It was dawn time. The sun had risen. But that lofty, green mountain to the east was to keep blocking its radiation from streaming into that deep, narrow valley where Fossi Lake was located for quite some time to come. The sky above the little valley seemed, so, hesitant to manifest the advent of the new day. And the still gloomy lake’s surface was garnished by a soft veil of vapor.
It was an excellent time to leave the tent and get active while witnessing this magic. I sauntered down to the little wharf by the lake and washed the dishes from yesterday. Then I went around rambling and depriving the blackberry bushes of their tasty fruit.
Morning advanced. Christina woke up and we had breakfast with coffee, biscuits, chocolate paste, and the blackberries I’d just plucked. The preparations for the departure went on idly. The morning became noon. And the heat being inexorable, we left our private lake heading for new lands.
We made two stops during the first few kilometers. Firstly, we stopped at the first spring we encountered to fill up all our bottles with fresh water. And then, to walk a bit inside a beautiful cave we passed by the side of the road, named Grotta della Scappuccia.
The inclination of the road then turned painfully steep. We toilsomely kept pedaling uphills, perspiring great loads of sweat amid the violent middle-day heat. We went past Rocchetta village, and then further up until the road reached its highest point by the foot of Cole Calvigiole mountain peak.
The road then started meandering down the mountain slopes for a great distance, leading to the eastern boundary of the regional park. The views to the countless, succeeding undulating hills; with the little towns and villages often crowning their tops and the distant mountaintops surrounding them were magnificent. Rolling down this natural greatness felt like freedom.
Having to barely use any power at all – other than exploiting the one of gravity – we ended up at Castiglioni di Arcevia village. It was a cute village built on top of a hill by the side of the mountains we just had descended from. We got to wander a bit around its narrow paved streets and marvel at its cute little houses, often decorated with pots of colorful flowers by their doors and windows. We stopped for a while at a little cafe, where we had to distract its owner from the – apparently of grave importance – card game he was in the middle of with some ten or more of the village’s old men, so to buy two ice creams.
The day’s trip was supposed to end soon, after that village, by the shore of a nearby lake we saw existing on the map. But as we got there, somehow strangely, there was not even a swamp. There was, in fact, nothing other than arid farmland. That was definitely not the right place to spend the night. So we had to continue for a while longer.
Instead of going back up that rough, steep road we’d just come down in order to get to that alleged lake, we decided to keep straight through the olive groves and reach back to the road closer to Tassanare village. It wasn’t an easy way, either, pushing the bikes uphill over the soft soil, but it was shorter. We were soon back on asphalt.
A while later, sunset approaching, we were nearing Poggio San Marcello. We left the road for an open field offering a really astounding, panoramic view to the south, and we named it home for the upcoming night.
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