Day 6, Porto Sant'Elpidio to Foggia

First some stats. We have now covered over a thousand miles and Ginny has clicked over 38,000. Today we saw the highest temperature of the tour, 39 degrees. A tad stiffling to say the least but only for the last hour of the ride.

A bit of an up and down day today, not without incident, of the Woody/Tomtom type, and of the unusual and/or adventurous kind.

We set off at 08:30, with the temperature at 25 degrees. We had a plan to buy some water at LIDL up from the hotel but all we could find was the bloody sign! We aborted. Being Saturday, it seemed everyone in Italy was on the SS16 road, either going shopping or to the beach. With the volume of traffic, through small towns, with untold zebra crossings and roundabouts, the going was very slow and very hot. We came across a LIDL, just before our scheduled fuel stop. On this trip, the Shadslow has demonstarted she can drink sensibly, thus, we are getting more than 150 miles out of her. The upshot being, today we could skip the planned stop and defer till later.

Back in the turmoil of the SS16, we were stop/start, stop/start. With the temperature 28 degrees, Ginny cried enough and overheated. Lucky this was only a minute from a McDs, so we were both able to have a stop and cool down. At first, we thought the place was closed, as we were the only vehicles in the car park. As it turned out it was open but we'll never walk into an emptier place. There were just four punters in there!

Soon it was time for a Tomtom misadventure, sending me up a 'quicker' route, that turned out to be a steep twisty rough road. Not long after that, I missed a turning and Tomtom and I had a disagreement. With some re-working of the route, we were finally back on track. All grist to the Garmin mill, as far as Grizzly is concerned. He won't conceded they both have faults.

Eventually the road opened out and the traffic deminished. We'd already made our first fuel stop, when we stopped at the second, in Termoli. With only 100 miles up we decided to skip again but had a drink and snack there for our lunch. It was 29 degrees and destined to get even hotter in the final hour of our day. Those last 50 miles were probably the best in terms of riding, with little on the road but also the most torturous because of the temperature.

As we motored along, we came across a young woman at the side of the road, wearing a bikini, under an umbrella/parasol. Strange. A little bit further up the road were 3 'ladies', two also in bikinis, one as naked as the day she was born! 😲There were a couple more before we reached Foggia, none of them naked though. Clearly, if you are looking for some action, the SS16 between Termoli and Foggia is the place to go. 😉

We reached the hotel at 4pm, giving us time to check oil & water levels before dinner. Ah, dinner! We came down to be told the restaurant was closed! Upshot, we had to get a very expensive taxi to a service station cafe a mile away, that took us 20 minutes to walk back from! Misadventure big time. On the walk back, in the dark, on a road with no pavements, we spotted a fire at the side of the road. By it, a lady of the night, literally. A dangerous place to be for all 3 of us.

Today's pic