Through Cattolica and on to Ponte St Martin


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Europe » Italy » Aosta Valley » Aosta
June 28th 2009
Published: June 29th 2009
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Nothing much happened on the ferry. We chatted to people. Hilary read the other two books she bought for the reader (Fury and Interworld). Eventually we got to Ancona, left straight away and rode 80 km straight into the sun, ending up back at the Ferrara hotel in Cattolica. They seemed pleased to see us. Ashley demanded new eyes but settled for beer goggles - we found a place opposite the Ritter hotel where they sold beer in litre glasses. This was followed by a pizza and a salad at the Pirate restaurant with half a litre of house white (very nice - all of it - and not expensive) and beer on the hotel balcony. We didn't get to Cattolica till after nine so there wasn't time to do a great deal. We also managed to miss the rain though some of the roads were still wet.

Today, after breakfast we started to ride. We went a long, long way. We finally saw sunflowers - not sure why we didn't see them on the way out - maybe they were not in flower. As the weather through Central Europe continues stormy, it seemed sensible to head for a more Western alpine pass into France - visiting the Italian lakes will have to wait for another year. We had fun going fast on Italian motorways all the way from Cattolica to the start of Valley d'Aosta. Along the way we ate Icaro and drank the lemon limme refresher drinks we like. We also saw huge numbers of Goldwings - we finally got talking to a couple with UK plates and it turned out they had been to a couple of rallies - most recently in Rimini.

The alps started very suddenly after the flatness of the latter parts of Emilio Romagnia and Lombardy. And with the alps came more and more birds of prey - some that looked like kites and later, I thought I saw a eagle, though it might have been a vulture, I never could decide - quotes aside it was probably some kind of buzzard.

Somewhat tired, hot and sweaty, we arrived at Ponte St. Martin where, unlike last year, we know how to find the hotel. We are currently drinking beer having had the espresso and the extraordinarily good icecream - Ashley got myrtle flavour. We walked up to the castle (nost the one in the photo - a closer one) and a cat decided to be our guide.

The place crawls with flies - this is a problem we had forgotten. They seem harmless enough and do not get inside but they do make eating outside less pleasant than it might be. We had a wireless connection but the travel blog site was down last night. Currently attempting to get a connection.

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