Tuscany to Rome

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Sunday 11th October
Tuscany to Rome
Four nights have passed by very quickly here but now it’s time to move further south with the Amalfi coast our next ‘long’stay broken by a night at Sacrofano,just outside the ring road of Rome.
We were up a bit earlier this morning than the previous days as we have over 230km to travel and as we are travelling on a local road rather than the motorway it might just take a bit longer than the Google Map suggests.
The day has dawned foggy,so much so that you cannot see more than about 50 metres and we hope this burns off by the time we are ready to hit the road as it will make driving tricky otherwise.
We drove the gravel road for the last time on the way to the main road south hoping to catch a final glimpse of a castle like structure across a small valley from our farmhouse but the fog was still too thick to reveal it to us.We had thought about driving up the next road which would take us up to the ‘castle’ but with the fog so thick it wasn’t worth it so its exact status will remain a mystery to us.
Being Sunday the road was very quiet of motor vehicles but not of cyclists.
In most European countries and in particular,Italy, Sunday morning is the time for cyclists to be out training in their colourful uniforms.They all cannot be world champion competitors or race for teams so we assume that if you are a really keen cyclist you buy a uniform of the team you support and wear it when you go out riding a bit like wearing your favourite rugby or league jersey back home.
We weren’t too far on the journey and we did strike a large group of more than 20 cyclists who thought the road was all theirs riding 3 or 4 abreast.Although they looked quite serious and were doing a reasonable speed for cyclists it wasn’t open road speed that cars such as RR is capable of and we eventually found enough open road ahead to overtake the bunch.
Then about 1km down the road we came to a small town and a red traffic light stopping us for no apparent reason as there was no other cars around.Gretchen watched the group of cyclists close in on us as we waited at the light and we were amazed as they all rode through the red light that we were stopped for!!!Now we were behind them again!!
However,this situation was short lived for after we finally got a green light and rounded a corner in the small town one of the cyclists was crashed on the road ahead of us with the group coming to a stop realising what had happened.The guy and his bike didn’t look in good shape as we drove around him.There were enough people there to give assistance so we drove on.
One of the interesting things we have noticed in the morning when we have been on the road early enough is that men,mainly elderly,gather in groups at the newspaper store in towns we have been passing through presumably to chew the fat and discuss the news of the day and world.It all seems very casual and laid back.Women are nowhere to be seen in this scene.
We were driving south on route #2 and after negotiating our way through Siena we were into more cultivated farmland.All the crops grown through the summer were now in and the fields for most part had been ploughed
Leaving large clods of earth which we assume will be ploughed again at some time to be broken up to lie fallow for the coming winter.
Evert town of any consequence or size has a soccer ground usually on the outskirts.All of the ones we have noticed have had floodlights which must represent quite an investment for a local club but enabling training and games to be played at night.I can recall the time when even the biggest soccer clubs in NZ couldn’t afford floodlights even to train under and local councils wouldn’t provide them either.
The area we are travelling through is not greatly populated and the towns and villages are further apart than they were in the more northern parts we have travelled through.
Near Bolsena the landscape changed and we descended from higher ground down to a large lake that had been formed by volcanic activity with land that was much more scubby than what we had been driving through.
We took a stop at Bolsena and walked up through narrow lanes and steps to the top of the town on a hill with impressive views out over Bolsena Lake.We had read at the start of our walk that the Basilica here had frescos worth seeing but we never found the place despite the town not being that big.
We were making good time and traffic hadn’t been that heavy until we reached Viterbo where our progress slowed.
The town of Sacrofano is located on route 10a and although that road is nor marked on our atlas we thought we had a pretty good idea where it was and when we needed to turn off route #2 which we had been on all day from Poggibonsi.
A sign that we were getting closer to Rome was that the road widened out to two lanes in each direction with a median barrier down the middle and the traffic building even more.We knew that the road we were looking for would go off to the left and now we had a median barrier in the way of a direct turn which would mean we would have to be looking for a sign that would probably also have destinations off to the right of us as well as the left on a road either under or over the road we were on.
Coming up to where we expected the road to be we spotted the town’s name but too late to make the turn off the road in the traffic.Never mind there will be another exit soon and we shall simply head back and turn off when we get back to it.Yeah,right!!No such early opportunity came our way.
So we decided to find Sacrofano from another angle.We knew from Google Maps that the hotel was near the intersection of where route #10a joined route #3 and that 3 came off the Rome Ring Road or GRA as it is known as.This would mean joining the GRA briefly but that it being a Sunday afternoon the road shouldn’t be too busy.
We negotiated all this rather easily making Gretchen feel good as she had had some fears of driving anywhere too close to Rome including the GRA.
In no time at all we found the other end of the 10a and there was the hotel.A piece of cake really despite the fact that we had found it from the other end of the road we had originally planned to.
The Park Hotel is not actually at Sacrofano but the next suburb on and it is quite a score for the BBA being four star accommodation for €40 including breakfast.Off season prices are getting cheaper for us as autumn heads towards winter.Our room had everything we needed including a small fridge and the bed felt very comfortable and for once the pillows did too.We are also getting to like having a bidet in the toilet and are seriously thinking of sussing one out for ourselves when we get home although we might have to widen the toilet to get one in or just get what they have in Japan and that’s a combined toilet and bidet with buttons to press depending upon what you want to use!!
We had got here in very good time and as we had been in the car without a lot of exercise we thought we would take a walk to find Sacrofano and see what there may be by way of pizzeria or restaurants for dinner later.
We should have asked at the desk just how far away the town was because we walked up the road with no footpath and traffic speeding by at far more than the signs said were the maximum and overtaking each other even when they were passing us walking gingerly up the fog line.In between cars we did take in the housing around us and noted that almost all of them were relatively new indicating that the area had been recently settled as an outlying area close to Rome about 20km distant.
Something else that was very apparent soon after we started the walk was that almost every property had a dog of a varying size and they were all keen to bark at us from behind a fence as we walked by.Perhaps living out here in expensive looking houses necessitates having a dog to guard the place while the owners are out at work or wherever.
We never made Sacrofano and we walked back to the hotel after being out for over an hour.Instead we got in the car and drove back over the road we had just walked and onto Sacrofano which was still another 3km or so on from where we had turned back on the walk.There was a small selection of pizzeria and restaurants but it was too early to tell if they would be open for dinner tonight so we went back to the hotel again for a beer and to check if the hotel restaurant would be open.
With the news from reception that the hotel restaurant was closed on Sundays it was going to be back up the hill to Sacrofano for dinner.By now we were familiar with the road and Gretchen drove it ‘like an Italian’saying ‘when in Rome’although I must admit I was pleased when we arrived at the town and parked RR.
We had noticed earlier that some sort of festival was happening tonight as there were little aluminium plates of wax with a burning candle in each.These were laid up the road on both sides at 10 metre intervals all the way around to the church.As we walked around to the church we came across a group of elderly men congregated on the pavement chewing the fat and it reminded us of the scene’s in the morning outside the newspaper shops we had passed.On this occasion there were women about but they were in their own space across the road sitting on plastic chairs waiting for the parade to start.
We were too early at 7pm for dinner at any of the pizzerias we went into and clearly they weren’t going to be opening until after whatever the festival climax was going to be.
However there was what would be a takeaway in NZ that was doing business and it had white plastic tables outside where we sat and ate our pizza(purchased by the kilogram) and drank a cold Peroni(beer) and watched the religious parade led by 4 men riding horses pass by as the locals celebrated whatever the special occasion was all about.The parade stopped at a grotto down the hill a little and there the crowd held a church service.

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