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February 22 Wednesday Bicycle touring Italy Sardinia from a beach past Porto Cervo Sardinia to past Olbia Sardegna Heavy dew last night. In our sheltered enclave there wasn't enough breeze to evaporate our expiration and a puddle of water had formed at the back of our cycle touring tent where the fly was touching. I mopped it up with my handkerchief and then we ate breakfast while waiting for the sun to dry the tent and fly. We pushed our bikes up the sandy path back to the main road and then began to climb with a strong wind in our face. We pulled our fully loaded touring bicycles to a stop at a little market at a crossroads to Porto Rotondo to buy bread and oranges. As we climbed on our touring bikes toward Golfo Aranci I stopped to look down on the typical harbour of Gulf di Marinella. Beautiful. There's not many places in the world that are more beautiful for bicycle touring than Sardinia. Cycling along a thin section of road from Golfo Aranci to Olbia we could see water on both sides of us. The road to Olbia was new and smooth (great cycle touring!) with little traffic -- except when we entered a 750 metre long dark tunnel and two cars from opposite directions met alongside us at the same time. Sharon figured Murphy's Law was getting carried a bit too far. I said it could have been worse -- it could have been two trucks. And with our luck.... We cycled to the port in Olbia to check out ferry schedules. It was two o'clock, so, of course, the ticket office was closed. Shiny ferry schedule pamphlets were securely piled behind glass ticket windows. I don't know why they couldn't have a few outside for customers, but then, they do a lot of things in Sardinia that don't make sense to me. For example, when I was at the little market a car pulls up and delivers six packages of carrots to the store. I haven't seen that back in Canada. I don't think that can be very cost effective to deliver six packages of carrots to each little market. The travel agency where we cycled to next didn't have any new schedules yet for the current year -- we are told the ferries to Italy don't run until April. (Later, some people told us they run every day.) We can leave from Porto Torres to Genova or Cagliari to Civitavecchia. Hwy 125 south of Olbia is busy with truck and commuter traffic. The wind is bending me backwards. I look across at trees. They are slumped in the opposite direction! Just my luck. When you're on a long distance bicycle tour and you think you've got the direction figured out due to prevailing wind -- ha! Don't kid yourself. Even the prevailing wind has gone against us today. We see a dirt road leading up a side hill. I run up to explore camping possibilities. It looks good, so we push our bikes up and select a spot overlooking the bay and some islands. We set our two-person bicycle touring tent up right on the edge of a path. I don't think any four wheelers will be coming by tonight. We can hear hammers banging away, working on building another tourist complex below us. |
