14 Aprile - over rivers and valleys north to Reggio Emilia

Most of the time the route we are following, based on the cycling maps found at openstreetmaps.org, are perfect. But every now and then we have ended up next to a farmhouse with barking dogs and no sign of a bicycle route unless you're on a nicely equipped mountain bike and not hauling any gear. Where's the route?

This mountain, which we named Little Baker was in our rear view much of the morning.

Today was one of those times of route adjustment. The road had started out with a nice decent from our campground along the spine of a watershed. Look one way, and you see the wide valley of the Flume Taro. Look the other way, and you see the much more carved out valley of the Torrente Baganza. But the road also included more climbing than we had thought--1,500', which isn't bad unless you have woken up thinking how you have a nice easy day dropping down to the next town--which in our case was the outskirts of Reggio Emilia. 

It was nice that much of our route in the beginning of today, we realized by the little signposts here and there, and one lone cyclist heading in the opposite direction, that we were still on or near the Via Francigena.

We did the dropping down--it was gorgeous! And back up--still gorgeous! But we also had an unexpected climb which brought us to ridge-top farmhouses with barking dogs protecting all the quiet within. There were a number of stops and starts, u-turns, up a hill then back down, pauses to check...where to veer left? 

The nice thing about the times when the routing doesn't work out exactly as planned is that you can still just look at the gps and figure out a whole new route that better suits your needs. Complete, yes, with the opportunity to assess there would be more climbing by counting the number of switchbacks on the map.

Even with our slight setbacks in the hills, once we reached the valley and cruised through back industrial and more flat farmland, we arrived when we'd hoped to meet our first Italian hosts, Paulo and Adriana. 

At Paulo and Adriana's farm--a family situation shared with 2 brothers and many little ones, roosters (Alaine counted 5 different calls in the morning), chickens, ducks, fruit trees, grapes....

Paulo, we learned, is a food microbiologist, with a specialty in fermentation and, more specifically, vinegars... Balsamic...several stages of which we got to sample.

...and salumis, two of his own which we also got to enjoy. 

The afternoon and evening melded as we listened to Paulo talk about vinegars, academics, economics, cycling, family and literature...that conversation got lively, with Alaine and Adriana developing a kinship in their appreciation of Thomas Hardy and other British authors and, in general, talk of good books.

This little one, Paulo and Adriana's first grandchild, Guilia...we were lucky to get to meet.