Day one ride photos

Montecarlo

View at Montecarlo

Lucca's walls

View from top of first climb

Viareggio harbour

Local help

I have luckily made contact with another cyclist who lives not far from Lucca who has explored much of the territory that we will be riding on days one and two. We met via an Italian cycling forum http://www.piste-ciclabili.com. His English and my Italian seem about on a par so Google Translate is helping our email conversation :-)

G. has suggested a couple of improvements to the first day's route, but all in all he has given me confidence that the overall route is suitable. We are even talking about him joining us on part of the ride if timing suits next year. He points out the obvious: that Lucca is worth more than a lunchtime stop, but that's the way it is unless we add more days to the trip.

I should also report that the somewhat vigorous discussion that I reported in the previous posting (with a gentleman from a bike hire place) has been resolved to everyone's satisfaction. We have sorted out various small misunderstandings and I know now that very suitable bikes are available for hire from his company! The price is a little more than I wanted to pay but nevertheless it remains an option.

A rethink of the route

A while back, before I started on the planning of this route, I'd thought about a "coast to coast" route in Italy. It didn't seem practical because of the logistics of bike bags and other luggage. However it occurred to me that a variant of my Bologna loop would work coast to coast.

Introducing: Italy coast to coast

So I've changed the route. Instead of taking the train to Bologna and eventually returning there, the plan now takes the train to Firenze, and uses that as a base. In Firenze I will unpack the bike and leave my luggage. Then onto a regional train to Viareggio on the Ligurian coast. From there the ride commences, inland to join the Via Francigana as it heads south, through Lucca to our first night's stop at Altopascio. The next day, after crossing the Arno our route turns north-east and more or less follows the Arno to Firenze, so we get to revisit our luggage briefly.

When we arrive in Rimini, instead of taking the train to Bologna, we take the train to Firenze! 

The overall distance remains more or less unchanged, although of course there is less climbing in total as we now only cross the Apennines once rather than twice.

The latest variant of the plan is at the wiki.