Sunday, July 17, 2011

Day 10, Near Ancona to Near Rimini, via San Marino

This day we rode to Rimini Lambretta Centre, via San Marino.

I couldn't sleep well in the hotel. To say the bed was interesting would be an understatement. You lay on the mattress, and you sank in to it. Very uncomfortable. I woke up at 4am, and played on the iPad for a few hours. Finally, as 6am I got up and changed my front tyre as it had worn unevenly from the problem with the forks.

We left at about 9:30am, but didn't even get out of the carpark as my new front tyre had decided to deflate. So, I had to put the old one back on again. We were now off to San Marino... another one ticked off my list of world's smallest countries. I've been, now, to the Vatican City, Monaco, San Marino and Lichtenstein.

As we went along the road, we realised that:

1) There was a much nicer hotel just up the road
2) If we had kept going, we had done the hard part and that the last 25km was MUCH easier.

Still, the ride to San Marino was fantastic, especially climbing up to the castle. It was, though, a very hot day at around 39C. The height gave us a brief respite from the heat, and we were rewarded with some stunning views.

When we got to the main town centre, we stopped and had something to drink. We hapenned to pick a corner where loads of young students were constantly filing past and going into a liquor store. I can only surmise that teh drinking age is lower in San Marino. The tour guides were certainly friendly with the store owners. The Lambrettas caused a bit of a stir, and were admired by many... but we weren't at the top yet. So, Ron and I got on the scoots and rode up as far as we could go to the entrance of the old castle.

When we had finished in San Marino, it was back down towards Rimini. I wanted a new inner tube, and get the front wheel changed. So, we decided to stay at an agriturismo in near the RLC that had been recommended by Dean, and that Ron and Suzanne had stayed at before, Antiche Macine. This place was stunning, and I couldn't wait to get back there after Rimini.

RLC were fantastic. One guy came down to the Agriturismo to escort me up to RLC, and I met Marco to start. He soon got the guys working on my scoot and then Dean arrived. Amazingly, we discovered we were from the same part of the UK and that he knew people I knew when I was a teenager. My god he can talk quickly. Full on. Great guy. He rode my scoot and was appalled at the handling (remember this is better than it was), and tried it without shocks... which was better again, so standard single action shocks were put on. We were looking at the shocks that had been there, and one of them just fell apart... so no surprise it was bad. Again, an improvement in handling, but still not perfect. The forks are definitely not true.

Finally it was time to go and enjoy that wonderful swimming pool and the last of the evening sun. Bliss!

Dinner was, once more, just amazing. Fantastic food. Of all the places I've stayed on this trp, this is one of my favourites. I wish I could've stayed another few days.

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