Actually leaving Switzerland

I might have lied a little bit with this title. It actually took me two more days to leave Switzerland. They weren't the best of cycling days. Most of it was spent right next to a highway, my arch nemesis. Its noise makes me view everything around me in a bad light. I did have some luck finding a wildcamping spot close to Como. Usually tightly packed villages and cities close to a big city imply that you'll have a very bad time looking for a wildcamping spot, but I happened to cycle past a wide flat field that seemed overgrown enough as to not be in use.

Italy

Italy welcomed me with a hot face-melting sun. The little hills that were left before I would arrive at the completely flat Po valley drenched my face in sweat, but my shirt remained dry due to instant evaporation, leaving just white saltstains. In Como itself I was happy to find myself enjoying the urban cycling, instead of continuing the train of thought of the two days spent by the highway.

I had planned a route around the western side of Milan, towards the Po river. That river is in my mind, due to an enthusiastic biology/(classical) history teacher, forever associated with the Etruscan and Roman civilisation. I was happy I planned the route through the Parco Groane, as its trees provided me some shade and escape from the heat. At first sight I thought I was travelling through a dutch forest. Upon closer inspection I saw vines completely engulfing trees, and much more undergrowth than one would find in the Dutch equivalent. The park was filled with bunnies hopping over the gravel roads and little lizards slithering away from the road as soon as I got close, thereby rendering their natural camouflage useless. I was surprised by some pools of water present in the middle of the unpaved road, but an informational sign later told me that this region has just a couple of meters of soil, underneath is a large layer of clay preventing any water from draining.

After I left the park I traveled along a couple of canals southwards. Until I was, at some point that is hard to define, in the Po valley proper: a large flat stretch of land inbetween the Alps to the north of Italy, and the Appenine mountains to the south of the valley. Like the Parco Groane, only a good look at the vegetation would betray I wasn't actually in the Netherlands, as the canals and the farmlands were reminiscent of home.

Ofcourse, not just the vegetation was different, naturally the architecture was as well. My eye kept being drawn to the vines that were covering, allowed or not, a large number of trees and buildings. It was with these sights: stretches of farmland, with the occasional village inbetween, that I headed eastwards toward Bologna.

I did make the conscious effort to go into Pavia, where I wanted to buy the first Italian espresso of the trip. Afterwards I would mostly be cycling straight through cities and villages. Sometimes, when the church looked impressive enough from a distance, I would weave in and out of a village's streets and squares in order to get a better look at it all. It was funny to see the frescos on some of these churches; from a distance one would see pillars and trimmings as architectural details, only to find out up close that they are instead painted on. The best one I saw was a church with statues painted on the front, with a particular arch-shaped shading painted around it to give the impression that the statue was standing in an alcove of sorts.

The Po

I realised, by looking at my map, that I was cycling along the Via Francigena. I remembered the name from an earlier trip I had made by bicycle from Napels back to the Netherlands. During those days I traveled part of this pilgrim's route while heading towards Florence. It seems that my routing tends to favour going close to walking paths so far: in Southern Germany, Switzerland, and the initial section of Italy I was often in the vicinity of the E1 walking path, now I'm back on the Via Francigena. I'm always impressed by long distance hikers walking these routes. I have this contraption with two wheels, allowing me to cover large distances with my belongings packed on the frame. Those hikers carry everything on their backs!

Following the Via Francigena from Pavia (which has the Ticino running through it), I took an, apparently illegal, unpaved detour through what I thought was woods to arrive at the mighty Po river, with the Appenine mountains visible to the south.

From my map I had expected to be cycling through some kind of park, woods, or a nature reserve. Instead I was greeted with a stretch of 50 kilometers of wood production, each planted with its center on a neat grid. Some rectangular sections contained newer trees and other sections the more fully grown older ones, but all seemed to have their undergrowth cut down and their surrounding soil completely uprooted periodically in order to prevent anything from growing there. For the hours spent next to the river, and these faux forests on its adjacent lands, I was unable to think about much else than these plantations.

I continued along until I was 25km away from Piacenza. There I met an older gentleman from France, with a certain level of mastery of Italian, German, English and French languages, but chaotically-inclined enough to continuously switch between them halfway his sentences. He was traveling in the classic extra-wheel fashion: regular non-overbuilt bike with a trailer with a single wheel carrying most of the loads. We had a small conversation about his trip, but we were both at the end of our days. And so while I would've loved to get to know him better, we both longed most to a good night's sleep. I advised him not to go looking any further for a wildcamping spot (because it is hard to camp relatively unseen between the aforementioned plantations), so he pointed to the nearest ruin and said: "Then I will camp there!". As we asked our last questions before we wanted to head to our respective camping sites, another man showed up.

He introduced himself, and told us he was the old mayor (and, as he would later tell me, a retired school teacher) of the tiny village Orio Litta. He really wanted to have his picture taken with the two cyclotourists, and the Frenchman and me naturally obliged. The ex-mayor offered to cycle with me for at least a couple of kilometers towards Piacenza, and I gladly accepted. We talked of his old job, his retirement, his love for mountainbiking (although, his 70 years of age did not allow him to go into the Appenines or Alps anymore, he said he was still able to climb mountains, but the recovery takes him many days), and the villages nearby. Two things really stuck with me.

Firstly he told me of the many pilgrims that walk the Via Francigena, occasionally staying the night in Orio Litta. When I told him I was Dutch, he proudly told me of a Dutch couple that lives in Den Bosch, and once walked through Orio, with whom he is still in contact. He told me that he tries to take his picture with every pilgrim that passes through (explaining his desire to have his picture taken with two dirty cyclists), but more importantly, he told me how he likes to talk with them if they speak a language he knows. According to him, after he rattled off an impressive number of countries, meeting all of these people opened his heart, and widened his view on the world. Perhaps you don't have to travel long days on a bicycle to learn about people, perhaps you only have to talk to the people that are around you (living close to a pilgrim's route will certainly help, though).

Secondly, a matter that is dear to my heart, he talked about the changes he sees in the Po valley. My journey along the Po was mainly along a cycleway built upon its dike. The same road where the two of us were shortly cycling together. He said the dike is approximately 11 meters higher, and that when he was younger, each year the Po would flood and reach up to those dikes. These days it doesn't happen anymore. Likewise he told me that every year, with an exception here and there, there was snow in the valley. You may guess that likewise, as a rule instead of the exception, this doesn't happen anymore. This story reminded me of a couple who allowed me to camp in their garden in a village close to King's Lynn in the UK, where they told me of strong winds that used to be regular, but seem to have diminished, then vanished. As you cycle through countries you regularly see, feel, taste and breathe the effects of humans upon the lands. I try to be observant instead of enveloped emotionally in my surroundings, to keep my spirits up during the day.

Deciding to write this blog has given a new dimension to the experience. Because the ratio in which daily experiences bring me joy, to those that sadden me, is not reflected accurately in the amount of words in which I want to write about these experiences. For me, it somehow requires less words to write about joyous moments in nature, than times that I see its destruction and all its subsequent deleterious effects. When all you see is farmland for 200 kilometers, all next to a once mighty river, and you hear that the river is drying up... Well you will likely spend the next hours contemplating various kinds of futures where there is going to be a shortage of food. Which again reminds me of the heat plagueing England last year, where I saw ruined crops and two fields where bales of hay were on fire. You get the point. I wrote all of the above to hopefully convey: I am having fun most of the time, but not all the time.

Returning to my journey on the Po's dikes, my cyclist companion at some point realised that he had to return home. He said goodbye to me with the heartfelt words "in bocca di lupo", which is something of an Italian "good luck". I was very appreciative of meeting him.

To Bologna

And so I continued along the Po river: listening to the ever-playing tune of the Cicadas, buying some fruits (and getting a free lemon, which leads me to conclude that fruitsellers are the most generous people in the world with n=2, also, I had no idea what to do with a lemon, so I just squeezed its juice into my water bottles), visiting panetterias, looking at churches and criss crossing through villages until I came close to Parma.

Around that place I decided that in order to meet an old friend in Florence, and to meet my girlfriend on time at the airport in Bologna, I would cheat a bit. I slept just outside Parma and took the train to Bologna early the next morning. Not only did this give me some breathing room in order to meet everyone in time, it also allowed my dear sitbones and legs some rest, they've deserved it after 17 days.