Final days in the flat lands north of Trevsio

This year's VERY special souvenir!

This Saturday we start moving into hillier country.  

First to Trento to race the Charly Gaul gran fondo..a race that last year I said "Never again" 😜and which Alex failed to finish..hopefully we will be a bit better this year!

After Trento we take 2 days to drive to Avignon, stopping at Briancon on the way.  We have sorted out where we're going by keeping out of the way of the Tour de  France..unlike most of our friends we have no great desire to be  spectators..Alex has once and wont get sucked into that again!

We're at Avignon for 5 days and apart from gazing at the pont d' Avignon we will climb the Mont Ventoux.

We've enjoyed being here and the apartment is incredibly economical..1300 euros for 2 people for 4 weeks ..wifi, AC,2 bedrooms, washing machine and endless hot water...sadly only 1 settee for horizontal TV watching but that aside all mod cons!  

my car on the left and the door to our apartment far right

Today's adventure on the bike was going to be a very long ride in the hillier part of the area but after about 70 minutes a wasp decided to explore the inner workings of my mouth...I managed to foil it's efforts but in passing it stung my lip, so I decided not to ride in the back blocks just in case I got an adverse reaction and so turned for home.   A swollen bottom lip was all I got and it's now settled down almost completely.

Random pix follow:

The picnic type knife and fork here are made out of maize/corn and are biodegradable.

Dead tree?..make it a feature

Caught by the vagaries of the English language (2nd down)

These are ALL Prosecco

Not sure why they don't chop the ivy off before this happens

m

modern fresco!

4 legged animals not allowed to drink!

Asolo a hill top old town with cobbled streets we visited earlier this week

More pix

Asolo is a great place to go but perhaps not on a Monday, when along with  the rest of Italy, shops are closed.  Trip Advisor said the 5th best place to visit there is the cemetary which led us to wonder whether the visit would be worth it!  Well it  was, despite everything being closed...even the tourist info centre which appears to be shut Monday, Tuesday AND Wednesday!!!  Great views and the beer glass made up for everything!

Allowing animals to drink is forbidden!

Asolo..hill top mediaeval town..very very narrow cobble streets

The best part of Asolo..and I bought the glass as well as the beer!

Somewhat different from the usual fresco!

Spending money

Last year we stayed at an apartment which had one of those pod coffee makers..running out of pods I managed to buy the wrong make and here we are 1 year later and they are still waiting to be used

what to do??..wait to see if another apartment saves me from chucking out a whole 5 euros worth of coffee when it becomes out of date later this year???

OR

give in/succumb

so  we did....question is do they sell this sort of pod in Aus or will this have to stay here with all the rest of my gear?!??

AND one of our goals for this hols was to find pix for the renovated kitchen which currently has very bare walls.......sooo after searching high and low in Treviso for 3 weeks  Alex and I found a groovy picture for the  kitchen wall while we were very briefly  in Feltre....2 pix down (I also found 1 in UK) ...a few still to go

Week 3 in Treviso

Tomorrow there is a changing of the guard.. my sister leaves to go back to London and Alex arrives from Aus.  This week I have changed from morning language lessons in a group to private lessons in the afternoon....the weather was just too hot to train in the pm.  As expected, the moment I changed, so did the weather!

Today's ride ended up in 3 parts..1st trying and failing to work hard, 2nd giving up and taking pix and finally when I turned for home and saw the black sky and flashes of lightning... a really hard race pace "gotta get home soonest" speed.

yup I AM in Italy!

Church/war memorial

side view...external stair case anyone?

NEVER trust this sort of sign to take you all the way!

hmmm!

and finally...seen in Slovenia..... a group of Aussies on small wheeled bikes  with these dinky cargo carriers behind...cool!

Treviso city and suburbs

Here's where I'm living currently...6km north of Treviso..a 15 min commute by bike ..most of which time is spent navigating around the city itself in order to get to the language school.  Our apartment is on the ground floor, the family live on the first floor.  That's my set of wheels on the left.

And that's 2 weeks of morning language school  and  of training in the afternoon heatwave completed. Ooooff.....currently I'm just existing as the humidity is pretty high.   Starting next week I move to afternoon classes and morning training, which just has to be an improvement.  My sister leaves and Alex arrives on Wednesday.

Apparently there is some concern about water supplies as there has been little rain for the past 4 or 5 months and little snow up high  resulting in less new snow melt but more melting of the glaciers.

Pizzeria Treviso style

Bocce is clearly popular here!

There's an ippodromo, a boccidromo but sadly no velodromo

the ancient St Thomas gate I cycle through every day

and on the far side of the gate is the Pinarello shop, although I've not yet been to it.  The Basso shop just a few km away too....

Treviso

 Treviso is a city surrounded by water and walls.  For cyclists it is a safe and easy city to navigate..cyclists being able to ride against the one way traffic system; however for the stranger driving inside the walls ie in the centre of town it is a nightmare.  Last weekend we decided to locate exactly where our language school was....never found it and 30 minutes later after circling round and getting totally confused we just gave up!

The area is almost completely flat and therefore is somewhat wind affected  so sometimes I can blast along the flat, straight, smooth surfaced roads with extremely low wattage and sometimes it's not quite so easy. So sometimes I feel the need for a small reward!

Our apartment at Lancenigo, where I've stayed previously, is  about 6km north of Treviso making for a 15 minute bike commute, most of which is spent navigating the city streets.  The road into town is a main one but there are bike and pedestrian paths and also a generous  clean bitumen edge to the road outside of the white line. 

This weekend I was originally going to do the Sportful Dolomiti Gran Fondo at Feltre which last year took me 6 hours to complete, but since my travel and race fatigue has only just lifted, I'm giving it the flick.

Instead I'll go along to rego, tell them I'm not riding, collect the bag of goodies, check out the expo,  go for a nice longish ride and then visit a town just north of us here which is coming to the end of a week long festival concluding  with  a Palio.  Last weekend I  checked out the place and bought these things! 

Austria, Slovenia and Italy

Just the name of a town in France that I hurtled past on a freeway.  This pix liberated from the interweb 'cos I couldn't stop to take my own

From staying in Karlsruhe for the night and discovering that breakfast was put on an hour later than advertised due to it being a public holiday, I drove to my home from home Sankt Johann in Tirol.  Originally I'd planned to stay for just 2 nights but on receiving an unrefuseable offer I ended up staying  Monday to Friday.  I rode the road race course x 1 and the TT course x 2.  This wood pile changes every year and every year I take a pix!

Friday morning early I shot off to Slovenia for the TT race there.  My start time was about 5:20 pm so there was plenty of time to find my apartment, find the  registration place, have a rest and return in time to warm up and finally race. I linked up with an old friend, Vida Ursic, which was nice but also handy for translations.  Finally at about 10pm , the presentations concluded and I got back home to bed.

On to Italy and in particular to Lancenigo a small town just north of Treviso (home of Pinarello), to our home for 4 weeks and where we've stayed for the past 2 years.  The apartment is nothing flash but is very economical and close enough to the railway station to allow us easy access to Treviso, Venice and points north as needed for my sister who doesn't drive.  For me there are flat straight roads, nearby hills and if I ever find it a velodrome that's not too far away.

grape vines and castles and the 1 nearby hill!

there's always a cow!