The day commenced with us lugging all the clobber in cycling kit past curious guards at the incurable hospital in order to get the van and get Jo, Deanne, Pat and George away (I’d decided I didn’t want the boys riding in Naples). One guard asked me what we were doing and I got the basis of the trip over to him. He was very impressed but wanted to know where my bike was!! The van emerged from it’s underground bunker all intact and we loaded up and sent them away. The four riders, relaxed and confident, then had a pleasant breakfast and decided Naples wasn’t so bad after all. Then we rode. A few hundred yards down to the dock front on setts, then left onto tarmac….for 400m. We then had over EIGHT miles of uneven setts and flags, through endless narrow streets of triple-parked mad traffic, with scooters buzzing like mosquitoes in literally every direction. Often the traffic came to a complete standstill because someone had decided to have a chat up front somwhere – on bikes we were able to squeeze past most blocks but at one I had just decided that it was too narrow on the pavement even for me when I had to press myself and bike to a shopfront as yet another bl**dy scooter came through, hooting away. We did at one stage find a short section of empty road that took us past gesticulating literally third-world looking kids and families but this was a literal dead-end leading to the local cemetery!! Back on route, I kid you not that the name of the next section of road was Via Purgatorio (!!!!) and that’s really how we felt – virtually no progress being made on a long day and seemingly no end in sight to the cobbles. Paris-Roubaix? Peanuts!!
Blessed relief as we approached the first meeting point in Pompeii, with brief snaps of Mt Vesuvius that we’d caught glimpses of all morning but the onus was on keeping going. You’ll see why later!!