Tuesday 14th June: Clear and cool to warm, 18°C to 25°
Roddino to Montemarino: 30k, 5hrs 30mins from 9.30am to 3.00pm
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! A long up hill climb through vineyards which are a hive of activity today with tractors, slashers, and workers pruning the vines. At one vineyard, theres 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 its hard to fathom why you can buy nice Italian wine for as little as 2 euro a bottle - about $3AUD.
10 little Italians pruning vines
25% downhill
You go first Milton
Quiet roads pretty as a picture
Honey, I broke the bottle
Lunch with the cows
and flowers
Arriving Relais Montemarino
First swim for 2 weeks
Dinner at Villa de'Amelia
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% grade is not easy especially when we then have to weave between the tractor and the slasher, a 60 cm gap. Then its 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 leaked into the gas can, the powdered milk, the Jetboil and there's a totally gooey mess of honey, broken glass, plastic and powdered milk. Bit by bit we separate the broken glass from the food bag, 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 trees 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 and its 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. It's not long before we're jumping in the pool in our cycling clothes.
Our rooms are luxurious - too cooth to hang our dirty cycling gear out the window like we usually do - so its hung on the railings out teh back and out of site. Time for a 5pm drink in the bar - beer for teh boys, bubbly for teh girls. A short break and time to sort photos before heading out to dinner at 7.15 at a restaurant 500m up teh road.