70.6 miles ridden – 772m climbed – Temperature 30C.

We went for an early start today so that we could break the back of our 22 miles of climbing in the cooler morning hours and because the sun is behind the mountains there is much more shade.

The climb started about half a mile from the hotel. Most of today has been following the SS18 road although trying to avoid the busier sections where possible and much of the first 10 miles today was on what I suspect is the old SS18 before the newer bypass based road was created.

We passed through a number of small towns and villages where most of the folk we saw were older and many of the cafe/bars were closed up. Apparently much of rural Italy is losing its young people to opportunities elsewhere so whether the closed businesses is due to depopulation or that the new road took away all passing trade is difficult to say. The are a lot of abandoned houses and plenty of property for sale too which seems sad. It means for us there are very few places to stop along the way but It is still picturesque.

We left the hilly section around 28 miles and stopped for coffee in a town called Amantea. Nice coffee, nice pastries, but very busy road. I had already drunk over 1 litre of water so it was good to rehydrate and top up water bottles.

The next 30 miles was a bit of a grind. All the SS18, nice wide, flat, well-surfaced road but the wind was unhelpful, it was quite busy an it was hot! When we pulled into a petrol station at 58 miles both my bottles were empty (1.5L) and I drank another 1L while we were sat there. The location of a beach bar pinged up on the group WhatsApp which was at 61.5 miles so that was our next stop.

The only drawback with this marvellous lunch was that having sat for 45 minutes my legs were decidedly unhappy when I got back on the bike and within 10 minutes started another gentle climb over the headland and down into Vibro Marina.

The final few miles were through an industrial area before we ducked down a flood relief tunnel under the railway line and came to our hotel on the beach. I haven’t gone to the beach as I have concentrated on cooling down in my deluxe air-conditioned room which has a balcony bigger than the bedroom, bathroom and balcony combined last night!

Tomorrow is our final day riding on the Italian mainland before we get the ferry from Villa San Giovanni over to Messina on Sicily. Very exciting. Hill climbing and a ferry – what more could you want?