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March 30 Thursday Bicycle touring Italy from Asciano Italy to Siena Italy It's 1º C again, but there's a patch of blue in the sky, so we pack up our cycling gear and hit the road while the getting is good. We are out of food anyway. The track we came in on is totally mud, and not easily passable with our touring bicycles. So, we crossed the creek, slipping down one side of the bank and scrambling up the other side. And this was the good, alternate route. We pushed our loaded touring bikes through a small wooded area and came to a road by a farmer's field where we walked the bikes along some grass. We made it back to the highway to find that it was busy with lots of cars and big trucks. But in about two kilometres, a road to Asciano, leading uphill through the rolling valleys provided us with a quiet escape route. I don't like bike touring with lots of traffic anymore. I bought a Mars bar -- Sharon says she wouldn't have made it without the chocolate boost. Cycling past some green scenery. The wrinkled green hills remind me of a rumpled quilt thrown over a bed in haste. A downhill sign reads 15%. I guess it wasn't just my cycling legs that thought the grades were steep. We cycled past a farmyard of newly born lambs with white, black, and speckled coats. At 11:30 AM, we rode our touring bikes into Siena -- the city described as a living art museum. Val, a woman from Australia, told us the clocks went ahead Sunday, so the time is actually 12:30. She is on a year and a half vacation. She took us to the main Campo Plaza, where the tall clock tower is. We leaned our loaded touring bikes against the wall, out of the throngs of school kids on spring break tours. Markus and Tina, touring cyclists, showed up shortly, sans bicycles. They cycle tour in the summer on a tandem and they shared some good route ideas -- particularly for Czech, Slovak and Hungary. They said Bulgaria didn't have much food when they toured there. They had spent most of their time hungry or looking to buy food. Tina is from England. She is working in Washington DC at a non-profit arms control group. I hate it when my arms get out of control and just start flapping around madly, smacking myself and anyone within striking range. Markus is from Germany. He's a transportation engineer. They cycle toured the Dolomites before, and said on the downhills Tina would squirt water onto their disk brake to cool it off -- the water becoming instant steam. Markus braked constantly for 25 kilometres. I looked at the most fantastic church insides I have ever seen. There was not only art paintings on the wall, but also sculptures everywhere. Heads, carved out of marble, surrounded the edge of the ceiling. Everything was decadently ornate and rich looking. The church had a lot of money in the old days. Met a family from Connecticut taking pictures for a children's Shakespeare book. They said this was the coldest day they've had this winter. Snowflakes blew down intermittently. The wind gusted mightily. We thought that perhaps if we were cycling, we would be warmer. Highway 222 heads toward Castellina in Chianti on the way to Florence. It was brutal climb on our fully loaded touring bicycles to clear the outskirts of Siena. Stopped and got water from a farmhouse. The woman held two snapping snarling beast dogs at bay while we hurriedly filled our bottles from an outside tap. Found a free camping spot for our Kelty bicycle touring tent by a little creek in front of some tiny purple and yellow flowers. It is still snowing. Snowflakes were swirling around our bodies as we cycled away from the farmhouse. |
