San Felice to Terracina

Friday 29th January.
San Felice to Terracina.
Early to bed does not always mean early to rise but we were down to breakfast by 9.15 and were slightly surprised to find that it was on the patio which being in the shade was actually colder than if we’d been given it on the lawn. We wore every coat and jersey we had and I even wore my beret which surprised Dick M-P when he Skyped us from Athens a few minutes later grumbling about it being cold there too! There is a lot of snow on the surrounding hills and yesterday it had tried to sleet briefly before luckily turning to rain. However it probably keeps us fitter as we cycle much faster to keep warm! At the moment I am wearing both my pairs of cycling trousers and am none too hot. We have passed a lot of fruit and vegetable farms along the route and seen masses of itinerant Indian workers, in fact at times it seems as though the only people on the road on bikes are the Armitages and the Indians.





Hill behind B&B






The B&B!

Today we had a choice of stopping after 15 miles in Terracina or going 30 miles to Gaeta which we are told is pretty. The concern is the big road, which joins the quite small road we are on just after Terracina and just how badly this will affect the volume of traffic. So we’ve stopped in Terracina which is coastal and pleasant and the good news is the police tell us the next stretch of road is OK for cycling.

Harbour with boat and shrimp fisherman we passed on

the way.

Terracina is a large harbour town divided in half by the ‘via Appia’ which anyone who learned Latin at school will remember was built as a trading route in 312BC to link Rome to Capua, Itri and go all the way to Brindisi. It was hot when we arrived so we sat on the beach and had a picnic before going in search of somewhere to stay.

Harbour Terracina

Lunch Terracina beach

We turned down a B&B on the grounds that it was too tacky, didn’t do breakfast and smelt of fags. This is always a gamble because you might not find anything else and have to come back and eat humble pie. Mercifully we found a hotel, open, warm and doing breakfast all for the same price. We were the only people staying in the hotel so were given the best room which overlooked the beach and the islands of Ponza, Ventotene and in the far distance Ischia and Capri. We could watch the rainstorms come and go for miles around us.

Storms coming our way across the bay where we'd had lunch earlier!