Nedly on his Treadly: Rome to Alberese

Thursday December 2, 2010
I slept very well overnight, probably because I was so tired, and got up at about 10 am.

My dorm at Ciak Hostel

Another day, another disappointing hostel breakfast. You just can't trust hostels for a substantial breakfast, very hit and miss. This "full continental breakfast" provided an inadequate amount of toast, some cheap cornflakes with an insufficient volume of milk, and some plain biscuits. No other cereals, no croissants, not sure how it could be classified as a full continental breakfast. Oh well.
I didn't feel in much hurry to get going again, I guess I wasn't too keen to tackle the Roman roads and traffic, I knew it wasn't going to be easy, and that getting out of Rome would be the hardest part.
I spent a while preparing, downloading podcasts and maps on the MotionX GPS app, and also looked at Google Maps to plan the route.
I headed off at about noon, the weather was currently partly sunny, partly cloudy, but rain was forecast for later in the day.
As expected, the traffic was heavy and chaotic and the cycling was dangerous. A friend from Melbourne, Daniel Braunsteins, boosted my confidence when he told me via Facebook about when he was cycling in Italy: "I was in italy for 3 months and I got hit by a car, a truck and I knocked over an old lady who started bleeding quite badly from her face."
Luckily, however, I made it out of the city unscathed, and didn't bowl down any elderly pedestrians. The roads improved as I got further from Rome, and the cycling was quite pleasant as I cruised along some quiet country roads surrounded by green fields, heading towards the west coast. At least that was the case until I got to a busier road called "Via Aurella". This was the only road I could take though; the alternative was the Autostrade, which is illegal for cyclists to ride on.

I listened to podcasts for most of the day, including Tech Stuff, ABC radio's AM and PM, All in the Mind and Dr Karl on triple j, I needed to give the brain some food to stave off the monotony of some of the riding.
I stopped for a late lunch at around 4 pm in a little town by the coast called Santa Marinella.

The spot I stopped for lunch, Piazza Civitavecchia courtesy of Google Maps

I hit the road again but just a few kilometres further on, I found myself with another flat tyre, just as it was getting dark. I pulled off down a side-street, and found a quiet spot to fix it, while listening to some podcasts from The Economist, before getting back on the road.
I stopped a little further on in the town of Chivitavecchia because I spotted a bike shop and thought I'd drop in on the off chance he had an appropriate tyre in stock, that elusive tyre I'd been hunting for for the previous few months. Unsurprisingly though I had no such luck - the closest he had were slick continentals, 26x1.6, not quite what I was after. However, he was a good bloke and we chatted for a while. He spoke highly of Australia, and told me about his holiday to Australia in January. He'd spent two weeks in Perth, one week in Queensland and one week in Melbourne. He informed me he'd been to Australia five times, and that he was looking forward to going for another holiday to Australia the next year. He spoke rather negatively of Italians, saying they're stuck in history and they have lots of people with only a limited amount of space. I thanked him for his help, he bode me farewell, and I was on the road again, just as a few spots of rain were starting to fall.
It wasn't long before these few spots of rain had developed into a large number of spots, and I only got another kilometre or two further down the road before it was quite heavy indeed, so I pulled up under a shop veranda, the only spot of shelter I could see under the time-pressure stemming from the desire not to get drenched. I was hoping it was just a passing shower, but I ended up sheltering under that veranda for a few hours! The rain was some of the heaviest I'd come across in my journey through Europe, and it was unrelenting, I just couldn't bring myself to head out in that weather.

Sheltering from the rain by the Via Tarquinia in Civitavecchia, Italy.

I listened to Hamish and Andy podcasts, and snacked on chocolate and choc-chip biscuits.
It wasn't until after 9 pm that the rain finally died down and I was able to head off again. The road I was on turned onto a fairly main road, which looked like an Autostrada, and I don't think I was allowed to ride on it, but I couldn't see any viable alternatives on the map. Also it was past mid-night by that stage, so I figured there wouldn't be much traffic so it wouldn't matter too much. I continued on this road for another 80 kilometres I'd say, through a few more showers, and right into the wee hours of the morning. One thing I noticed in between the showers was how clear the stars were.
I was keen not to be riding on such a road during the day, for fear of being hit by a car/truck, so I figured I'd get it out of the way there and then. Eventually I saw a nice looking road forking off the main one a little way before Grosseto, and turned off onto this one without hesitation. This little road skirted by fruit tree and olive tree orchards took me to a little town called Alberese. By this stage, it was after 4 pm, so I was keen to set up the tent for the night. So after a wander around the town, I selected a spot near the centre, in between a statue and a little hedge and set up the tent for the night, or at least what was left of it.