Giro d’Italia

David has always been keen on cycling and big fan of cycling. One evening, while drinking a particularly nice red wine from Montepulciano, Helen, David, Diane and I came up with the idea of a road trip to northern Italy so as to experience some of the great Giro d’Italia road race. The Giro is second only to the Tour de France in terms of significance in world cycling. It is a multi-stage race typically run over 23 days, mostly in Italy. The very best riders in the world compete for honours and the overall leader gets to wear a pink jersey. The Giro was started in 1908 by La Gazzetta dello Sport, the sports newspaper. This was printed on pink paper, I have no idea why they chose pink paper, but this is why the leader wears pink.

First job was to get to Italy. David spends much of his time in an electric wheelchair now. This can be loaded into the back of a specially converted van, imaginatively called a Wheelchair Adapted Vehicle or WAV. The chair runs all the way to the front so that David is in the normal position of the passenger seat. This all works well. To get the wheelchair through the WAV it has to be empty. Two seats at the rear are folded up and turned around. The wheelchair runs up a ramp at the back and while Helen secures the chair in the passenger position, Diane and I load all the luggage and open the seats up. Finally the ramp is raised, the back door closed and we are good to go. After a few days we started to get very good at this.

Overnight ferry from Hull to Rotterdam and then a night by the Rhine River. Approaching the hotel at Rüdesheim am Rhein, the satnav indicated we had 1.5 km to go but also that this would take over 30 minutes. The conundrum was resolved when we rounded a corner and came across the ferry. This was a fun way to end the day and Rüdesheim proved to be a delightful place to spend the evening.

By evening the next day we were overlooking the Bodensee Lake from the Hotel Lilienberg on Swiss side at Ermatingen. This was a very nice hotel but of course, being Swiss, it cost a fortune. From there we crossed over the Alps. The mountains were overcast and foreboding. After many hairpins in the mist we descended into Italy and arrived at the lovely and comfortably old Hotel Risi, right on the banks of Lake Como. That night, to celebrate our arrival in Italy, we dined on Pizza, red wine and ice cream.

Finally, we were getting close to the Giro. A short and easy drive took up to Cassano Magnogo where the stage for that day was scheduled to finish. The Giro is a terrific spectacle. Roads, villages and whole towns get shut down when the cyclists arrive. Many hours earlier the roads are marked off and banners hung from railings, windows and trees. The first spectators arrive as roadside vendors and officials start to get organised. Local cyclists ride up and down the road enjoying the lack of traffic and the building anticipation. A long caravan of advertisers vehicles precedes the riders. This entourage of colourful vehicles is a good ten minutes in passing. A lone police motorcyclist rushes past, blue lights flashing and horns blaring. He waves and the assembled crowd cheer. Excitement starts to build. The streets are lined with enthusiastic people all ready to cheer for their favourite riders. More arriving every minute. More police cars. More sirens. Then the first of the team cars. Then we hear the helicopter. We know it is filming the leading group. Closer and louder. The crowds erupt as the first riders come round the corner. These are the final few hundreds of metres of the stage. The competitors have been battling all day. Hours of flat out pedalling and jockeying for position. Sometimes it all comes down to the very last section and the width of a tyre on the line. We have a reasonable position by the roadside. Some kind spectators have moved aside so that David can see past them. We can see what is going on but we don’t really know what is going on. Later we will use the internet to find out who actually won. Just here and now we experience the moment, enjoy the atmosphere, and marvel at the athletes. Faces locked in grimaces of concentration they turn themselves inside out pushing for the line. A few minutes later comes the main peloton. This sort of race is very much a team sport and these guys have spent their everything trying to keep the team leaders in the first group. Finally and possibly most desperately, come the stragglers. The guys who are having a bad day or who spent themselves too early. No prizes for them but they still get cheered as they push determinedly to cross the line in time to avoid elimination.

Later, back at the Hotel Risi, David planned our next day at Bergamo. This time we avoided the crowds at the finish and instead headed to a corner, not so far from the finish, at the end of long straight. It was also on part of a loop around the town so the race would actually come past the same point twice. We got there early and set up so that we had a terrific view down past the shops and offices. We also found a nice bar for a couple of beers to help pass the time. When the race arrived we could stare straight into the riders’ faces as they pushed down the road. I busied myself taking photos while everyone else cheered and shouted. The day before it had been cold and raining. The crowds were a little difficult to deal with and we could not get a really good view. This time, the weather was warm and sunny, we had a brilliant view point and beer. An hour or so later, the race came past for the second time. Yet again we had the perfect viewing position and by the time we left we were all feeling pleased with ourselves. That evening we drove along the picturesque shores of Lake Garda to the Hotel Villa Enrica in the holiday town of Riva del Garda.

Next day the wheels came off our well laid plans. Not literally, but almost. The brakes of the WAV were making horrible noises. Investigation at the local garage showed new parts were needed. In the meantime we were stuck. Fortunately, the plan for the day was a rest day and the following day the Giro was coming right through Riva del Garda. So all we had to do was sit tight and let it all happen. The weather was beautiful, the mountains were spectacular and the lake glittered in the sun. Paddle boarders, dingy sailors and even the odd swimmer were dotted around the lake although the majority of people seemed to content to bask and the sun, drink beer and eat ice cream. Helen and I had a brief shot of swimming in the lake. We did it but it was very cold. The swim was short and we felt no great urge to repeat it. In the evening a massive thunderstorm rolled in and the pent up heat of the day exploded around us. Sheltered on our balcony we could enjoy the spectacle of moody, grumbling mountains while finishing up a glass of wine.

The Giro came to town. Everything shut down. The road was closed. Barriers went up and we put yet another brilliant plan into action. We went to the bar. I particularly liked this plan. It had been well thought out and rehearsed. We went to the bar, ordered drinks and sat under the awning watching the race on a large screen television. One Aperol spritz and a few peanuts later, we could see the race would be arriving soon so we turned out chairs around. Having cleverly chose a bar right on the actually road that the race was using, we could simply move a little and we had prime position seating. After it was all over, we took another beer before wandering further into town for celebratory ice creams.

The fixes to the WAV were delayed while parts arrived. We had to skip a stage of the Giro but, eventually, we were back on the road again. Now we headed to Venice. It is a rather odd place and even after a couple of visits I do have rather mixed feelings about the place. However, quite rightly, it should be on most people’s bucket list and this was the case with David. From landward, you approach Venice across a long bridge, Ponte della Libertà, at the end of which are several car parks. Fortunately one of these was happy to give us prime position so that we could unload the wheelchair. It was a good start but twenty minutes later we hit a problem

The boats were on strike. Helen asked at the information desk about wheelchair access to the Piazza San Marco. This is one of the most famous places to go in Venice and on the opposite side to where we were parked. The city is built on 180 small islands connected by 400 or so arched bridges making a boat by far the easier way to get around. In fact, we were told, a boat is the only practical way to get around with a wheelchair. So, utterly impossible, because the boats are on strike. Now, Helen likes a challenge and she does not like being told she cannot do something. So, as she then explained to me, in a rather expletively laden and dramatically delivered sentence, we would carry the damned chair if needed. And we did. I lost count of how many bridges we climbed. One early and particularly long bridge over the Grand Canal we were helped by two burly policemen. This was encouraging. Elsewhere, quite a remarkable number of passers-by stopped to lend us some muscle power. We pushed and pulled and heaved and sweated and, some three hours later, arrived at the Rialto Bridge. David was pleased and the rest of use definitely felt a sense of achievement. After a couple of hours of touristing we came across a lone ferry still running to Tronchetto – an artificial island that is mostly a big car park. This made the return trip much easier. From Tronchetto the ‘Venice People Mover’, a monorail, took us back to our original car park.

Next day we headed to the very top, right-hand corner of Italy to catch the penultimate stage of the Giro, a time trail in the mountains. The lovely alpine village of Tarvisio is tucked up in the Julian mountains right on the borders of both Austria and Slovenia. The time trial started here and the riders were set off at one minute intervals to ride 19 km up the fiercely steep Monte Lussari. Just outside the village, we found a perfect spot by the cycle track and set up a picnic. Here we could sit in the sunshine watching the world’s greatest cyclists going past us one at a time while we nibbled some cheese and sipped wine. Unfortunately it was not such a good day for the Welsh cyclist Geraint Thomas. He started the time trial leading the Giro and looking set for an epic victory. Painfully he lost 26 seconds to Primož Roglič, which cost him the lead. At the conclusion of the final stage, next day, their positions were confirmed with the Slovenian Primož overall winner and Geraint second.

The last few days of our road trip took us back through the scenic mountains of Austria to Germany. We made a detour through the Black Forest and then north into the Netherlands. Then the ferry to Hull and back to England where the first thing we noticed was that it had started raining.