Europe Day 1: 67 Miles

Rome, Italy to Viterbo, Italy

The first day of a bike tour is always difficult, even under the best conditions. Nearly 7 hours in the saddle was a shock to my body having not logged many long rides prior to this trip. That shock was amplified by some poor weather conditions and rookie mistakes. Overall it was a challenging day, but I’m proud of what I was able to accomplish given the circumstances.

My day started out by trying to fight though Rome traffic during morning rush hour. I loaded the day’s full route onto my GPS and began following it from the center of the city. The GPS mapping system is great in rural areas, but it is pretty horrible in a busy city with many side streets. I wasted 45 minutes trying to follow the GPS rather than following my instincts. I knew if I continued on a northwest trajectory, I would have to hit the river bike path at some point. After looping around a few times and making no progress I instead used the compass on the GPS, set it for NW and within no time had found the bike path.

The bike path followed the Tiber River out of the city where I was then able to head onto the roads. It was at this point that the rain started to come down hard. For the 55 miles that followed I rode through rain with temperatures dropping from the mid-60s in Rome to the mid-40s when I arrived in Viterbo. The roads were fine for the most part. It was hillier than I expected with some steep climbs, but I wasn’t having any problems. This all changed when I finally reached the Via Francigena route. This route is meant for walking, but everything I read said it was easy to bike as well. For some stretches this was true, but for about 15 miles I found myself on narrow rock and dirt trails which were impossible to ride on. The conditions were made worse by the rain, which caused the dirt to become thick mud and rocks to be dangerously slippery.

I was meant to follow the Via Francigena all the way to Viterbo, but immediately started looking for a new route. Luckily I was able to get on SR2 with about 30 miles left in the ride which made all the difference. SR2 is a main road with lots of places to stop and rest and didn’t have too much traffic. I had decided against riding SR2 out of Rome because it looked to be a 4 lane highway with no shoulder. Two miles From the point I got on SR2 it changed into a nice 2 lane country road. I honestly would not have made it to Viterbo today had I stuck with my original game plan. I saw a ton of walkers going in the opposite direction on the Via Francigena and I’m sure I would have ended up camping in the mud with a group of them. I really got down on myself while I was struggling which made for a really difficult afternoon. I put some music on to try and distract myself and once I had ridden a few miles on SR2 I was immediately in a better mental state.

By 2:30 I was about 6 hours into the day and hadn’t eaten much. I had a quick breakfast of yogurt, an apple, and granola and followed that with a small panino for lunch. I could feel the lack of calories and stopped at a supermarket for a Gatorade and a chocolate bar which was a great pick me up to get me through the last 20 miles.

I arrived in Viterbo at 5:00 which was amazingly the exact time I had told my Airbnb host I’d be arriving. After having felt so down earlier in the day I was pumped to actually hit my expectation for the day exactly. My riding on the back half of the day was really strong and I’m looking to carry that over into the next couple days. The Airbnb turned out to be awesome and a great value at just $38. After checking in I immediately wanted to hop in the shower, but had to take care of a bunch of chores first. My bike and panniers were covered in mud and needed to be cleaned off before I could clean myself up. After about 45 minutes I was ready to explore Viterbo and get some dinner.

Viterbo is an ancient city that I think is best known for housing the papal palace for a time in the 1200s. The city has some really interesting maze like cobble stone streets that were fun to explore. I may explore the city some more tomorrow morning if I have time. I had dinner at the restaurant directly next door to the Airbnb and my laziness in restaurant choice paid off. A 3 course meal including antipasti, pasta Amatriciana, porchetta, a side of broccoli and 0.25L of wine came to €18 and was the best meal I’ve had on this trip so far. The restaurant opened at 7:30 which was right when I arrived. This was great because with no one else there the waiter was nice enough to translate the entire menu for me.

I apologize for a lack of photos from the actual ride today. All photos are from Viterbo except for the cows. The rain was coming down too hard to stop for any photo ops. Hopefully tomorrow brings better weather so I can capture the amazing scenery.

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Musings:

• Hedgehogs are the new squirrels, snails are the new turtles and paninos are the new Subway. I can define parts of the United States by the types of roadkill, but I never saw hedgehogs or snails. I admittedly did not research the wildlife of Europe before arriving, but never would have guessed hedgehogs were a thing in Italy. In the United States you can pretty much find a Subway in every town. In Italy it is all about the panino. Nothing like a warm piece of bread right from the oven with freshly sliced prosciutto and hand sliced cheese as a mid day meal. It beats Subway any day in both taste and price.
• Converting metric distances to miles is a great way to pass the time on a bike. There were many times today where I saw signs with kilometers left until Viterbo and found myself automatically doing the math to get to miles. I’m sure it won’t be long until I’m comfortable with the metric distances, but for now I didn’t feel like I knew how much distance was left in the day until I had done the conversion.