Bella Italia Stage 12

Montefiascone to Narni

Strava: 59.3 km, 856m, 3:05, 328 shifts

Lots of rain was forecast for the morning, so we got up late and walked into town for breakfast. Montefiascone has a nice old non-touristy central area, where we checked out the cathedral. We’ve left Tuscany and are now in Rome’s province of Lazio. Deciding on an easy day, we booked an agriturismo near Narni for the night and finally headed out at 10:30. The cool 15° air felt great for a change.

Soon after leaving town, we headed off on narrow dirt roads, deteriorating into farm tracks. There was a section we couldn’t get through, thick berry vines, so we detoured through a field. It seemed almost impossible but we hated the idea of retracing our path. So we walked/dragged our bikes through a field of old sunflower plants, and finally reconnected with our track.

Dirt roads continued, with some time on paved roads. Then we had a long steep (20%) dirt section. It was sprinkling on and off and the climb took quite a while. We came out on a road to a small town called Lugnano in Teverina. We had lunch at the Jammin’ Café/Pizzeria which is a great place. Pizza, focaccia and lots of drinks.

The rain started for real while we ate. With jackets on we continued. It was only another 20 km, with some nice descents and one that was quite rough gravel/rock and would’ve been terrible or impossible to climb. Our Agriturismo was a bit off the route after Narni, and Google took us on a nice gravel route to get there.

The place is an equestrian center and had a wedding going on. But our two bedroom apartment is great. First thing was to go for a swim in the pool right outside. Nice!

We had dinner delivered to our apartment due to the wedding and it was nice. It was heavily meat and cheese based but I got enough. Vegans beware. We shared a couple of bottles of red wine, and solved all the problems of the world (again).

While looking ahead to tomorrow night we had trouble booking a place far enough away – due to it being Saturday night. So we booked for another shortish day tomorrow figuring two short days are like a full day plus a rest day.