This is going to be a quick final post for the Paris to Brindisi ride. We're now coming to the end of our short stay in Brindisi, a pleasant and moderately prosperous coastal town. We're staying in a very esoteric bed and breakfast where we have a oddly shaped ground floor apartment to ourselves where the shower is by one of the doors onto the street (separate to the rest of the bathroom). The street itself is a typical small Italian street where an elderly woman has been shouting at (presumably in some sort of conversation) passer-bys constantly from her balcony. There's a bakery at one end of the street which fills the narrow passage with the smell of warm bread and yeast for most of the morning. At the other end is a shop selling just fruit and vegetables and next to it, a supermarket.
For our first dinner we made full use of our apartment to cook pasta with white sauce and to indulge my watermelon lust. We bought a local pasta that was very dense (almost tasting undercooked) and caused me a moderate amount of stomach pain the next day!
Since Bologna, we've been seeing small Piaggio trucks parked on intersections with piles of watermelons being sold. Lacking culinary facilities and a way to store and carry an entire watermelon, we abstained. Here, however, it becomes much more feasible - and for a whole €1.60, we bought 5 kilograms worth of delicious watermelon. There was no knife in our apartment though, so we had to butcher the watermelon with a spatula. This worked surprisingly well, no doubt due to the sheet metal like thickness (or lack of) of the spatula.
The ride into Bari from Pescara was surprisingly quick thanks to a wondrous tailwind which pushed our average speed up to 17.7 mph, over 5.52.12 hours and 96.01 miles. We made fantastic time into Foggia which allowed us time to stop at a gelateria /caffe for an espresso (Phil) and hot chocolate (me). It was a bit of a gruelling ride after that and our accommodation in Bari (at the B&B La Finestra Sul Centro) was depressingly unlike the advertised room. The en-suite was actually just guaranteed sole use of a bathroom and many of the promised furnishings were not present. Still, they had air conditioning and wifi so things were ok! They also didn't take payment by card as they had advertised...
In Bari itself we spent some time looking for a barber to get rid of my wonderful beard (and to see if people still thought I was Greek after that, they were amusingly confused by my ethnicity - having been asked three times that day). After some fun we found a place that said they did it but operated a bizarre queueing system where, despite waiting for longer, I was served after 2 other customers. Still, eventually I was served and although there was a moment of concern as the barber apparently tried to stop my face from bleeding, it was a smooth shave and I came out €5 poorer and looking ten years younger. In this time Phil managed to get his hair cut at one of the hair dressers (but not a barber) that we had come across in our search for a barber.
After this, we wandered into the Bari old town which was a delightful assortment of tiny streets, ancient buildings interspersed with many bars and restaurants. Motorcycles and scooters rocketed up the narrow streets with such speed that I can only imagine the honed reflexes their riders must have. We stopped at a bar in one of the streets that also happened to be a lottery outlet, selling a wide variety of scratchcards. It was doing good business. After this we went to the sea front and saw locals (although probably just tourists like us) patronising a stall selling what appeared to be fried cheese. Curious, Phil and I bought a bag for 2 Euros. The rectangular slabs were doused in salt and were initially palatable but we quickly felt ill after a handful. We threw half of the bag away in the end and marvelled at how this was even an economically feasible business.
Feeling quite hungry, we managed to get swept into a pizzeria with terrible service that lined one of the tiny side streets. Several times our waiter was almost bowled over by a buzzing scooter coming down the street at pace. Spotting several groups of teenagers walking towards the sea with gelato, our after dinner mission was made clear. The piazza they were coming from was absolutely humming with activity making a pleasant contrast to the apparently deserted town we had ridden into.
The final ride into Brindisi was equally rapid and we managed the 73.41 miles in 4.24.21 hours, an average of 16.6 mph. There was some confusion finding our route out of Bari at first and we accidentally rode illegally down a highway for a couple of miles. We soon realised that actually it was taking us down a parallel single lane road that was much less trafficked and where bicycles were legally permitted!
This single lane road became parts of the old Roman Road after a while, which was beautiful and somewhat technically challenging to cycling down. Most of it has been re paved but as is typical of Italian roads, it was heavily potholed. The road took us amongst some pleasant lime groves and then further amongst some other (unknown) fruit farms. Occasionally our route took us along the coast and I found a wondrously stark piece of rocky beach which was devoid of sunbathing Italians.
We soon arrived to Brindisi, alarmed a little at the sheer number of used pregnancy tests that lined the base of the Brindisi town sign. We've been taking it pretty easy here, it's a small enough town centre to walk around in a day. We spent most of half a day looking for packing materials (eventually settling on bits of cardboard), cleaning and then packing our bikes. Our B&B owner was a little concerned at the size of the bikes when packaged, since he was providing us with transport to the airport. I half suspected he would turn up in a Fiat Panda or a similar tiny hatchback. Thankfully he had some sort of MPV which fit our bikes horizontally.
For our last meal in Brindisi, we visited a busy restaurant on the waterfront where I had my LAST Italian pizza which, thankfully, was as excellent as always. (I'm not looking forward to the relatively doughy American pizzas.) After dinner, I tried grappa, a brandy like spirit which is served in all the restaurants here. Phil had warned me that it was foul stuff but I didn't think it could be that bad. It was as terrible as he had suggested and I could not finish it. Lesson learned.
This morning we had an uneventful check in at the Brindisi airport although they did come find us twice after we had passed security - once to rescan our pannier bags which we were carrying onto the plan and again to ask us to deflate our tyres. Extensive online discussion suggests that this isn't strictly necessary but most airport staff wrongly seem to think it has to be done.
On the Ryanair flight back to London, that truly concludes this tour. I'll post one further writeup of the tools we used to plan the trip since this took some trial and error. It's been great fun and passing through fairly small places, we were able to truly experience both Italy and France - and not just the most heavily trafficked tourist cities. France was somewhat awkward (albeit with excellent pastries) and Italy has been superb. I think it is now my all-round favourite country in Europe.
I'm also relieved that my bike and body were able to cope, three years and three surgeries on from the Tour D'Afrique. The next challenge, now that I can hold my right arm above my head and therefore can actually swim again, is to attempt a triathlon.
