A three country ride

By now I've become pretty good at the car jigsaw.  It seems helpful to remove pedals, but I no longer have to remove my rear derailleur.  Luckily, Sarah's head tube is much shorter than mine, and her handlebars narrower, so the front ends nestle together well.  The only real drag is that both seatposts have to be removed.  

To get out of the mountains, the car's navigation system suggested we drive over Passo Mauria, which meant we were able to have another crack at the mighty fine panini caprese available in Ampezzo.  

Soon after, we'd merged with a motorway, and by virtue of the 130km/h speed limit, made good progress towards Trieste.  Arriving in a city was a bit of a shock to our systems, and I did contemplate forfeiting our booking and heading back out into the sticks!  But, we decided to give it a whirl.

After unloading the car of all but the bikes, I jumped on cyclingnews.com to see what the outcome of the day's Dauphine stage was, only to find that it was still going.  After scrolling through about 40 channels, I was delighted to find a live broadcast of the last 40km of the stage!  The Slovenian superstar took the stage out, which was particularly nice given I was planning a ride into Slovenia the next day.

We'd left the car in a parking building, and I was keen to retrieve the bikes, and take them for a spin.  I convinced Sarah to join me, and we soon stumbled upon folk sunning themselves on the Trieste waterfront.  There was no sand, and it was pretty weird to see people lying on cobblestones!

Offshore was a massive yacht with a very strange appearance.  When we got home, we discovered it had an even stranger story, having been seized in March 2022 by the Italians in response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and costing a small fortune since to "maintain".

Sy A

On our return journey along the waterfront, I saw an interesting monument up above us, and eventually found a way up to it.  

We made good use of the hard-won elevation, and the tried to retrace our drive through town to our accommodation.  I was able to recall some of the turns, and the closer we got, the worse things became!  We got there in the end, though not by memory...!

We struck out for dinner on foot, and while there were of plenty of places to have a drink, there weren't too many dinner options.  We settled on a Chinese restaurant, "Cinese" in Italian, courtesy of their special "C", and it turned out to be some of the nicest Chinese food we'd collectively ever had.  I especially loved that they called dumplings "ravioli"!!!   

The next morning, I popped to a nearby supermarket for some extra breakfast supplies, and after making mum a morning coffee, we got rolling.  It was an absolute shambles at first, as I hadn't been super careful mapping the ends of the ride, and I got horribly confused by two inefficient tracks on my GPS map screen.  

It didn't take very long at all until we we seeing signs for Slovenia.  How exciting!

We crossed the "border" on a small road a few minutes' ride from a massive shopping mall on the outskirts of Trieste.  There were a couple of signs, and that was it!  Quite remarkable, especially coming from an island nation, where our border makes so much sense!

So began our only major climb of the day, up to only about 400m above sea level, but hot work on exposed roads.  Before too long, we passed under a couple of epic modern viaducts, and I really appreciated the shade they offered while I waited for Sarah.

After admiring a nifty sculpture adjacent to the road, we did a quick lap of Kubed, hoping to find someone who'd sell us a cold drink!  While we were unsuccessful there, there was a shop not far up the main road.  I found myself not knowing whether to use my Italian pleasantries, but it was great that my Euros were welcome!

The road we'd been on was fairly busy, but we soon turned off onto a much quieter road, and we treated to some shade for the rest of the climb that would top out about 35km into the ride.  Signage seemed to indicate we had another border ahead, with "HR" appended to some of the town names.  Sure enough, Google Maps confirmed we were bearing down on Hrvatska, or Croatia as it more commonly known down under. 

This border actually had some buildings at it, and a sign suggesting some had "Free Passage".  NZ was not on the list, but it seemed crazy to turn around!  

Unfortunately, aside from the road quality, and the shape of the people, I wasn't really capable of picking any dramatic changes in the built environment between Trieste, Slovenia and Croatia, though it was obvious to me that we were no longer in the Alps or Dolomites!  The old stone buildings were always a treat to see.  

What goes up must come down, and we were treated to a mostly-downhill 25km run back to sea level, during which time Sarah stopped for a bath, and we both stopped for a ham and cheese toasted sandwich, which up until now would have been called a panino.  

The final minutes of the descent were on a big road, which at one point had us perfectly lined up with an airport runway (IATA code, POW!)!  Unfortunately, there was too much traffic to be pissing around with my camera.  It had to stay away too, for the border crossing back into Slovenia, which this time was what one might expect when switching countries.  Sarah and I rolled through behind some cars, giving the Slovenian border guard a smile, to which he responded with a small tip of the head, which I took to mean we should keep rolling!

Moments later, we joined a cycle path, which we enjoyed for much of the rest of the ride.

Once we got out onto the Adriatic Coast, we found an abundance of folk sunning themselves.  As with Trieste, it seemed that sand is pretty rare, so most of the swimming was being done off concrete walls.  We'd packed togs, and followed the lead of three cycle tourists by getting changed in the shadow of a supermarket!  We celebrated a quick swim with some pricey gelato.

At a split in the cycle route, I asked Sarah if she wanted to take the long or short route.  I probably should have offered the flat route or the climb, but then we probably would have missed out on a lovely old railway tunnel, which seemed to be having some incontinence issues at one point.

After passing a few thousand more sunbathers, or in some cases, sunbakers, we reached the Slovenian port city of Koper.  It was fascinating to see people having a beach experience right by massive cargo ships.

By this stage, we'd lost the marked cycle route, but generally had "local" cycle paths to use.  One of Sarah's knees was giving her some sharp pain, which probably contributed to her not noticing our fourth and final border crossing of the day, back into Italy!  During our second passage of Slovenia, we'd ridden much of its 47km Adriatic coastline.

A road closure had me pull the pin on the route I'd "planned", but Garmin's "Back to Start" option served us very well instead.  I recognised plenty of road from our outbound trip including the massive mall where we'd turned off into Slovenia.

We found mum in the park opposite the entrance to our apartment, sitting adjacent to folk enjoying some marijuana with their evening conversation.   Once upstairs, we got stuck into a lovely post-ride snack of mozzarella, tomato and basil, and followed that up with a home-cooked meal.  

Tomorrow, we start heading west.  

Stats:  a 26km entree, and a 115km main course.  A mere 1400m climbed between them.  Three countries and one swim.  Temperature range on the longer ride between 26 and 43 degrees.