Day 11 – The Colle di Nava

It was a nice and safe place where we slept last night, but we didn’t sleep that well. The church clock tower above us chimed every hour (maybe it stopped for a few hours, we didn’t keep track). Viki was also in some pain from her saddle, which kept her up.

We set off by 7:50am continuing on our climb, in search of coffee and pastries. The first two “towns” that we got to were tiny and didn’t have a coffee shop. We flagged down some old Italian men who were also cycling in one small village, who advised us to carry on to Pieve di Teco, 8km, and offered to escort us. Fortunately it was all downhill and we quickly arrived. It was a quaint old town, where we found a bar with coffee and chocolate croissants (only 1EUR per coffee and 1EUR per croissant, which seems to be the norm in northern Italy). Since there was no supermarket, we went to a small deli, where I was able to buy bread, some meat “speck” sliced fresh, and some pecorino cheese.

We had a sampling of the bread, meat, and cheese on a bench and asked a local store owner if she sold small bottles of olive oil. She said no, only large bottles, but then brought us out some fresh olive oil to use on our sandwiches. Then began our major climb of the day, the Colle di Nava, ~600m straight up. By the time we were at the top, we had cycled 30km in 3 (moving) hours and were ready for lunch (~1pm). We had the sandwiches, which were delicious. The meat easily tore apart and wasn’t chewy at all (unlike some of the Spanish ham we’d had).

We then spent much of the rest of our day on a relatively shallow long descent down into a valley, with mountains surrounding us and the houses taking on a somewhat Swiss appearance, with white walls and dark wooden shutters. We had gelato in Ceva ~75km and finished our ride just past 100km in the town of Villanova.

In Villanova we found a field to sleep in and asked a resident of the opposing apartment block whether it would be okay. Then five different residents all got out onto their balconies and discussed animatedly. One man brought us cookies and chocolates from a fancy chocolate shop. One lady, Patricia, let us camp in her small garden plot behind the apartments. We went off to have dinner at a nearby pizzeria and had a nice dinner. We also chatted with a friendly French couple who asked about our travels and invited us to stay with them in their house nearby, even going so far as to offer to drive us and our bikes the 6km. Now we’re all set up in the tent and ready for sleep