Amalfi Pompei and more

October 21 - last night on the road - tomorrow we ride what looks like a fairly long day into Rome bringing to a close our Rome-to-Rome bike ride.

so this blog entry is a quick catch-up to where we are.

October 15 - rest day in Maratea and a hike up to the statue of Christ the Redeemer and the views down into Maratea where we were staying and back down the coast from whence we came

October 16 - back on the bikes, continuing up the coast to Paestum - a fairly long 140 km day with detours due to landslides. Lots of lovely scenery, but the greatest significance to Rae was that it was one year ago that he had the surgery to replace both knees. He could not have imagined back then how well he would recover or how well those knees would perform. So one year later, a 140 km day with over 2200 metres of climbing, a total of over 2000 km on this trip alone and over 6000 km of cycling since the knees were replace

Here riding with Fiona, a friend from the Korea-Japan trip last year,
Paestum is home to the best preserved Greek ruins short of what Athens has to offer. No time the day we rode in, but we were able to make a quick pass by the next morning on our way out.
Then it was on up to the Amalfi coast. The road hugs the cliffs on the way in, towns nestled in every inlet, houses built in amazing places.
This is Amalfi where we had a rest day - our hotel the yellow building to the left. 
A group of us got together for a a gelato dessert in town that evening.

Rain moved in for most of the rest day. But our highlight was a reunion with one of the German Navy officers for who we were civilian sponsors when hw attended the military college in Toronto 15 years ago.

The cathedral in the central square in Amalfi...
The next day was back on the bike for a relatively short (51 km) ride to Pompei. Morning started with pouring rain. We know we passed beautiful scenery, but you couldn't see any of it. By the time we got to Pompei and checked into the hotel and got cleaned up, the rain had paused and we managed to get a couple of hours in the Pompei historical site before rain resumed for the night.
The next day (October 20) we started on wet roads but the weather cleared and we had a dry day for a bit over 110 km as we now press on for the home stretch to Rome.
Vesuvius...
Nice stop for cappuccino
Today, October 21, we continued northward towards Rome. Lots of climbs, some pleasant...  
...some absolutely miserable and the bikes were walked up grades of close to 20%. Not shown is the garbage dumped at the left edge of the photo.
We took a small detour to visit the Commonwealth Cemetery at Cassino where close to 5000 Canadians are interred.
The rebuilt Montecassino monastery, which was the objective of the fighting here, is on the top of the hill in the background.
Along the way they were harvesting the olives - handheld vibrating rake powered by the car battery to drop the olives onto pastic sheets on the ground, dogs watching carefully.
We had some great scenery...
and nice backdrops for a short rest, here with Efrons, Aussies who we rode with last year in Korea-Japan.
We were on some unbelievably bad roads...
...and we had pleasant back-country roads...
...and we had minor delays when other traffic took over.
Rae managed to squeeze past and get the next photo with Ursula closing in on the shepherd but still had to wait until they got to their home pasture.
We got our new jerseys tonight for the final day's ride into Rome tomorrow. It looks like it will be a challenging day for distance considering the roads we'll be on and Rome traffic in town, Then the bikes get packed up, then the final dinner, a quick sleep, and catch the flight home on Wednesday. Next blog will be the last.






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