San Marino is one of the world’s smallest countries in size. It is landlocked, surrounded by Italy.

Tucked away in the Appennine Mountains, it is one of the oldest sovereign states in the world dating back to the 4th century.

San Marino was our destination today, third time lucky.

In 2018 we abandoned our ride to San Marino, caught in the wettest spring experienced in over 30 years, and we trained to Bologna.

In 2020 I was a scheduled ride leader for Italy Bike Tours including the San Marino stage of the Giro d’Italia. Covid cancelled the Giro.

2023, could it, would it happen?

To get here we had a few challenges for sure. Three climbs.

You are thinking that you can only see two climbs? Check the 22 km point. That little pimple. That was a seriously hard 18% on shiny cobbles for only 900 metres but it was hard as.

We got to that climb after leaving our accommodation and spending most of the time on a super busy arterial road with little to no verge.

We thought Santarcangelo di Romagna would be a reprieve. We got up the hill one way or another. It was the other for me, as I do not do 18% cobbles let alone on a loaded bike.

Nice old buildings, cobbled laneways and arches overlooking the modern town.

I liked this map showing our destination like a kids story book with the king living in the palace at the top of the big hill, but we had no horse to ride, we had a bike to achieve our conquest.

Hill number two, growing in length, around 6 km climbing, although the first few were only 2-3%, with around 6-7% majority of the rest.

Verucchio is known as the cradle of the Malatesta family, where the came to power in the late 1100’s. Structured as a medieval village, rich in historical buildings built on two hills with views towards San Marino and the Adriatic coast.

Climbing up we had the road to ourself for the majority. Nice views. It was quite hot climbing here too as it was open with minimal shade opportunities.

At the top we explored the main piazza, viewing some of the old buildings, laneways, art works, views, also finding some cold drinks and refreshments that we ate in the piazza below.

San Marino loomed closer and closer. The view from Verucchio, but first we needed to descend, so we could climb. Of course!

The climb to San Marino is 9.9 km long gaining around 550 m elevation. The weather was looming as a potential challenge.

As we climbed it sprinkled with rain, but the noise was enormous with the thunder gods having an extended period of noise activities. By now, I am a little more used to the noise, comforted by the fact that rarely does lighting seem to accompany the noise.

The Tour de France starts in Italy next month with a stage from Florence passing through San Marino. I will watch with interest. They will have road closures for their climb, wishing I did today.

The climb was the scariest climb I have ever done due to the traffic. The road was mostly narrow with vehicles ever so close, many speeding. I have no hairs remaining on my left arm and leg they were so close.

In other spots, drivers cut us off, at roundabouts, intersections wanting to ‘beat us’ and save a few seconds. They would pass and turn right leaving us in a potential t bone position. The number of shouts out I gave!!

I was almost biblical in my thoughts, just hoping we would come out unscathed. The gradients were up to 12%, more often than not 5-9%.

Two divine intervention moments did occur.

The first were roadworks where there were two lanes heading up. The right hand lane was closed for around 1 km but we could use it bar one small section. That gave us a huge reprieve climbing in traffic.

The second was just after a super tight right hand hair pin bend. There was a bus behind me, and a long queue of cars descending. After a short time I realised the bus had not passed me and the descending queue was growing.

That must mean there was a blockage at that tight hairpin so I used the opportunity to put my foot down a bit and climb harder whilst we had that single lane to ourselves, knowing it would eventually catch up with us.

I reckon we got one km out of that issue, to our benefit.

Wonderful views looking towards Tuscany.

Up and up we continued around hair pin bends until we arrived in the centre, where cars are banned from travelling further! Boom, boom!

A final climb and we are at our accomodation, boasting incredible views from our bedroom.

We went for a walk to get a feel for this ‘country’. The three Torres towers are all fortifications with the first built in the 1200’s. The walk between the three is known as the Witches Walk due to stories of witches doing witchy rituals there in the medieval period.

What a day. A tough ride for cycle packing without a doubt. But we did it. TICK.

Thanks for reading 😊❣️

Leaving Comacchio viewing the Trepponti bridge, a rare example of a five way bridge, with a three way canal split underneath.

Five large staircases connect the bridge. It was constructed in the mid 1600’s during a period of renovation to improve defences.

We headed back to the Adriatic coast and the Po delta.

The beaches were quiet with not many takers along the lido’s Comacchio claim as theirs.

Life was quieter and calm along the delta,.

We had been riding along busy roads hopping off onto a dirt trail around the delta to better view the birds and local activity.

The large city of Ravenna loomed, a city of around 160,000 residents, nestled known for its UNESCO Byzantine mosaics from around 600 BC.

We rode through an extensive industrial estate before arriving into the historical heart.

An early ruler Theodoric was buried here in the mid 500’s.

Many interesting and historical old buildings.

Heading back towards the Adriatic was this art installation. We had some quieter roads for a time.

We hit yet another market. This one looked quite interesting with local craft work, but we walked and scooted our way through about 750 metres of market, then rode along the waterfront.

Now you cannot see much beach despite being waterfront. The amount of commercial activity and structures is enormous. In most areas, you goto a particular bar, club, restaurant and they have beach access.

However there were moments of seeing the long, flat beach.

We had an about 14 km of non sealed surface riding today including this park. In many spots we were dodging tree roots.

Nice village boats.

Cycling roundabout as we arrived into Cesenatica.

Cesenstica, the birthplace of Marco Pantani, the celebrated Italian cyclist I mentioned on day two of our our trip as we climbed Passo Pantani and signed a memorial book.

In his home town he is a celebrated hero. He is also buried here with many flocking to his mausoleum.

Here in this park is a statue remembering him. Whilst there, many cyclists ventured in. Some just sat quietly, others more active in checking out the monument.

Adjacent was a flying banner indicating that the Tour de France is starting in Florence, which is not that far away.

Leaving the town was problematic. Our route movements are below. We rode down Viale Dante Alighieri to go around the small roundabout, to head up to the higher flyover bridge. Roadworks prevented us. Totally blocked. So we headed to the south and tried. Nope.

There were no other nearby options due to the fact that we needed to get onto that bridge as it crossed an auto strada a few hundred metres on.

We decided on this option. Trespass through an overgrown paddock! We pushed our bikes through this and onto the climbing lane for the bridge. Problem solved!

Roundabout of the day, cycling themed.

We see hills! After days of flatter landscape the hills are back in our midst. The next part of the trip will be hilly.

We are now in Cesena, an ancient Roman town with a similarly extensive history that suffered badly with WW2 bombings.

Some photos from around the town.

Another day done. 99 km. Tomorrow we head to the hills and may shorten the route as Tony hacks away as I write.

Thanks for reading 😊❣️

We needed to cross the Venetian Plains today. A decent length ride of 115 km.

The forecast was dismal for the last day of spring. We woke to rain and looking at the forecast it seemed it was going to get worse and then later improve. In fact, the further south west we travelled, the forecast improved.

Could we beat the weather?

We left in light drizzle, looking at more of the older outer remnant fortifications.

For the next few hours there were no photographs.

Shortly after the first photos it started to bucket down. We ended up taking shelter on the busy autostrada (deliberately accessing off a gravel path, fence) to shelter under a bridge that crossed over the autostrada. Bit scary but a bit drier too.

When the rain eased we then headed back along the dirt path to the busy arterial road. The rain continued but we got wetter from passing vehicles (spray and puddles they were through).

Some time after that there was a lull and we thought, great!

The wind came out then to dry us….but it was a horrid cycling wind. It was predominantly on our left hand side, so a side wind that was pushing us off the road (remember we are riding in the right hand side), and we had a very steep drop off on the right hand side. So got a bit scary.

What made it seem worse was that this section of road was 10 km or so and dead straight, so no reprieve. It seemed to drag on and on.

Life got better and we did a few turns and the winds eased, the sun came out.

This was our first glimpse of the Adriatic Sea at this river opening.

We crossed this dodgy looking bridge, all metal with someone standing in the middle collecting money. Turns out it is a privately owned bridge. Bicycles can cross at no charge.

Seems like shrimping may be a popular activity here too.

We started riding parallel with the Adriatic Sea, just metres from the beachfront, so we popped down to see what we thought. The area was infested with tourists and holiday accommodation options.

Not my cup of tea, but obviously popular for many people.

This did interest me. Some people are super clever. This is all sand.

The map below shows the area we were now riding along.

The area from Lido Di Jesolo was km after km of tourist shops selling the same stuff and I do wonder how they survive.

It was a relatively car free zone, but made up for with aimlessly wandering tourists, a variety of hire wheeled bikes and trikes and carts, dogs and it took lot of concentration to get through unscathed.

The Venice basin was interesting.

The reason for the earlier closure is that these cantilevered walkways are being installed. They are brilliant. There are many km’s worth already in place.

We needed to get a ferry from Punta Sabbioni to Lido, one of the Venice basin islands surrounding the opening to sea for the lagoon waters to enter.

That was a drama. The young 20 year old ish girl gave me a super hard time saying we might have to wait numerous ferries (every 30 minutes) to cross, there were no refunds blah blah.

Feeling agitated as we did have an accomodation deadline to check in by, we lined up straight away for the next ferry. No one else had lined up.

After about 10 minutes an old toothless, scruffy looking bloke indicated he would like to see our tickets….dubiously we handed them over. He looked at them, then put them through the scanner for us. Nice bloke helping us out I thought.

Turns out he works for the ferry line. He allowed us to go under cover with him near where the ferry would arrive. The ferry arrived, and he got us on first! No issues whatsoever!

I gave him a big wave as I was thankful for his help and kindness vs the young officious ticket girl.

The ferry was pretty full and no one was displaced due to the bikes!

So we are on Lido now staying at a bed and breakfast with Sven from Belgium who thinks all bikes are ok in the rain…..fortunately rain is not forecast and they are behind a high locked fence, with two chains, under a grape vine.

We found a lovely place for dinner and wandered around. We will see more of Lido tomorrow as we cycle down towards Pellestrina island.

Lido has many canals but not as intricate a network as Venice itself.

Our ride today was 115 km, very flat with a variety of climatic conditions. Certainly the wind and rain was a challenge in the first half. We actually got hot in the second half!

Our full map is below.

Tomorrow our adventures continues, and the forecast looks great for the first day of summer in Italy.

Thanks for reading ❣️😊