South Kesteven District Council

Blog 4 May 15

Ciao

Now in Sardinia and my first change of language. Although the boat trip from Bonifacio in Corsica was just an hour long, the islands are quite different. Sardinia is greener than I had expected, and although slightly flatter is more rugged. Whilst the French struck me as exceedingly courteous (lots of “bonjour monsieur” and “bon voyage”) the Sardinians seem impressively friendly.

Courtesy of Ryan Air my wife, Julie has joined me in Alghero for the weekend and for the first time in a fortnight it has rained …. continually. Whilst it is a disappointment for her, the rain is a relief for me because it was becoming unbearably hot when cycling in the middle of the day.

An ode to tarmac.

One of the unintended consequences of a long cycling trip is that you become a connoisseur of tarmac. Inevitably if you are on two wheels you need to keep one eye on the road ahead, but on a ladened bicycle, that pothole can become a show stopper. So you quickly learn to appreciate the flair and skill of those who build the roads and those who dig them up and put some of the surface back down again. You start to wonder whether all highway engineers should inspect road repairs from the saddle, because next time the cyclist in front of you wobbles it may well be because of a pothole that a driver wouldn’t even notice.

In France, even the ‘departmental’ roads were generally of a very high standard which helped me to speed along. Often there were dedicated cycle lanes, but where not, the major roads have wide ‘hard shoulders’ leaving me plenty of room to cycle without causing traffic to swerve round me.

The hazard which I had not expected is the road tunnel – we don’t have many of those in Lincolnshire! I hit my first just north of Marseille and although it was short and I was well lit it was a thoroughly disorientating experience. Lights may help motorists see me, but I couldn’t see the road, or even the walls, and the light at the end seemed to take an eternity to grow larger. It wouldn’t take much to convince me that the odd troll still inhabited their dark chambers.

On closer inspection of my route through Sicily and southern Italy I keep finding more and more of them – it’s becoming an obsession and I have visions of lugging my bicycle up over the tops of mountains in order to avoid them.

Duncan.