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Day 14 - Brindisi, Italy to L'Aquila, Italy.
Its gonna be a small entry today purely down to the fact that its been a bit of a target driven day centred around trying to put in about 350 miles after quite a late start due to the ferry arrival time being late.
The ferry crossing was nice and calm and we all got quite a good sleep even though we knew our cabin was surrounded by some of the meanest and angriest looking eastern European lorry drivers you are ever likely to meet! Getting off the ferry is simple and we don't even get stopped at customs ( and they wonder why Italy has such an immigration problem - bit political, apologies!)
The rest of the morning is spent trying to get as many miles away from the heel of Italy as possible,. There's just time for a quick bit of breakfast at a little service area and then we're on the motorway. It gets up to 32.5 degrees and its so hot even when moving at 75mph - quite a lot of water is consumed. There's a slight mix up at a toll where we only get 3 tickets instead of 4 but Warrior assures us he can sort it out at the exit toll station if we give him our tickets. Just after this he realises he's chucked his own ticket in the bin 5 mins earlier.
There's then a quite dull section off of the motorway heading for a town called Bojano. Its got loads of speed restriction changes, speed cameras and absolutely idiotic Italian drivers. I like to give the benefit of the doubt to people where possible but actually risking someone else's life just to get 15 feet further ahead in the line of traffic has to go down as pure stupidity. We even see one chap tailgating a police car and then undertaking it!
It turns out there are no food businesses open in Bojano on a Wednesday afternoon so we push on further to Isernia. These are some rural southern Italy areas we are going through now and my feeling is that they feel like the Balkans a little bit.
We struggle to find anywhere for food except for a cake shop so that's what we call lunch at 16:30 in the afternoon. Slash is suffering today with a case of nappy rash due to days and days of sweatyness and we need to take it steady for his delicate parts.
We decide that L'Aquila should be our destination for the evening but it'll take us another 2hrs 15mins to get there. This turns out to be great road. Sharp and long bends, tunnels and bridges. There are also some long straights through flat plains where you can imagine winter snow becomes a real issue. One section contains about 6 or 7 roundabouts which you can actually pick a racing line on as its so quiet. L'Aquila suffered major building damage in an earthquake about 7 years ago and a lot of the central buildings are still all buttressed and propped. Turns out that all the hotels are fully booked possibly due to people still being homeless or the building contractors or some Alpine goat herder convention. It may be a lucky escape in actual fact as Warriors snoring could have brought the rest of the buildings down!
We end up finding a couple of rooms at a Golf and Spa resort about 12 miles further on. ( slumming it again!). Its dark and gone 9pm by the time we arrive so only time for a quick shower and some food which is a real shame on our penultimate night.
Warrior and Hawk have made the decision that they are going to ride back to the UK from London..............
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