Beaune to Florance, 840km’s with a wolrd cup (timed to the second) section in the dark in the foothills of the Italian Alps. We set off from france yesterday morning at 9am and just highway slogged our way to itali, some beautiful massive mountains though. And then crossing under the alps through a 14km tunnel into some fairly flat and relatively un interesting plains of north Itali. I was shocked at just how industrial itali was, for some reason in my mind i had expected grape farms and olive orchids stretching to the horizon with villas and mansions plotted around the place, well i was wrong…
Dad worked out that the time trails last night were the same roads that he did in Peking to Paris last year but in reverse and knew that if we did them, we would already get maximum lateness penalty and then get maximum lateness for the final time control for the night at the hotel, so instead we bypassed the time trails and copped the penalty so we didn’t end up getting compounding penalties and be worse off for hours and hours more driving. And by the time we get to cape town, no one is going to remember that we skipped out that one section back in Italy. Our goal is to make it for the long haul!!!
Penny is still trooping along great!