Cycling Weekly: Holidays

The Holiday programme bit first.

Lucca is a small to medium size town, maybe 30,000 population and the mediaeval city centre is just that. Its got city walls that encircle it, you can walk or even ride round them.

Just about all the buildings inside the walls are authentic mediaeval and attractive.

There a few nice squares with cafes,gelaterias, pizzerias and bars in them and a few posher restaurants as well. But also there are genuine shops selling fruit and veg, clothes, books, normal stuff; so although there are quite a few tourists, in the day at least, it is a "proper" town with real character.

If you need a large supermarket there are a couple in the more modern areas outside the city walls.

We stayed in a converted chestnut store halfway up a small mountain, in a village called Valdittavo (I think), about five miles out of town, found it on the interweb.

You can eat out pretty cheaply, 2 pizzas, 2 ice creams, coffee and a bottle of wine for £15. The poshest meal we had, was three courses, aperitivo, digestivo(or whatever Italians call Sambucas) and a bottle of red, and coffees for less than £40.

Lucca itself is on a plain with Pisa 15 miles to the south, another city worth visiting. Once you've seen the leaning tower and cathedral and walked 100 yards round the corner, away from the coach parties, into the real town, its a wonderful mediaeval town again.

Viareggio, is on the coast about 10 miles away, and its nice enough, I ran into David Trimble there, (then UUP leader). The only trouble with the place is that in like a lot of Italy the main part of the beach is privately owned, so if you want a swim you have to track down the public access to the beach, its there but easy to miss.

The area to the east of Lucca is also mostly flat and has some very posh 18th century Villas(think small country stately home) there which you can visit.

As to the cycling, at last!

I didn't have the bike, but wished I did, the area north of Lucca (Bagno di Lucca and onward) has valley roads which looked fast and weren't usually busy, but when you turned off them onto any village road they turned into something between the alps and North Wales, i.e. the length of climbing found in most of North Wales, or the Peak District, but with forrested hillsides, lots of hairpins and next to no cars. I saw all drivers treat cyclists with respect even though they were very rude to each other.

The only downside to staying in the hilly countryside is that you get small (nearly harmless) scorpions visiting your quarters, don't know if that would bother Mrs Cid, oh and unlikely, but possible, snakes (big,big ones if you're un/lucky)

I could probably go on a bit more, but..

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Invicta