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Published: October 21st 2015
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Sicily Day 12. Wed. 21 Oct 2015
Breakfast was a non cyclist affair made up of cakes, juice and coffee. Not what you need to go off cycling up the hills of Sicily. As soon as we were about to go at 9am the heavens opened, big style, and we hurriedly donned wet gear to climb up the steep hill out of town against a torrent washing against our tyres. This disappeared down the large grids across the road which are real tyre catchers. It was on an off all morning and even the best clothing succumbed to the intensity. Luckily it was quite warm and so was not as bad a Lancashire rain. Of course there was the obligatory mud again, not as deep but was everywhere on an important route to Corleone. This made our bikes and clothes absolutely filthy and ended with Alex falling off with a rear end slide, which must have upset her confidence after doing so well yesterday with her new found mountain biking skills. There were no shops or cafes on our route so we had a late lunch at 2pm in Corleone. Another concrete jungle with a quaint old town which in true
Sicilian style looks like it would have been in 1945 and no attention since ( bedraggled). Very narrow streets with 3 storey buildings and balconies with washing hanging from them. Run down, or abandoned, churches and shops, litter on the streets and a drainage system which consisted of grooves alongside the road, cobbles sticking up at all angles and sink holes every 10 metres, not forgetting the Fiat Puntos and the dogs. Lovely place really, but not of this age. Our lunch was in the square, pizzas, and in my case pasta with broccoli washed down with beer. Three o’ clock WA the appointed time to be shown around the Mafia museum, where we were told of about the origins of the movement in the mid 19th century and its movement from protecting the Silians from a neglectful government to controlling them through fear and intimidation. The rest is history and hopefully they are being hounded out. Our hotel is quite nice but we are bunched in 4 to a room, which makes bathroom scheduling important and clothes drying a nightmare. We have a Sicilian balcony but by the time we washed the sun was dying rapidly, so I doubt
they will be dry in the morning. As I write this, it has started to rain again, so treat that as a definite. We gave the bikes a bit of a wash when we arrived and so that will be a bonus to be on clean bikes again tomorrow after a bit of chain oiling. On our travels today we saw a few goat and sheep herds with their bells clanging and their guardians behind them. One set of goats had long straight curly antelope type horns, which was most unusual. A few beef cows, milk cows and horses were also seen at various stages amongst all the over ploughed landscape. I think the ploughing grant was enormous and for this year only. Before I forget - the river fish are dead.
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