Day 28 - Feb 27th - Milan or bust! 134 km

My 'not so rural' emergency campsite in Ovada

In the morning, over unusually lumpy porridge,  I decided that I want to get to Milan today. It was a tall order but my legs seemed to have mostly recovered from 9 hrs of pedalling yesterday. (Note to 'ample' ladies/gentlemen: I burnt 7,300 calories ye sterday. Get on a bike, strap a 50kg bag of cement on the back and pedal it up 1000m....you WILL lose weight.) My antidote to excessive weight-loss is currently 'amoretti's, delicious Italian almond pastries available from all good pasticcerias.

All packed up and ready to go

The sudden transition from the mountains to the flat frosty fields of Alessandria was surprising. Today was head-down and go.......the only climbs were bridges over motorways but on the other hand the scenery was dreary, just heavy sodden clay fields. By lunch-time I knew I was going to make it, albeit another night arrival. The final 20kms were mind-numbing. As dusk fell, I was alongside the Naviglio Grande canal which went straight as an arrow into the city. I was on the wrong (LH) side mixing it (without much of a hard shoulder) with the heavy traffic pouring in and out of Milan. There was a perfectly good cycle track on the other side of the canal but annoyingly not a single bridge to cross over and join it.

It started to rain. Dicing with the city centre traffic in the dark and wet while trying to navigate to your hostel is quite fun if you can forget how dangerous it is. Take your pick; pedestrians with a death wish step out without even looking, buses, trams, and even worse those tricky wet tram rails.All this while trying to jiggle the GPS buttons with gloved fingers. Anyway, I arrived and all I can say is the 'Ostello Bello' must be the best hostel in the world. It was rammed full of friendly people and you received a complimentary beer at reception......I'd arrived!