D33 moneglia to Sarsana

The great thing about camping without a flywheel is you're up at dawn and away. Met a guy on the from on his mountain bike and checked with home about the coastal route - his response was definitive the only two ways out were on the SS1 waving towards a piece of heroic civil engineering taking traffic far above us on huge concrete legs or the train which is why there is such a well developed series of tunnels on the Liberian coast , a 4o km stretch near Genoa has been opened as a dedicated cycles to save reviews and there is a plan to extend it but no good to me! So I climbed 700 metres before morning coffee which was a bloody heroic effort. Just when you think you can't do any more (the concrete span was carrying the A12 motorway the Ss1 route may far above aarrgghh) of course you turn a corner and youyourve made the height and a fellow cyclist seeing your face stoow a to tell which of the two cafes you should visit where I was served quite simply the best ham and cheese toasties ever made! The pass summit is reached half an hour later and a swooping descent takes me down to a pleasant river side town after the best Saturday morning cycle ride ever.

Yes I have just come from down there ! To put this in perspective the climb up to Pyromali our land in Greece is significant but half this Ligurian mother.
A fun but if cycle sculpture persuaded me to stop and fuel up at the next town and half an hour later I hear the distinct sound of children slashing in water and realise not only is the river below me available but that there is a convenient bridge to get over to the beach....man I was across and in that water pretty sharpish.

I was enjoying the riverside scene So much I took lunch, did my weekly cycle maintenance (got the lights working again as I recalled the Thorn advice that sometimes the wires have been known to short out if they touch the hub so I rearranged them and it bloody worked!) and had a song song with a mixed age group with a guy and  his guitar. Having worked up Tambourine man in Geoff's memory I asked him if he played Dylan and  man he could play (even pulled out a harmonica to go for the verse accompaniment). So I was feeling well chilled when I stopped for the last coffee of the cycle day and the Batman casually mentioned the SS1 approached La  Spetsia through a  series of three tunnels (here we go again) all of which were down hil! And I would definitely need lights and to help well in to the right. Thanking my lucky stars that I'd just fixed the light i came around a corner and we were in.....dark, extremely noisy with plenty of traffic making no allowances in both directions . The surface was cut up.in places and the incline was such that I was doing 30-40kms / hour. Talk about a white knuckle ride.
La Spetsia turned out to be a sizeable port and I realised I hadn't been anywhere near one for a month.

Finally the GPS Garmin from La Spetzia took me up a mule path which required porterag e but emerged finally at top to arrive at a perfect Italian hill town which I took to be Sarsana but was 3km away and far nicer. I found a camping, there the tent up and returned to the hill too pizza bar for a blowout!

Thoughts of Eleanor Barrow reading ? Pilgrim's Progress as I pushed my burden up the hill and of fear Greg and his obstacle crossed. I will not fear the valley of the angel.of death - another obstacle to endure. This is turning into a pilgrimage about (re)discovering depths of resilience.....you can get it if you really want!