Our first post from the trip!!
On Tuesday 7th July 2009 we flew to Rome with the bikes to start our great adventure! After lugging the boxes and bags from the airport across Rome, we stayed the night with two friends of Fr. Stephen Langridge’s – Vincenzo e Stefania. Also staying there were Maria (Phil’s sister) and Miriam. After a very pleasant evening, great food, enjoyable company and our last civilised sleep for a few weeks, we all headed into the Vatican for a photo, an ice cream, and the start of our trip!
We left Rome late afternoon Wed 8th, and not surprisingly, didn’t make it very far at all. 10 miles, in fact! We slept in Rome Tiburtina train station – one at a time to keep an eye on bags – and got the first train in the morning to Fara Sabina – just outside Rome. (We weren’t cheating – we simply couldn’t work out a route out of Rome without using a motorway!)
From Fara Sabina our journey really started. Off we went towards Rieti, and hit an incredibly mountainous road. This carried on the whole way, and for our first day of cycle touring, we really were put to the test. On and on and on we pushed ourselves, and there seemed to be far more uphills than downhills. After a hugely tiring day, we finally made it to Rieti, with enough light left to find somewhere to pitch our tent.
Sorry there are no photos to accompany this post! The internet café computers won’t let me plug my camera in..
Phil continues in the next post!
Thank you all for your prayers! Whenever we find ourselves starting to feel depressed with different challenges, things always seems to start to look up again. God is definitely with us, as Phil will write about shortly..
Please do comment on this post or the next – we’d love to hear from you!
The next café we find, I’ll add photos. (I’m afraid, Miriam, the video interviews you wanted us to take are simply too large files to put on the internet! Sorry!)
All the best, Dom 