I started early as promised straight into a 10km climb, under a starry sky, leaving the glowing village behind me.

Once more the views were simply stunning. In fact I breasted a climb and involuntarily exclaimed at the view before me as it was so beautiful.

The terrain I was covering meant many of the roads were pretty poor or even absent.

But in some places there were exquisite plazas to sit and eat a cornetto with a cappuccino.

Getting enough to eat was a major preoccupation.  I was raiding small stores and bars for chocolate bars like Marathons, Mars Bars, Twix, or KitKats but it was nice to stop at a village and get a Panini and some tomatoes and fruit; I didn’t do that enough.

I was approaching Maratea and from a distance caught sight of the giant statue of Christ high on the hill. I knew I was going to have to climb up to it and, apparently, the tradition is to walk around it with your bike.

It was a a grind to get up to that f***ing statue!  At which point my Garmin reset itself again – nnng – but the views were incredible.

At this point there was a diversion because of mud slides affecting the route. I was, however,  arriving at it long after the leaders had passed through. I gleaned from the WhatsApp group that the original route was now rideable again so I followed it.  The village was still being cleaned and the extent of the mud flood was sobering but it was passable.

 I booked myself into an Auberge in Morano Calabro but misjudged how far away it was.  I had to message the proprietor and say I would be arriving late. 

When I got there he was kindly waiting for me. It was about 11-11:30pm when I arrived and crawled into bed after a shower. I made the strategic decision I was going to have breakfast there and start later than usual after such a long day.

Over 15 hours of cycling.

2VS Day 6 – 17th October 

I had made the decision to have a shorter day as, after about 100km, supply points and places to stay became sparse. So I set my sight on Acri. 

First it was important to have breakfast – cereal, fruit, bread, cheese, meat, coffee – in fact everything I could lay my hands on.

It turned out to be day of climbing to hill top towns and navigating gravel paths and even having  someone with a chainsaw cut me a path through fallen trees.

One thing I did notice in Italy was that vehicles, in the main, tended to be respectful of cyclists.  Someone had said that the law meant the bigger vehicle or least vulnerable vehicle was always considered to be at fault in an accident. If true, it seems quite an incentive to take care?  There were also plenty of signs exhorting drivers to give cyclists space when overtaking.

I made it to Acri having managed to book myself into the Supersonik Hotel online. When I arrived it looked utterly deserted and shut.  A man in the street helped me rouse the elderly couple who were in charge and I eventually found myself in a big room with a super hot shower.  The old couple told me about a Pizza restaurant up the road. I made my way there to eat while also recharging and resetting my Garmin before getting to bed. 

One aspect of riding through the countryside I have forgotten to mention is that on two occasions I spooked wild boar who ran up the gravel path ahead of me. There were also a number of encounters with huge sheep dogs left to tend flocks of goats and protect them from wolves and, it would appear, cyclists. The adrenaline surges such encounters stimulated helped me up more than one hill…..