Today was 93 tough hilly miles!

The Sun had got a particularly big hat on today, possibly the sombrero it brought back from Benidorm together with a raffia donkey and one of those crappy jug things that pours sangria on your shoes. It was several degrees hotter than yesterday and a cloudless sky. If things go on like this we will have to stop filling our bottles with cheap Italian wine and use water 🙁

The morning was easy and we lucked into the only town with an open shop we saw all day. We had a tasty lunch on the bench outside the shop and they even laid on entertainment in the form of people in funny clothes riding horses (see photo).

The afternoon was somewhat less funny. We still had 50 to do and it seemed like every hill was longer and steeper on the up than the down. The sun shone, we both sweated and Alan cursed. The other photo is of him having a quick bath in village fountain.

The scenery has been fantastic and the wops are proving to be much to our liking (maybe more on this another day). Against every expectation the drivers are very considerate of cyclists and we haven't yet had an angry horn or close overtaking manoeuvre.

We didn't get to our campsite until around 6:30. Astonishingly, this one was open so we quickly settled down to cook some food. The pasta with italian sausage and tomato sauce was delicious, especially after we got the worst of the glass and hotel carpet out of the sauce ;-). (Don't worry girls, we really bought some new sauce).

We are at Lago Di Bracciano – a big lake to the north of Rome which is a weekend holiday retreat for the Romans (when they are not building an empire I suppose) as well as for tourists. Tomorrow we will skirt past Rome, not sure how the 'all roads lead to Rome ' nonsense will cope with THAT.

Steve
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