Phew

I was sad to leave the campsite, probably one of the nicest I have stayed in. I wimped a bit and set the alarm for 06.00 instead of 05.00.

I had observed the route profile last night. An thought I I climb the it was nearly downhill all the way to the sea. This was not the case, there were successive on and off road climbs, some I have to say we’re quite taxing.

But they did culminate to the climb up to (And then out of straight after) Pitigliano which is a very beautiful town.

But the road did then slope down to the sea, mostly off road. I did see thus poor wild bore by the track.

But there were a few sections that I got up to quite a speed, not fast enough to catch any other cyclists though.

I then got to the island of Monte Argentario which isn’t really an island as there are 3 spits that connect it to the mainland. I was to circumnavigate the island. I had been to it before so had some idea that there were some hills.

I got half way round feeling pretty cool. Then the road turned to a track and like always the gradients were steeper than the road and but off road for any given gradient is substantially harder than on the road, and with my bike fully loaded I had slow and agonisingly painful progress. Each time I joined a road and thought, this is it, I turned rough again and then finally just to tire me totally when I did get to the final road it was fiendishly steep.

But I knew my campsite was on the southern mist mainland link. And here I am, the opposite to last night, squeezed into a small space with 1000000 camper vans, 1000000 kids making lots of noise. Ho hum.