Thursday, 4 July, 2024 – Thursday, 11 July, 2024
On Thursday morning, we set a new record for an early start, being ready to go by 6:30 AM. We had fewer things to pack since we left most of them on the bikes overnight. This part of central-northern Italy is densely populated with cities and fields, making it difficult to find a private spot to use as a toilet. When we finally found some bushes, we had to contend with mosquitoes biting us in the ass. It’s not like Slovenia, where forests are abundant and it’s easy to find a safe spot.
We’re still on the plains around the River Po, so everything is flat. The only climbs are the ones over the highway. Almost every day, we take a break during the hottest hours, but this time we continued cycling and ended up with sunburned legs.
We try to avoid big cities because there is nowhere to put a tent and we don’t want to be exposed while we sleep. Treviso is one of those larger cities, and we had to navigate almost 15 km of city roads and bicycle paths through it. Starting in Treviso and going all the way to Ostiglia, there is a bicycle path (ciclovia) spanning 116,20 km that was once an old railway. Today, it looks like a tunnel of trees. Much of it is paved, and the rest is covered with gravel. It’s oddly straight, crossing a bunch of regular roads where you have to be very careful since it seems like drivers in Italy don’t really mind having a cyclist on their windshield. Even though the bicycle or pedestrian crossings are marked, you usually have to wait for all the cars to pass before you can cross. This can be annoying for someone who wants to travel quickly, but for us, it wasn’t much of a problem and provided a good excuse to rest. A big bonus is that you can ride in the shade of the tree tunnel for the entire day.
As evening approached, we needed a place to sleep, so we rode slowly past houses in Quinto di Treviso, searching for someone outside. By some luck, we met Eleonora and her amazing family, who accepted us and treated us with pizza and watermelon for dinner after just meeting us! We can’t express how amazing it is to meet so many wonderful and kind people who are willing to take us in and help us.
Also after about 10 to 15 messages sent over WarmShowers, we finally got a positive response! Giacomo wrote to us that he’s happy to host us in Curtarolo the next night (Friday-Saturday).
When we started riding on the Treviso-Ostiglia ciclovia, we had no idea how long it was. We left it to find somewhere to sleep in the evening but quickly returned to it. We rode on it all day and eventually figured out its length. It is indeed beautiful, looking like a tree tunnel from a fairytale, but after a while, it gets a bit boring. Don’t get us wrong, riding in the shade all day is nice, but there’s not much to see. There are trees and bushes on both sides, and occasionally fields of corn. The only change is when it crosses a smaller city, and you have to navigate to find the ciclovia again.
We saw many cyclists on this path, but very few were touring cyclists. Mostly, we encountered commuters, recreational cyclists, some on electric bikes, and a few on road bikes passing us. Later, we found out that most touring cyclists choose the EuroVelo 8 route next to the Po River, a bit south of us, which is more bike-friendly but more zig-zag shaped, not as straight as our path.
Around 6 PM, we met our first WarmShowers host, Giacomo. Right after the introduction, he offered us a shower and treated us to an Italian appetizer of bagels with olive oil, cherry tomatoes, and eggplants, followed by pasta for dinner. He was very easy to talk to, offered us a beer, and gave us advice on which path to take moving forward. We planned to meet in the morning at Piazzola sul Brenta (about 5 km away) for a morning orange juice before leaving.
After the orange juice with Giacomo in the morning, we returned to the Treviso-Ostiglia road. We plan to meet Iris’s family near Lake Garda on Friday, which is almost a week from now, but we have only about 120 kilometers left. Because Lake Garda is very touristy with high camp prices and few WarmShowers hosts, we decided to travel slowly, finding hosts on the way rather than risking wild camping or paying high camp prices. We’re still writing to potential WarmShowers hosts along the way, but most of them don’t even reply.
We spent another day in the nearly nonstop shade of the ciclovia. We’ve learned quite a few Italian greetings like “Ciao,” “Buongiorno,” “Giorno,” “Ave,” and various other expressions we couldn’t decypher. It’s amazing how lucky we’ve been in finding people to host us. This is already our fourth night in Italy that we’ve had to ask people for a place to sleep, and once again, we hit the jackpot! After almost an hour of slowly cycling around different streets, trying to find someone outside, we met Erika and Matteo. Generally, when we ask to stay somewhere in the evening, we don’t expect anything special, just a piece of grass to pitch our tent and maybe refill our water bottles. But here, we were offered shower multiple times, a cold beer, and the use of their kitchen and fridge. If you’re reading this, thank you very much again! With hosts like this it’s also nice to be able to speak English and actually communicate, rather than relying on gestures and hoping we’re thinking about the same thing.
Now that we’re actively trying to pass time, it’s getting a bit harder. We would much rather cycle than sit for a few hours on a bench in a park, trying not to fall asleep while one of us watches over the bikes. The weather is also getting weird, with brief rain showers in the morning and around noon. Sitting in the shade, watching ants carry coconut crumbs, was an interesting way to pass the time. After the noon rain, we rode a few kilometers further and took one more break for lunch.
We had another lucky coincidence when Luiz and Beatrice stopped and started a conversation with us, eventually inviting us to spend the night at their place! It was the first time someone invited us on their own, and it realy made our day. We couldn’t stop smiling because of how lucky we were. We planned to meet them in the evening, but before that, we needed to wash and dry our clothes and tent.
Luiz and Beatrice warned us about a hill up to their house, but we didn’t realize it was THE hill. Most of the way, we had to push our bikes, but it was 100% worth it when we arrived. The view was amazing, and their hospitality even more so. They offered us a shower, invited us for dinner, and Luiz proved to be an excellent cook.
We slept longer than usual, waking up at 6:30 AM, then packed everything on the bikes and had breakfast with Beatrice and Luiz at 7:30. We somehow stayed until 11 AM, talking with them and enjoying our time.
After a week of mostly flat terrain, we had to cross the highest hill on our way to Lake Garda. We did it during the heat of the day, with temperatures reaching 32˚C in the shade. We climbed almost 300 meters before descending back to near sea level.
In the evening, we experienced our first rejection when asking for a place to sleep. We rode through smaller towns where most houses didn’t have gardens and there weren’t many people outside. After an hour of searching, we almost accepted that we wouldn’t find shelter and planned to find benches to rest on until dark, then sleep in shifts. But we didn’t give up yet, and by some miracle, we saw Max outside his house. He welcomed us warmly, gave us a cold beer, a hot shower, we got Cuban dinner, and he introduced us to his wonderful family. Thank you, Max, for saving us that night!
We had breakfast and tea at 6 AM with Silvana and Max, then started the day with a short but steep uphill road to reach the other side of a hill and get to Verona. We had planned to see and touch Juliet’s breast, but there was a long line, and we couldn’t get in with our bikes, so we had to skip it. No boob for us. Verona has terrible roads, with lots of potholes and awful traffic. The main square was crowded, and we had to push our bikes through slowly.
We started using the free website findtap.com to locate nearby drinking fountains, and that’s how we found a great one with cold water in a park in Verona. The site is also available as a phone app, and anyone can add new fountains. We’ve already added our first one a couple of days ago.
Today, we received our second WarmShowers invitation, this time from Alberto near Lake Garda! He invited us to spend the next night (Wednesday-Thursday) at his place.
A heat wave started near Verona, with temperatures rising each day, predicted to reach over 36˚C by Friday. On Wednesday morning, it was already 30˚C at 8 am, and it’s only getting worse. We were melting in the shade. Last night in the tent was so hot it felt like a sauna, and we couldn’t fall asleep for at least two hours, just lying there sweating. Our only salvation was finding water fountains to get cold water and spraying it on ourselves to cool off a bit in the shade.
In the evening, we met with Alberto, our host for the night. We shared hosting with two other cyclists and had a very good dinner. We could leave our bikes in Alberto’s garage, where he has a few of his own. He and Barbara also allowed us to spend one more night, which saved us from risking wild camping.
With our sleeping arrangements planned, we considered Thursday a relaxation day while waiting for Iris’s family. We left most of our baggage at Alberto’s place and cycled 20 kilometers to Lake Garda with our lightweight bikes, where we spent most of the day lying in the shade and swimming in the lake. Unfortunately, we made the mistake of sleeping in the tree shade without sunscreen, which can apparently still give you sunburns, so now we look like two boiled lobsters. Hopefully, we will learn from this mistake. On the way back to Alberto’s, we bought after-sun cream and applied it thickly on our backs.
Dinner that day? Homemade pizzas with different toppings, one of them even featuring cooked potato, which pleasantly surprised us. In the evening, Alberto gave us a guided tour of the nearby area, the highlight being a visit to the top of a neighboring hill to see the old military fort called “Forte Mollinary di Monte.” There was a hole in the fence, so one could, in theory, go inside the fort and see the beautiful view of the city lights below. It was a very nice ending to the day. Tomorrow, we need to get up early to meet with Iris’s family.
On average, we spend about an hour each evening looking for a place to sleep, and the process is quite stressful. Our initial plan was to avoid being a burden to people and to wild camp as much as we could. However, as we’ve learned along the way, Italy is very strict with laws against wild camping, so we had to improvise. Now we regularly have to step out of our comfort zones, but hopefully, we will get used to it as we progress on our journey. We wouldn’t have met all the amazing people we did if we had wild camped every night.