Today, the first proper day of the trip, was a scorcher. On paper it didn’t look too difficult - wind out of Milan, gentle gradient for a while, gentle downhill, gentle gradient for 30 km, and then wicked fast downhill. But what made today more difficult than it should have been was the heat. We essentially rode in air at body temperature, which is really hard to do. The sweat doesn’t evaporate properly and pools and runs instead. On top of that the sun beat down hard, and there was surprisingly little shade - even along the old farm roads which took us to the passes. Usually these are lined w ..read more

Check out the tour on Komoot: https://www.komoot.com/collection/1429359/-alps It has been a while, hasn’t it? The year of 2021 has flown by. The pandemic lingers, under the surface, but life is returning to normal, for many people- for the moment at least. Last year, 2020, I went for a full on 3 week bike tour around the Apennines which was staggering in the diversity of the country that it revealed. The remainder of the year was taken up by a cyclocross racing season - save for a short trip to Paris, and posting pictures and descriptions of the cheese and bread we ate would hardly be fair - r ..read more

Software, hardware and network issues all colluded to prevent me blogging my trip 'live', as it were. But perhaps that was a good thing, since I've now taken the time to write about tour fully. It was quite the tour - a total of 83:16 h of riding, covering 1,646 km, and climbing 25,280 m. Starting out from San Donato val di Comino, on the Apennines, and then heading NW through Lazio, Abruzzo, Umbria, Tuscany, Emilia-Romagna, and La Marche, returning back to San Donato. The variety of countryside I saw was quite staggering, from the fields of sunflowers, to the fields of Tuscany, the flat land ..read more

[the blog is being written on an iPhone and the picture upload is wonky. Working on getting it to behave asap] The clock ticked over to midnight somewhere when I was on the plane heading to Rome. It was probably in Italy, but in my groggy state it could well have been back in Boston too. The 7.5 h flight was delayed by an hour due to a flat tyre (!) which made a whole 8 hours in a comfortable yet uncomfortable seat - I could never find the exact compromise between my bottom, my legs and my head. Two would be comfortable, one would not. As a result, I think i got some sleep - and the fact that ..read more

2020 and 2021 seemed to have lasted for an eternity. And an eternity with few rays of sunshine to which we could desperately cling. Now it's mid-summer 2021, and the world is, mostly, opening up, with the power of modern medicine having delivered safe and effective vaccines (just go get your shot if you haven't). The distribution could have been better, but we are at least moving in the right direction. For me, as a result of a Johnson & Johnson injection, and one sweaty night's sleep, life can become normal(ish) again (Plug: go visit Jason at The Haven in JP, he'll be happy to see you all ..read more

Today, which I eventually figured out was Saturday, I had hoped to meet with Max of Grace Hill Farm in Cummington, MA - just north from where I had stayed overnight. But, unfortunately, he had some things pop up early in the morning, and so I had to be content with a stop at the farm, and finding cheese at the local coop. The clear skies overnight meant that the morning was crisp - about 1C/35F, but I knew that the afternoon would be warm. Oh what to wear, what to wear!? Layers are your best friend on a bike, so, wool undershirt, bike jersey, arm warmers, thermal coat and wind breaker, would ..read more

Day Four Motel coffee is not the greatest in the world, so I figured that since I was in a in a College town (Williamstown), I’d be able to find something decent within a stone’s throw. I rolled out early towards the ‘centre’ of town and Tunnel City Coffee, where indeed, I found a very nice cuppa and muffin. It had rained last night, so there was a dampness to the air, and a hanging mist still wrapped itself around the low green hills on the horizon. The noise my tyres made on the road today had changed too - no longer the dry sticky sound of grip, more the sound of the hissing from a very no ..read more

Bicycle touring with a schedule is not really what it’s meant to be. Touring is about taking your time, absorbing the views, the time, the places, and resetting your internal clock. All at your own pace. So two days with ‘appointments’ at cheesemakers meant I had a little hustling to do every now and again - which isn’t ideal when the route you are taking is circuitous, and the bike you ride is equal to your own weight. Somehow I’d held it together, but with no scheduled stops, today was a day to Let. It. Go. Today I could tour. Getting up at 7.30 (late for me), and leaving my room at 8.30, a ..read more

Waking up at 6 am didn’t feel all that bad since I’d fallen asleep at 9 pm the previous night, but today required an early start - I’d got 3 farms that I need to get to, and for 2 of them I’d got vague appointment times. I wanted to leave time for breakfast before stopping at the Robinson Farm at 9 am. Hence the extra early start. A quick ride into town in the ‘fresh’ air, took me to the place I love to visit on tours - Becki’s Bistro: A small café with hot coffee, plenty of eggs, plenty of waffles and plenty of pancakes. My kind of spot. And with another 100 km / 60 mile ride ahead, with ple ..read more

It’s late September, and there is a slight chill in the air here in Boston. It’s not until the humidity of the Summer leaves, that you realize that you don’t hate the humidity - the humidity is the reason for those long warm Summer evenings, and you want those back, don’t you? At 9 am, I step onto my beloved touring bike (Kona Sutra), with what feels like a layer too little of clothing on. Today is is the first day of my second Tour de Cheese. My first tour in July was through Vermont. Not all of Vermont, and not all the Vermontian (?) cheesemakers, but a handful. And in the end, I managed to ..read more