Marmirolo - Bologna (99 miles)

A New World

The more the journey proceeds the more unexpected things become. I am in ITALIA proper and it is nothing like anywhere I have been before.

When, for example, have a ridden on a country road that was completely straight and flat for over twenty miles? Not a highway. A country road, with no cars and nothing surrounding it except farms and olive groves. It reached the point where even singing failed to keep me entertained and I know a lot of songs.

How about the clouds of pollen that were thicker than fog on a swamp? Like riding through a comfort blanket I wanted to close my eyes and have a nap, not pedal over a concrete expressway. At one point the fluff became so intense that I was worried I might suffocate and my corpse blow off in the wind. Then, when I opened my eyes, the woods around me looked like an Arctic forest and the sun still burnt down on my arms. Was I alive? What world was this?

In the Po Valley I took a wrong turn found myself on single-lane road populated by nothing but cyclists. Located on a dyke adjacent to the bank of the gargantuan river it was a raised promontory overlooking idyllic agriculture of the valley. It was big enough for cars but for over an hour I did not see one. My tyres rubbed is asphalt like slippers on a rug and the river gushed alongside. Cows turned and shrugged.

Can there have been a time when I have been so hot that I valued ice cream over water? Well this s what happened today from Carpi and for the next fifty miles to Bologna. The heat was such that dogs hid under coke machines. I stopped for a break and had to start riding immediately to affect a cooling breeze to my face.

I now understand now why this is the country of Gelato – it as necessary to the diet as bread and coffee. Without I think I may have melted onto my bike and certainly it seems the best way to survive the late afternoon heat without simply staying in bed. Although I was derided by some Bologna locals for complimenting mine with a pint of beer rather than an espresso. Hey - its hot!

Add to this the Enzo Ferrari museum, which looks like a Pininfarina-styled yellow spaceship and a takeaway Pizza that was as delicious as anything in an English restaurant and you have a very special day. And now I am in Bologna – a town of cobbled streets and beautiful girls riding tandem on vespas. Ciao Italia!

I think it was getting lost in San Benedetto de Po that finally obliterated the last remnants of that foetid Milanese evening. Simple rural isolation, green fields and cows and no Western amenity within fifty miles meant I was going to have to draw on something more than my pre-existing knowledge and tourist clichés. Now I was going to have to open myself to the real Italy and embrace what surrounded me.

For a while I felt alone – very, very alone. There are very few moments in our crowded modern world that you come by this feeling and for a second it is very frightening. You feel exposed, like someone has taken away all your clothes and your words and left you in a desert of starving wolves. Its disquietening, intense and wonderful all at the same time. Away from the usual attractions your sense become heightened and you feel a strange bond forming with the natural environment. Then, as you move, it feels as you move with the world, rather than through it. Suddenly it feels so harmonious. When finally you reach a highway and have to the 'real' world, you feel fresh, like a child reborn.

So it was at this point that I rode into the forest of pollen and it didn’t seem all that odd. Just nice and pretty, like the world is.

I wish I could say the same about the Roman road from San Benedetto de Po to Modena but I am afraid that a year in the eye of Jupiter could not leave me tolerant of that experience.

With hot air sat on the concrete like a cushion of wobbling jelly and my bike clicking with annoyance it was not quite the Zen experience you might expect. In the same gear, with the same surroundings, with no corners or hills or roundabouts or traffic lights, for mile after flat mile after flat mile, cycling becomes a little monotonous. With nothing to distract you, the speedo becomes a focal point, slowly counting through the miles while reminding you of your lessening velocity – 14.6mph, 14.6 mph, 14.4 mph, 14.4mph, 13.8 mph - grad...ually, get-ting, slowweer...the energy, in your legs...expiring...calorie by calorie, muscles...tired, tired until...finally you start to go mad.

WHAT ARE YOU DOING? WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS? LEAVE ME ALONE!

I started singing as loud as I could, first songs that I knew and then songs that I made up on the spot until it became childish gibberish.

The waterfall sit on the table

Brush, brush

Brush, brush.

Then I closed my eyes and stopped thinking about anything. I was a robot on a machine, pedal-pedal-pedal.

Then I looked at the speedo again.

14.6 14.6 14.5

Arrrgghhh!!

It interesting what you become reduced to without any points of reference. You create new worlds. The mind never rests does it.

In Bologna though I am almost sedated. With the right mix of art, ice cream, sun, women on bikes, water fountains, beer, toilets, a pen and paper and streets to ride around, I think I have no wish for more. Not in the real world anyway.

Bologna

It is the baked red brick, the cobbles, the sizzling hot afternoon, the gelato, the bronzed girls on vespas and the general chaos. It is the Italy as I dreamed but didn’t really expect to find.

'Girls, ice cream and sunshine?'

Hey, don't jump the gun. This is also home to the oldest university IN THE WORLD, and the closest this country will come to Oxford or Boston. Its not really a tourist town even though it is was beautiful as any I have come across. There is nothing pretentious about it either – from the whores gathered on the entrance to the autostrada to the relentless maze of bars under pre-Renaissance bell towers. It is old, medieval Italia populated by the young, dynamic and beautiful. What an interesting place. Things are happening here, and more is going to happen in the future. I can feel it. There is a buzz on the ground and as it grows louder as the evening wears on.

I may have just cycled 95 miles but I take great pleasure in riding around its cobbled streets, with the ubiquitous vespas, and the piazzas chattering mouths. There are also more cyclists here than any city I have visited so far, which must be a good sign.

So I feel it is no coincidence that I find myself in BY FAR the friendliest hostel (compared to Florence whose staff are the rudest people in Europe outside Paris). The receptionist upgraded my room just for the sake of it, ordered me pizza and beer, gave me a verbal tour of the city and then sat next to me with his girlfriend while we all had dinner. 'Its paradise here yes?' he said with a knowing smile. 'Yes,' I said. He produced another beer. 'We can do it.'

The audacity of hope.