Tuesday 14th June: Clear and cool to warm, 18°C to 25°
Roddino to Montemarino: 30k, 5hrs 30mins from 9.30am to 3.00pm
Accommodation: Relais Montemarino
On the road again
A short but delightful day up a long long hill, and down a 25% very short sharp hill. A minor disaster when our honey bottle broke inside Ian's food bag and we had honey all over our jetboil, in the milk powder, clogging up the gas can, not to mention the sticky mess inside our Sea to Summit food bag! Total ascent for the day was 1200 metres
A late start after breakfast of teacake, yoghurt, fruit, jams and homegrown hazel nuts which the area is famous for - this area is supposed to make the best Nutella! We’re expert and packing our panniers now so it doesn’t take long after breakfast to be ready to go.
10 little Italians pruning vines
25% downhill
You go first Milton, I’ll follow
Quiet roads pretty as a picture
Honey, I broke the bottle
Lunch with the cows
and flowers
Arriving Relais Montemarino
Warm swim in 28°C heated pool
Fine dining at Villa d'Amelia
A long uphill climb through vineyards which are a hive of activity today with tractors, slashers and workers pruning the vines. At one vineyard, there’s a line of 10 workers snipping and pruning the grape vines very methodically, each worker snipping his/her own row. There's acres and acres of vineyards, all very labour intensive, and it’s hard to fathom why you can buy nice Italian wine for as little as 2 euro a bottle - about $3AUD.
We come to a turnoff then down a road with a 25% grade through more vineyards. It's steep - head over handlebars steep - and at the bottom is a tractor/slasher blocking the road with the driver attending to a mechanical problem. Stopping abruptly on a 25% steep grade is not easy especially when we then had to weave between the tractor and the slasher through a 60 cm gap. Then it’s more uphill to Diano d'Alba, another hill top village where we find an Alimentarii and buy some fresh bread, tomatoes, cheese and strawberries.
There's no place to sit for morning tea at Diano, so on again, down the hill and at 11.30am we find a shady pine tree on a ridge for a cup of tea. The view is stunning, but more importantly, our glass bottle of honey has been smashed against the tin gas can in Ian's pannier, and we have a food bag full of honey that has seeped into the gas can, the powdered milk, the Jetboil and there's a totally gooey mess of honey, broken glass, plastic and powdered milk inside our food bag. Bit by bit we separate the broken glass from the food, then try to retrieve the powdered milk which luckily is in a bag inside another bag. Morning tea was memorable if not for the right reasons.
More up to Montelupo Albese and Benevello and soon we spy a church with a few picnic tables. But there's none in the shade so we elect to sit on the roadside curb under a flowering tree where we're soon visited by a mob of curious cows. Lunch is beautiful with our fresh bread, tomatoes and cheese etc etc, all washed down with a hot cup of tea. On the ridge beyond, we can see our hotel for the night.
After lunch, it’s only a 4k, 15 minute ride down to the Relais Montemarino, our home for the night. It's a very slick looking place - and it has a swimming pool - at 28°C – just my perfect pool temperature. It's not long before we're jumping in the pool in our cycling clothes, no one has bought swimmers.
Our rooms are luxurious - too cooth to hang our dirty cycling gear out the window like we usually do - so it’s hung on the railings out the back and out of site. Time for a 5pm drink in the bar - beer for the boys, bubbly for the girls. A short break and time to sort photos before heading out to dinner at 7.15pm, 500 metres up the road at a restaurant Villa d’Amelia, a classic fine dining restaurant, with classic Italian waiters buzzing around. Ian and I have ravioli del plin and vitello tonnato, and the others have some contemporary haute cuisine creation with a bottle of the local wine.
A walk back down the road in the cool of the evening to the Relais Montemarine and bed at 10pm.