Why are rental cars always crap?

I pick up the rental car from the airport, a truly terrible Saab estate, how is it possible in today’s world to make such a bad car? At least it is a diesel and cheap to run.

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.

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.

The Crema 'training' ride

One day I am training solo in 6 layers with gloves and booties and the next day its 120 guys in the bunch, I am in shorts, jersey and its 35c! That is what you get when you travel exactly half way round the world I guess.

Slim (Andrew) and I ride through a maze of flat roads to meet up with the race – I mean training ride. It is typical Italian affair, everyone is super relaxed, lots of talking, lots of shiny bikes, lots of guys looking a million dollars. The leaders of the ‘training ride’ know Andrew, having the two of us their raises a few eyebrows. We get going, zigzagging through the countryside, I quickly lose all sense of direction, it’s hot, it is fast there is no wind and there are no landmarks like hills to key off so getting lost is very easy. I feel okay considering I have just spent 35hours travelling.

Everyone is on sparkling bikes wearing the coolest kit, blinged to the max. What is unusual is the amount of American bikes being ridden, Cannondale and Specialised are the most common bikes here, I guess they sponsor a couple of Italian pro teams and the punters want to ride what Bettini rides.

Andrew and I have a few goes at getting up the road but nothing was going anywhere and when I did get up the road solo, I had no idea where to go so staying in the bunch was the smartest option. We picked up more and more guys and the last 20km was like a race-sized peleton with 120 or more guys there. Moving up in the bunch constantly bought me back to racing the European way. Most of the skill of racing in Europe is positioning yourself in the peleton, at home a big field is 60! I vividly remember my first race in France with 200 starters.

I attacked near the end of the ride on the only ‘hill’ got caught a few kilometres later, Slim came past and yelled ‘2km’ which seemed to be about right as it was pretty quick and guys where attacking and then blowing up everywhere. That was enough heroics for me I sat in the first 10 until the finish, Sim meanwhile was lining himself up for the sprint, I think he snagged a 3rd. The sprint signalled the end of the ride but not the speed, the warm down was run off at 45kmph! It must be hot because even the locals looked cooked, a few litres of water later I felt fine.