I’m still lazy in the mornings and just made it onto the street at 10am, and went straight out of the place.
I tried to resolve my phone problems last night but they wanted nearly 25 euros to activate a prepaid SIM card that would only work in Italy. It sounded too dodgy for me, so I endured another day of no phone reception or internet.
It wasn’t a particularly exciting day but there were definitely some fun moments in it.
The guys in the picture above were fantastic. I stopped in Carosino to eat my lunch. The guy on the right was riding a classic old bike with an old Brooks Flyer leather saddle, and came over to me and said hi. He was carrying a photocopied book called – Tutti bicicletta – which I assume means every bicycle or something similar.
He surveyed my bike and located each component in his book. Brooks saddle ? Very good. Internally geared hub ? He had many options and showed me the pages. Disc brakes ? Same. My suspension seat post stumped him though. So, I took my makeshift dustcover (a Uniqlo COVID mask) off and showed him. That brought out his phone and the bike was soon completely documented in pictures.
The next guy turned up and wanted to know where I was from. Australia ? Whoah ! I was an instant celebrity. That brought the next guy over and the three of us discussed my trip in pidgin english and pidgin Italiano. Great people but they wondered why I was there and not in Paris and Rome.
To be fair, the town was lovely and the war memorial in front of the church – my lunch stop – was really well done and poignant as well.
The next section was on a straight, uphill and fairly busy narrow road until Francaville Fontana where I joined up with a documented cycle route. Thats when things became very relaxed and easy. The road even wound through olive groves in classic arcs that almost put me to sleep. It was beautiful, very green, and so relaxing with very few angry dogs and almost no traffic.
This lasted almost to Brindisi where the traffic slowly built up and the road surface deteriorated proportionally.
I had a screenshot of where the BnB was. I also had the address but no way of navigating to it – because of my damn phone.
Google Maps helped a bit and I compared the screenshot with the high level google map. Luckily, the screenshot had a restaurant marked on it, and from there I could find the place – once I located the restaurant.
That done all I had to do was locate the number in the street. Simple right ? It would have been if the numbers and streets didn’t merge and divide willy nilly.
As luck would have it, check-in was up the road from the BnB at a wine shop. The guy opened up the shop as I approached. Again, timing is everything. He also gave me a bottle of wine as a gift and refused payment.
I got onto wifi and contacted Three mobile in the UK. Over the next few hours, no progress was made. They couldn’t work out how my phone would connect for a couple of minutes and then drop out. That settles it. Factory reset and new SIM card, it is.
