asciano early – without breakfast or even a cup of tea (because of lack of electrics again) – we stopped in Castigliano del Lago for groceries. There was some kind of race going on – it looked like a walking/running race perhaps around the lake. After we parked once again at the aire in San Feliciano I saw one of the runners – looking fairly fit, but puffing on a vape as he ran.
The aire was almost totally packed – most of them likely here for the race. There also were two tour buses that pulled up and discorged several dozen old folks who proceeded to amble along the lakeside promenade into the town. I was walking Max at the time and the volume of them seemed to intimidate him a bit – we decided to return to the camperan rather than venture into the village for tea.
I do have a comment about the lake…Trasimeno is the third largest lake in Italy and you can literally see the perimeter of the entire lake from where we are. The surface area of the lake is just over a third of that of Okanagan Lake, and overall that’s around 350 square km. In contrast Lake Superior is over 82,000 sq km of surface area.
It doesn’t mean one is more beautiful than the other, however, although Trasimeno does have a slightly more violent history. Hannibal played a trick on the Romans when he was invading, and they killed so many Romans that part of the lake turned red with their blood. Also, in WWII the Canadians broke through the Nazi line on the west side of the lake in one of many battles on the Allies’ way up from the south.
We met the new estate agents at the house in Papiano on Tuesday afternoon. Basically the woman spent most of her time making excuses for the lack of attention to the terrace. This is how the terrace should look…
…and this is how it looks now:
In the meantime I took the fellow outside with me and played ‘bad cop’ ranting about the terrace to the poor guy for about 15 minutes. I think we got it through to them that we weren’t happy and that something had to be done – as we had requested several times.
We left Papiano for Trevi, where we spent a couple of nice nights at the aire there, and had a lovely lunch at one of our favourite restaurants – La Vecchia Posta. We both wanted the roast wild boar but were told that that needed to be pre-ordered so settled for the wild boar ragout pasta instead, which was, of course, delicious.
We left after two nights for Fossombrone to find the route for stage 5 of Tirreno Adriatico. Miss GPS took us on a route we hadn’t been on before, and it was just beautiful – lots of lovely little towns and wide green valleys. Even the road surfaces weren’t too bad!
We found, as usual, an excellent place to park on one of the climbs for a couple of nights and settled in to wait for the race the next day. There are lots of deer and wild boar around here – I think we hear the wild boars sometimes at night, and I’ve seen several deer in the field across the way in the late evening.
Race morning was not bad – not so much wind, and not raining.
Coverage on the tv didn’t start until right around where we were, but as usual all of the police motos and the helicopter…
…let us know when the riders were near.
Alaphillipe was in the breakaway of seven or eight, with the peloton following around 5 minutes behind. Colin lucked out as the EF rider threw his bidon directly to him – it was the one he wanted the most this year.
After the last rider had passed we retired into the campervan and watched the last half of the race on tv.
From just down the road you can see Fano (I think) and the Adriatic Sea in the distance.
Sally McKenzie's European Adventures 