I drive back to Slim's house in Crema with the aid of his sat nav, that is a marvellous invention, almost completely takes away the anxiety of driving in unfamiliar places.
We load the car up and as usual leave 3 hours later than we hoped to. Slim does his best to pick up time, he has assimilated into the Italian culture well judging by the state of his driving, 100% Italian attack mode everywhere. We decide to make for San Remo on the Italian Riviera. 180kmph get us there quite quickly, the last 40km are on the most extraordinary roads I have ever travelled on. Down from the mountains to the coast, it would seem the road engineers were in fact just doing this roading job in between building Grand Prix tracks! Twisty, tunnels, viaducts... it had it all, absolutely stunning, the poor old Saab just couldn’t cope.
San Remo is the finish town of one of cycling’s most famous races – Milan San Remo. San Remo is stunning in a eurotrash type way. We stay at the ‘Imperial Hotel’, Winston Churchill’s favourite. It obviously is exactly the same condition as when Winston stayed there, but it’s fabulous in a grand and shabby way.
I take the shot of Pantani’s name not because I like or admire the guy – he was a cheat. But it seems right to see his name here.
We do what every cyclist should do when they are San Remo, which is to ride the last 30km of the Milan San Remo race route. We ride through the town dodging scooters and rush hour traffic and ride along the coast. We get to a small town called Cipressa, we do a u-turn and we are now on the race route of MSR, we turn up the Cipresa climb, its long and surprisingly steep, it doesn’t look that way on TV, I feel awful and climb slowly, over cooked it yesterday. The descent is incredible the road is super fast, like a piece of spaghetti through onto the hillside.
Back onto the coast road we quickly get to the Poggio hill, it is surprising how flat and how short it is. There is loads of cycling star names painted on the road – including Pantani’s. I stop to take a few shots feeling like a bloody cycling tourist but I’ll get over it.
I take the shot of Pantani’s name not because I like or admire the guy – he was a cheat. But it seems right to see his name here.
The climb even goes downhill in areas, but kicks up near the top. Slim has long since disappeared he’s doing his best impression of a MSR race winner. We stop at the cross roads at the top of the hill and take photos. The Poggio decent is even better that the Cipressa’s, it would require real skill and nerve to go down this fast. The descent drops you into the middle of San Remo, for a few seconds I imagine myself soloing into the town to take the victory. It has been a great ride.
No comments:
Post a Comment