Friday 12th of August

A little lie in followed by some breakfast and it was time for a little ride around the local area. I had a little fettle with the bike first mainly in order to clean up the chain which had been washed clean on lube on my downhill adventure from the Galibier. Soon after I was sun-creamed up and ready for the off.

I was out about an hour with nothing much to report apart from a closed road that I wanted to go down and a tunnel that wasn't wide enough or didn't have a cycle lane and I didn't like the look of. Anyway it was just a saunter around in the sun and for this it was perfect.

Nice background for a ride and off the main roads the traffic was light and tended to give lots of space as it passed

I spent a fair amount of the afternoon sat outside using the laptop to catch up on the blog and also finishing reading my Anquetil book. Georgio and Anita (Chiara's parents) were 'in campo', i.e. working in the garden/field. They came back with a wheelbarrow and two large baskets of fresh faggioli beans and also a wheelbarrow full of dried beans. I'd previously seen a house in the village with 4 kids stood outside around a table removing the beans from their casing and reminded me of the pleasure you'd get (I seem to recall) when podding peas as a kid.

After dinner I joined Chiara and her friend on a trip to the local town where there was a festa, a kind of open evening for the town with many of the shops open until very late and also several musicians around the place playing different styles of music. I stopped for a while to listen to the group playing Pink Floyd's 'Shine on you Crazy Diamond', particularly poignant for me as I'd listened to that many times thinking of Benedetta while sitting by the beach in Grado after London had been rocked by the bombs.

Shine on...

We found a little bar off the main street and had a beer while listening to a lady sing latino songs while her guitarist played along with her and waiting for Chiara's friends to find us. It's still strange though to see a group of macho italian men walking out of a bar with effectively half-pints of lager - birra piccola. Maybe they were all driving home that evening.