For the past three weeks we have been following the London to Barga bike ride – #londonbarga with the two intrepid cyclists Stefano Elmi and Oriano Gigli.
Via the internet we have been able to plot their daily progress and read their reports on road and weather conditions on the route.
This morning, precisely on time and as predicted the pair arrived at the tunnel which joins The Province of Massa and the Province of Lucca -- they had arrived home and to met them was a reception committee of Barga cyclists, friends and two generations of family.
As you can hear in the short conversation (in Italiano) with the pair recorded as soon as they had finally stopped pedaling, both were eager to reach home and go straight to Aristo’s in Barga Vecchia for a well earned beer and then home to put some cream on some badly sunburnt legs.
London – Portsmouth (con nave per Saint-Malo) – Rennes – Le Mans – Tours – Chateauroux – Lyon – Grenoble – Barcellonette -- Col du Larche/Colle della Maddalena – Cuneo – Savona – Genova – La Spezia – Cinquale (spiaggia libera) – Passo del Cipollaio – Barga”.
Hopes grow for VenTo, a proposed 422-mile cycle path in northern Italy
Culture and tourism minister praises project that would tie in with Milan Expo and link Venice and Turin along the Po river
For the past three-and-a-half years, activists in Italy have been lobbying for the construction of a 422 mile (679km) cycle path, known as VenTo, that would link the major cities of the north as well as a host of lesser-known treasures along the banks of the river Po. Now, as the eurozone’s third largest economy starts to see faint signs of recovery from its longest postwar recession, hopes are growing that the project’s time may just have come.
Last week, after meeting with VenTo’s proponents, the culture and tourism minister, Massimo Bray, lavished praise on the idea, saying it was an important initiative that could be an example of sustainable development for the rest of Italy and would ideally tie in with the Universal Exposition due to be held in Milan in 2015.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/04/hopes-grow-vento-bicycle-path-italy