So exhausted I forgot how to count
Getting out of the Turin area the following morning was a bit rough. Luckily I met 2 professional Brazilian cyclists training for the Giro as I reached the outskirts, who kindly told me that I should turn back and take an alternate route if I didn’t want to be competing with all of Piedmont’s truckers for our own bit of the autostrada.
A whole new state of mind.But the moment I crossed into the region of Liguria and started up into the hills of “Le Langhe”, the world was transformed. It was postcard gorgeous, hilly as hell but covered in vines and olive trees and rambling rust coloured farm houses. Everything was so perfect that I ended up having to indulge in some unjustified eye rolling when I passed my fifth black-veiled nonna, in the interest of maintaining some remnant of ironic distance and to avoid imposing an entirely purple post on you, dear reader.
I lunched on bunches of fallen grapes which I had collected in the roadside vineyards throughout the morning. Sweetest little morsels I have ever tasted, just on the verge of being transformed into raisins by the surprisingly strong September sun. It’s soft and sweet up until midday but from then on it singed my moon legs on a daily basis.
Sweetest grapes we had ever tasted.I appreciated the idyllic scenery and the quaintness of the villages all the more so thanks to my trusty Podpanion, who had picked out for my listening pleasure that day the following gems: Louis Theroux’s memories of meeting Ike Turner, some salacious dialogue between David Sedaris and a dirty-minded New York taxi driver and Yo Yo Ma’s classic soundtrack for the Good, the Bad and the Ugly. And that’s how the image of rolling hills of olive groves will forevermore evoke in my mind coconut air fresheners and lesbian pornography. Thanks a bunch, Genius!
Digging the roadside chapels as always.The day had been pretty, but as night started to fall I began to worry a little about where I was going to stop for the night. There were signs for “agriturismi” every few kilometres among the road, but these fancy B&B-type places were aimed at the budgets of wealthy Milanese yuppies, not those of bicycle bums such as myself. So on I pushed, on and on until I got to the wee village of San Benedetto where a young family informed me that I could camp in the church garden for free. In between the play area and the graveyard. I slept like the dead who lay just a few metres away from me...
Le Langhe--hot stuff...
