Stage Eight: Benevento to Bari

It was already dark when I arrived in Bari and the only way in and onto the docks is a busy dual carriageway, so it was on with the high viz jacket, lights and helmet and once more into the urban Italian traffic, a game of nerves and assertiveness. I've discovered if you ride straight at the driver as they try to pull out in front of you they brake and let you pass, but if you lose your nerve and try and steer round them theykeep pulling out and push you into the oncoming lane.

Safely through that lot I got to the ticket office with an hour to spare and boarded the boat to Patras, phew!



















From Lavello onwards the road was pancake flat as it passed through olive groves, walnut groves, huge fields of cabbages and vineyards to Rapello on the Adriatic coast. What a huge contrast from the misty mountains of Melfi just 24 hrs before! Time for a quick swim and a doze on the wide and deserted beach before caning down the coast through a series of little coastal towns to Bari.

And then, almost suddenly, the mountains were over. The landscape changed dramatically as I dropped down onto the coastal plain through Lavello for one last night in Italy in one of the half finished buildingsthat litter the landscape.

With the strenuous climb up to, and freewheel down from, Melfi completed, and with the last range of hills before the Adriatic coast in sight, exhaustion got the better of me and it all went a little bit swimmy, so I had to sit under a tree for an hour or so and just breath. Not exactly a Bodhi tree but it helped, even if my meditation was punctuated with a steady stream of bikers out for their Sunday thrash.

On the climb up to Melfi the roads were jammed with parked cars and hundreds of people were out and about gathering chestnuts. It was a real community event with people everywhere joiing in with the harvest and then partying in the evening. I've never come across anything like it in England. A little further on I came across a whole hillside full of storage caves where olive oil, vegetables preserved in oil, wine and of course chestnuts are stored during the winter. I'm sure many of these caves were once dwellings too.

The climb up to Passo Mirabella and on to Melfi was as memorable and as steep as it was in 1984, although this time my left leg was hardly strong enough to push on the really steep bits let alone pedal. But it was good to see the Italian's continuing investment in renewable energy sources with several fields set aside to shiny new 'solar farms', energy self-sufficient factories and clusters of magnifcent turbines on the hilltops and ridges. You'll note this climb up to a 911 metre pass also had a headwind; you can't win 'em all.

On the first trip I sailed from Brindisi after declining a three day wait for a boat from Bari and making a 100km sprint down the coast to catch the ferry to Patras.