(Strong language may be used in our blogs) Italy – Courmayeur – Milano – Bergamo and Lake Iseo

WOW what a difference  45 min’s makes on a bus under the alps (We were not allowed to cycle the tunnel as it was too dangerous, probably because of the lack of air in there)

We got off the bus dressed in shorts and T-shirts, pulled the bikes out of the trailer and loaded up our gear, then looked round and saw Mont Blonc from the Italian side “Nice” and very white with the sun blazing down on it. I went into the tourist office and asked if there was a map of Italy we could buy from them, the woman said that they didn’t have one of Italy but they did have one of the Courmayeur valley for free, once she said free I couldn’t pass up on anything free so said thanks very much then turned round and asked her how do you say thanks in italian as we didn’t know anything apart from “Ciao bella” and “justa one’a more’a corneto” So we set off and then stopped again pretty quick as we remembered that we needed to do bit of a photo shoot and a video blog with the mountains in the background.

When we planned the route back in Ireland we decided to go along the euro velo 8 across Italy because someone mentioned in a blog that it was all downhill and they hardly had to peddle at all the whole width of Italy, Well by going under the alps we kinda missed the beginning of the euro velo 8 that starts down south of the alps along the coast of France/Italy and started at one of the highest points possible and the first day was downhill all the way and the only time we needed to peddle was when the wind that came up the valley was right in our faces… peddling down hill, what a pain in the arse!

At five in the evening(Two hours earlier than any other day due to the heat, but still had 100km under our belt) we found a nice picnic area to camp with toilets and also benches to cook and eat dinner on. We set up the camp and put up the projector screen and lay back and watched “Game of thrones”

Sam the tech man setting up his solar charge system

In the morning we woke and set up the bikes, Sam had drained most of the battery in his power gorilla from using the projector and mini rig speaker the night before so had his solar charger set up on the front of his bike to charge it all again. The ride today wasn’t so down hill, more flat and the mountains around us started to turn into hills but the sun was still relentlessly beating down on us. It was funny because in France we were complaining about the rain and saying how scorching hot sun would be nice, then we realized we would still be moaning even if we had hot weather…. and here we were saying “Aaghh it’s too hot”  with squinty eyes pink noses and burnt arms… now that we had the big straight roads for miles and miles through the northern italian countryside, all farm land with nothing much to see we decided to try out the cycle train technique where you all cycle as close to each other in a line and one of you blasts through the wind while the other two slip stream you and hardly peddle at all(this was a good way of letting Will’s knee heal while cycling) at the back you don’t really see any of your surroundings because you are constantly checking your distance from the bike in front but it didn’t matter as our surroundings were pretty bare.

Cycle train, at some points we were 4 or 5 inches away from each others wheels

One thing that we hadn’t taken into consideration was how much water each of us would go through when the weather was hot, before back in France we were getting through 2-3.5Ltr a day(thats how much each of us carried) but here in Italy with really nice weather and mid day heat we were doubling that so stopping for water was becoming a lot more regular.

water stop outside a church – continuos water from a spring

Our lunch hasn’t changed much yet but maybe thats because we are still living off french food supplies, Cheese, Chorizo, Butter, Bread, and Wine.

Lunch time – Somewhere we don’t know where

Using the cycle train technique it didn’t take us long to get to get close to Milano, again we got to around five O’clock in the evening and we were physically drained and dehydrated, after a few stops and not everyone agreeing to set up camp we all felt like it was time to stop… thats when you can’t find anywhere to camp anymore because you passed all the good spots, I was at the front and spotted a side track going into some woods that had a river running through it so we back tracked along the duel carriage way and then went down the track and jumped in the river, I was happy to set up camp right there and then but Will wanted to check out just a bit further down this track so we all got on the bikes again and carried on along this old track that had more holes than road, at the end was a big house and turning circle with loads of benches outside, we sat down and Will went up and poked his nose in and found a person who said “Yes we have beer” and “Dinner is at seven” so we drank a few and waited for dinner. Only €10 for a three course meal and it was bloody lovely Gnocchi with a fantastic bolognese sauce to start then roast pork with a butter sauce and an apple sorbet to finish with an espresso.. BOOM and we were done… Only problem was that it was now dark and we hadn’t found a place to camp yet… We went down the track a bit further and found a field with about 30 bee hives on it, so we went a good bit further again and found another field that smelled great as we walked through it, Camp went up a little wobbly because of the beers and because we put it up in the dark, Will and I went off back to the river where there was a mini sluice gate, we stripped off and had a very cold wash in the river, that was doubly cold because of the sun burn and dehydration, but felt great afterwards.

We woke up a little late the next day but it didn’t really matter because we were only about 35km away from Milano, when we got out of the tents we realized why the field smelt so good last night as we walked through it… it was a meadow full of flowers, probably planted that way for the bee’s to gather all their nectar from, I say probably but I am pretty sure that was the case as we had Bee’s all around us as we packed up. We blazed on towards Milano and got there in good time not even having lunch before we got there. What a chaotic place to try and get into, everyone was driving like nutters and the scooters didn’t bother to stop for red lights… Just scooting past saying Ciaooooooo, just like the Eddie Izzard sketch about Italians.

As we were going along everyone was beeping their horns at us and whooping with thumbs up (Better than in France where we got people beeping their horns and shouting with the middle finger up) we were cycling along the bumpy cobble stone streets of Milano when I spotted a cycle route and decided to take a little short cut over a grassy knoll, not a bother all loaded up with about 50-60kg’s of gear and my own body weight until my front wheel went into a hidden pot hole up to the front hub, I went right over the handlebars and the bike stayed right where it was I rolled off down the hill and the lads looked at me in shock, once they realized I was ok they both doubled over in laughter and asked if I had the GoPro turned on, alas I didn’t as that would have been a good bit of footage, the people in the traffic loved it and shouted at us beeping their horns (they love cyclists over here)

Bugger

when I got up and checked the bike I couldn’t turn the handlebars from side to side because the front forks had bent backwards about two inches and the tire was now hitting the drink bottle cage on the underside of the frame, I got Sam and Will to hold the bike up and pull back while I sat on the floor and grabbed the forks in my hands while bracing myself off the peddle crank with my feet. We managed to bend it back enough to be able to ride and the turning is a little sharper than before but its grand and it didn’t cost me a small fortune buying new forks (This is why you get a steel frame bike when cycle touring)

Piazza del Duomo

We got to the centro finally and saw the Duomo (Piazza del Duomo) We sat down and had lunch and then tried to find accommodation, not so easy as that so it seemed, we went to the tourist info office and they printed us off a list of directions to a campsite… all in italian, so they did it again this time in english and we left in search of a campsite… the streets don’t seem to have any name plates so we soon threw the directions away and got Will’s new sat-nav out that one of the Tom’s gave us in Chmonix, it worked really well once we knew what the name of the place we were going to was called. 

We got there and it seemed like it was an adventure park holiday camp kinda place… it had a petting zoo and had peacocks screeching all day and night plus lambs bleating, what a place. It cost €11 to camp plus €11 each to be there, €44 all together to stay in our own tents and have the luxury of hot water… great stuff. we got out of there pretty quick in the  morning even though it was raining all night and all morning (we did manage to fit in a pizza breakfast though) blast me it was wet, warm and wet, almost tropical.

We made our way through Milano again, this time trying to find the circular ring road… Wicked we found it… Bugger roadworks and its all blocked off, we worked our way through the back streets of Milano and found our way to the Bergamo road, stopping and starting at traffic light after traffic light all in rain so hard that we were soaked before we had even got out of the campsite. We arrived in Bergamo again with a warm welcome from the locals all waving and asking us where we came from and where we were going to after Bergamo, this made cycling through traffic pretty hard while chatting through windows using sign language as we were still limited to about three words in italian. We saw a McD’s again and headed for it to use the internet, then we saw a sign saying hostel and went that way rather than going into a McD again… Eeargh, no thanks.  We whizzed through the streets and people flying all over the place and found the hostel, as we pulled up outside a bloke started talking to us in english, he turned out to be american and said he was staying in the hostel, we asked him if it was affordable and he said it was to him but we should go inside and check it out. Will came back out and said its €25 a head and we get our own room… we were all so wet and tired of traffic that it was a unanimous yes. We unloaded the bikes and put our stuff upstairs in the room two stories up, I jumped in the shower right away and washed all his clothes and unknowingly flooded the whole shower room and bed room with water that merged with the run off water from all our bags and proceeded to flood the corridor in the hostel. We went out for  a look round Bergamo and it was pretty much closed apart from a few clubs and pubs/classy wine and cheese bars, we wanted to get something to eat so went to find a pizza place, we found one and the staff were dressed smarter than us so we gave it a miss, just next door was a Palestinian kebab shop that was full of people sitting down to eat, we went in and got one of the best kebabs any of us had ever eaten, we finished then ordered another one and left to go home, on the way back we stopped off for a quick pint in a trendy bar and only just managed to get past the bouncers as they looked us up and down, Will went up to the bar and the bar tender looked at us and said “three beers, big ones right” everyone else was drinking wine. He served us up three pints of a nice blonde beer, nice one mate.

1000km’s since Ireland

We got back to the hostel and started checking out the maps so we knew where to go the next day. We got up and had an early breakfast in the hostel, not like an english or irish breakfast of bacon and sausages but more european like yogurt and fruit juice with toast and jam or Nutella, we then got out of the hostel and ventured into Bergamo, it wash’t raining, we got lost and went the wrong way round and eventually ended up at the tourist info where a very helpful woman gave us a regional map and told us the about the campsites around lake Iseo (Where Sam and Will had decided would be a good place to stay the night before) she then phoned up a couple of the campsites and booked us into one that was right next to the lake, only €9 a night per person. We set off again this time with an idea of where we were going and stopped off in a Decathlon store to get chain cleaning products and gear oil so we could do a service on the bikes as we had just hit 1000km’s since Ireland

The rain was still raining but it wasn’t a new sensation anymore so we just got on with the cycling and got to Lake Iseo with loads of daylight left in the day, We pulled up to a campsite (We weren’t sure which one as we had lost the piece of paper the woman from the tourist info gave us with the name and phone number on it) and a woman came out and started talking to us, we asked if she was expecting us and she said yes, as it turned out she was english and from Manchester but had been living in Italy for nearly 35 years, she showed us to the area where we could set up our tents and left us to it.

Camp at lake Iseo

So far we have been here two days and it hasn’t stopped raining yet… we are sure once the clouds have gone the view will be amazing.

Three Surly long haul truckers for sale

We had a mad few days before we left Ireland, getting all our gear sorted for the bikes, packing up our lives into cardboard box’s and trying to spend as much time with our family and loved ones as possible. On the morning of our leaving day all three of us were still doing last minute packing and adjustments to the bikes, so last minute in fact that we were late to our own send off at the Blue haven in Kinsale, we got on the bikes and and rode then for the first time fully loaded with all our gear, the look on each others faces was classic,a look of realization that we had far too much stuff and we couldn’t even pick the bikes up to get them out from Katie-jo’s back yard, thankfully the first leg of our trip was down hill and we all wobbled down the road and we cycled into Kinsale town and up to the Blue haven where family and friends were all waiting as well as the Mayor of Kinsale. As we were already late and it soon became time to leave so we could get to the ferry in time, we made a good start getting out of Kinsale but we wanted to go and see Robbie and his family at the bike shop in Carrigaline and get some photos for the K2K page, there wasn’t enough time to do it if we cycled so we shoved our bikes in to the back of Will’s parents pick up and all got in to Katie-jo’s car and drove to Robbie’s, we made more last minute adjustments and bought some food in the Polish shop next door as all the shops were likely to be closed in France due to it being easter sunday when we made port.   The guys at the Polskie shop came out and gave us a crate of oranges for the trip so we stuffed oranges into every spare bit of space in the panniers and then got on the bikes and cycled to the ferry port where we said our last last good byes and got in the que for the ferry where they staff came over to us and asked if we were the three mad lads setting off on bike to India, we told them that we were they and that gave them a good laugh. We got up onto the top deck of the ferry and went straight to the info desk and tried to blag a cabin for free but the woman behind the desk said that of course we could have a cabin but she would have to charge us for it, so after that nice refusal we went to the next best place and went to the bar and started with three pints of Murphy’s, it was going quite well until the boat entertainment started up and some guy who seriously though a lot more of himself than was due started to sing and tried to pull people out of their seats to dance, we got up and left after we had about nine pints between us and went to the cinema to watch Jack Reacher where we laughed so much at how Tom Cruise made himself look like a tall person, the hysterical laughter might also have been down to the bottle of Jameson’s we drank as we watched the movie, we didn’t have a cabin so the only way we could make bed time seem ok was to not remember when bed time came. We went back to the bar and two guys who were also on a cycle trip came over and started talking to us because they had seen us in the Irish Examiner paper the day before and wanted to ask us if we really hadn’t much love for cycling bikes, we told them that  the title of the article was a little over exaggerated but no we weren’t really that keen on the idea of cycling ten thousand kilometers. We did find a place to sleep in the end, it was a small crawl space on the flaw behind the bill boards and it had a plug socket to charge up the laptop and our phones, we woke up after what seemed to be no time at all to a far too load alarm and got up and found a free shower and stole a load of toilet roll then made our way down to the bikes  and bumped into a French guy who asked us about our trip and why we had all matching clothing, we told him where we were going and he said that if we ran out of money while in France that we should still go into cafe’s and order food but when it came to paying just tell the staff that we had no money but would be prepared to work for our food that we had just eaten, we thought that we would probably pass on that bit of advice and went on down to the bikes and waited until everyone was gone before we set off out of the ferry. When we got out it was still very dark but with a slight hint of blue showing on the horizon and as we cycled out of the ferry port we met up with the two other cyclists who were doing a two week trip around France, they soon overtook us and we didn’t see them again. We were completely buzzing from the idea that we had made it and were finally on the road and doing what we had been planning over the last year and driving our friends and family mad with the constant talk of K2K We made it to Morlaix in good time and were pleased to find that there was a market going on and a bakery open even though it was easter sunday, we stocked up on bread and bought lots of fresh cooked sausages, it was bloody cold and our hands were shaking like mad as we ate our first breakfast in France. After the bite to eat we made our way down into Morlaix and got completely lost because even though we had been planning this trip for over a year we hadn’t really looked at a map of France and didn’t have a clue as to where we were meant to be going, it was uphill and really took it out of us as we were still sweating the Jameson’s out of our system from the not too long ago night before.   after about an hour of going back up hills and winding our way through back streets we found our way the road we were after that would take us though a kind of national park. We did over ten hours of cycling on our first day and only made 47.5km and we were wreaked, we managed to set up a camp hidden behind some trees from the road, I literally put my tent up and blew up my bed then passed out was snoring in my tent, Sam and Will couldn’t believe it but soon followed suit and we all slept and forgot to lock the bikes or even bring our stuff in to the tents. we woke up as it got really cold with the tent doors open and cooked dinner , Pasta and chorizo with cheese (that was going to be the same dinner for the next two weeks) The next day we got up pretty early and took down camp and there was ice all over the place,

we made pretty good milage that day because we camped at the top of a hill and for the first real time we got to freewheel for about twenty minutes, we were trying to get to the Brest a Nantes grand canal because it would be an easy ride along the canal, it being flat with hardly any hills. We made it to the canal and managed to do nearly eighty kilometers in a day, we set up camp at a picnic spot alongside the canal and had a great sleep despite the cold, today we only had to cycle about twenty five kilometers down the canal to a place called Gouarec where we were to meet a guy Called Graham who said we could stay at his place for a night, clean our clothes, shower and he even cooked us dinner. We got to Gouarec at the wrong time because France closes at twelve for two and a half hours, we can’t get used to it and keep having to wait outside supermarkets until they open. The only shop open was “The UK food shop” so wee went in and got some Guinness and malt cake and got talking to the local english population of Gouarec, asking them if they knew of a Graham and one of the women in the shop knew who we were talking about and because he lived up near her, she gave us directions to Grahams place and we left the village of Gouarec and went over the bridge and round the corner to find a bloody great big long monster of a hill that completely trounced us because we had been getting soft from the easy cycling along the canal. We got to Grahams and were totally welcomed into his house by him and his dog Jess, we had a little bit of a chat then he showed us the barn where we could leave the bikes then he took us into his house where he continued to show us round and show us the spare room we could use for the night then he left us to go to the shops so he could get us our dinner for the night, we all got cleaned up and put on some smart clothes and then all sat down for dinner where Graham told us tales from his travels before he moved to France and gave us great advice about always making sure you have a beer with your dinner to make sure you don’t get ill and not to eat salads when you are out in the far east because quite often they are washed with unclean water, we took this advice to heart and made it the K2K motto – Drink a beer at every meal and don’t eat salads. Graham was and is a great bloke and a total gentleman with fantastic stories and tales to tell, we are all very grateful for our stay at his house 

2013 with three months to go

So we have started the new year and already its a good one. We have just got our Ortlieb panniers sent over from the UK and they seem like they will be good enough for the job.
We also got our Brooks saddles too, Sam has his already attached to his bicycle that he uses to commute to work. Apparently you have to give  them about a thousand miles before they settle into the riders shape, that means Sam will be sorted half way across France while Will and i are still getting used to them.

Just heard back from Robbies bike shop in carigaline that the bikes should be turning up some time next week. I don’t think Will and I have ridden a bike properly in years, its going to be a shock.

Happy new year to you all – k2k