This was Cathie’s first ever day of bike touring so she was understandably nervous. (Maybe nervous that everything I’d told her about this lifestyle had been exaggerated ?) After all, she had a new bike, a heavy ebike, had never ridden with panniers, never ridden on the right hand side and we were riding the wrong way down a one way cobbled street in Florence. What could possibly go wrong ?
We had a nice flat run out of Florence, initially following the Arno, then passing by Ponte de Vecchio and over to nice bike paths that we’d follow for kilometres. As bike touring introductions go, this was a good one for her.
We had purchased a lightly used second hand ebike two days prior. It had a fantastic range and should ensure that Cathie can enjoy the delights of this mode of travel without aggravating her recent injuries. 2026 hasn’t been an easy one for her and her determination to get here, let alone ride to London was impressive.
So we thought a short flat day would be a good start. In fact I think we’ll do that for a few days. It’s not easy to start bike touring when you’ve hardly ridden a bike prior to this year.
Pretty soon we were on quiet trails and we met two American lads from Minnesota who were riding Zurich to Napoli. I suggested they could park their bikes for five minutes on the street in Napoli at the end of their trip, and they wouldn’t need to lug their bikes home 😁
After twenty kilometres in Poggio a Caiano, we started looking around for some lunch and found an Asian restaurant that did Poke Bowls, so that suited us perfectly. As a rule, I try not to eat Asian food in Europe. It always seems to end up as a fusion of various cuisines and generally disappoints. We are so lucky with the Asian food available in Australia.
We also thought about finding a hotel in Prato, but there didn’t seem to be any good options available, which was probably due to it being Saturday. So I started looking further afield., and found a really nice place just up the road in Poggio a Caiano. It was at the top of a hill but that wasn’t an issue. It turned out to be a fantastic hotel.
We walked down into the town proper and had a look around, but didn’t see much of note. Of course, there was the ancient bridge that spanned a few metres. Nice but not startling. Further down the road was a bar restaurant that was teeming with locals just being sociable. That meant it was Aperol time, and we sat down for a spritz and nibbles. The nibblies became prosciutto, cheese, bread olives … and by the time we were done, we knew that dinner wouldn’t be necessary. It was superb, and the waiter and other patrons made us feel very welcome.
On the way back, we took a different route and stumbled on an old Church with a beautiful tower at the top of a ridge. Further along was part of a village and the Medici Villa, which I suspect is not the only one in this country.
From quite inauspicious beginnings, Poggio a Caiano proved to be a great place to stop.
