Distance: 65.09 km
Time: 3 hours 48 minutes
Speed: 17.1 km/h
Ascent: 590 metres
Total distance: 236.5 km
Total time: 12 hours 36 minutes
Wordle scores: Captain 4 Stoker 4
Word of the day: “colline” (coll-een-eh) – hills!
The Stoker writes:
We really enjoyed yesterday all round, great cycling, excellent sight-seeing in Serravalle, and a lovely dinner of sausages, salad and wedges, eaten on Ines’ balcony with the incredible view of the mountains. We even managed a glass of fizz!
Note to self: not a great idea to transport a bottle of fizz a kilometre on the tandem. The resultant jiggling shook it up rather, and it pretty much opened itself all over the kitchen as soon as the Captain touched the top!
We woke this morning to cloudier skies, and even the chance we might get rained on. We didn’t mind the cooler temperatures though, as today we would test our climbing legs on a few of the prosecco hills.
After a very efficient breakfast at the cafe over the road from the apartment, we set off, ready to tackle the climbs. We navigated the exit from Vittorio Veneto flawlessly – this has been a trend so far, surprisingly. That doesn’t usually happen! It’s either kudos to Gilbert, or luck, who knows. Maybe I have now jinxed it by mentioning it. Watch this space, for a possible navigational fiasco tomorrow!
The first climb came up after a few kilometres, nothing too testing, and we felt fine. The next one would be a tougher test though, with hairpins and everything. As we turned onto it we realised we were riding the official Strada del Prosecco.
We were not alone – there were lots of couples on little rented scooters, maps in hand, giggling in their matching tricolore helmets as they negotiated the hairpins quite a bit faster than we were. Each hairpin had a turn number, it was just like Alpe d’Huez!
We wound up through the vines, the views down into the valleys were amazing, and it reminded us why we like the hills.
We felt strong on the tandem despite its full laden weight, the gradient wasn’t particularly taxing, and after turn number eight Gilbert announced that we had completed the climb. Hurrah! We weren’t even particularly pink!
We enjoyed the descent, several kilometres of well-earned free-running back to the valley floor, and a crossing of the Piave river. Very dry, like the Tagliamento a few days ago, but some evidence of actual water this time!
We have boated on the Piave river, but much further downstream. Here you’d probably struggle to float even a kayak, let alone a big LeBoat houseboat! That said, it probably looked very different a few weeks ago, when Italy suffered massive flooding in the Po valley.
After the crossing, we encountered a huge competitive run** in the town of Maser – several kilometres of sweaty runners sporting numbers, water bottles in little jackets, and for the most part big grins! There must have been two or three hundred of them, all told. There was lots of waving back and forth.
We scoffed a quick cereal bar to fuel us for the big climb of the day, up to the town of Asolo. This would be the real test – it was much steeper, and it was quite warm now. It was entirely unnecessary, we could have gone around the base of the hill to get to today’s destination of Bassano del Grappa, but we wanted to try the climbing, and Asolo looked gorgeous.
We turned onto the climb, and after a couple of unrepeatable expressions of surprise at the gradient of the first couple of corners, we started up it, quickly into the lowest possible gear. It was really hard work, 14% for a long stretch, the Captain had to concentrate really hard to keep the heavy tandem straight at such low speeds, with very little let-up in the gradient. We took a break after around 500m, had a drink, looked at the view, and then climbed back on and carried on up.
Gilbert called the top of the climb with a big tootling fanfare, which was nice, but seemed a little premature. He was right, though, we’d done it! There were a gorgeously gentle couple of kilometres on the plateau, a sign for Asolo, and suddenly we were in the piazza. It was just as lovely as promised.
Bruschette for lunch in a shady cafe under some sycamore trees, absolutely loads of water, and we were ready for the last kilometres of the day. Downhill to begin with, of course, and then weaving through the uninteresting suburbs of Bassano del Grappa until we suddenly popped into the ‘centro storico’ and found our lodgings, right on the Piazza Garibaldi. Our host greeted us with prosecco and banana bread!
It had been a proper day’s cycling, and we felt very satisfied with how we’d done. The legs will be stiff tomorrow, no doubt, but it’s shorter day, just 30-some kilometres into Vicenza.
** Later research indicates that it might have been the Asolo ultra marathon – 100km:
Wow. Chapeau….
Here’s today’s route and a short video