Cinisi-Terrasini

Well the last couple of days have been a comedy of errors. Whilst it wouldn’t happen to me, I have visited enough foreign lands now and got myself into and out of silly situations in doing so as to not make any daft mistakes, such as that of a friend of mine "Cadel". 

Basically he recently made the mistake of booking into a hotel, which was to be the departure point of a tour he was undertaking, without doing all of the obligatory checks. Sure he’d checked to see that the room rate was competitive, the facilities adequate and so on, what he didn’t do however was to check it’s precise location relative to the town in which it was purportedly located. IE: That the Palermo Beach Hotel was in fact located within walking distance of Palermo as opposed to being some 35KM from town (and at the arse end of the world as far as public transport is concerned). Sorry for the language – His word’s not mine!

Now that in itself wouldn’t be the end of the world, if he:

• Knew the local language;
• Had been astute enough as to write down the addresses of the bike shop(s) in Palermo from which he needed to pick up some vital supplies rather than just having their webpage saved in his “favourite’s file”; and
• Italian restaurants / hotels actually provided WIFI or cable connected internet access.

All of this would have saved him doing the inevitable thing one does when on holiday being to walk 500 miles looking for a "bike" shop.... In his defence however is the fact that shops are spread far and wide and are open at odd hours. IE: The Italians (in Sicily at the very least) take a midday siesta in the same way the Spanish do! Fortunately however, as I write this blog, I can report that my friend “Cadel” has now managed to get his bike roadworthy and that as a result, this should mean that you’ll see that a training ride has been undertaken and appropriately recorded in the Strava within the next 24 hours or so….

The first ride that you’ll see, is likely to be a bit of a tour of Cinisi-Terrasini (hopefully including a bit of video footage) which highlights precisely how shops of all sorts are located amongst the houses and so on of the local community. As a result don’t expect it to be an intensive training session over a considerable distance, that’s something that will be something undertaken shortly and once I have been able to create a circular route of sufficient distance and trying conditions….