Things are heating up in southern Italy. Temperatures are now well over 30C which is hot for cycling. Normally we try to get an early start and finish by 2pm or so but today’s ride was longer than usual (95km)so we didn’t arrive until 3:45pm. The ride itself wasn’t too demanding, all quite flat but still long and tiring in the heat. We go through a lot of water so have to keep replenishing our supply at bars and public fountains as we can only carry 1.5 litres.
We rode from inland at Matera to the other coast on the Mediterranean side and followed that along to Taranto. The scenery today was good for the first half through the hills then on the beach for a bit but eventually we were on a service road beside the freeway which wasn’t too exciting. It was pretty fast though and we had some wind to help us for a change. We were managing about 30 km/h most of the way. A notable thing we saw on our route was large fields of solar panels. This is definitely the place for that.
Taranto is an interesting city geographically as the old part of town is situated on an island of sorts with a small island sea on one side and several bridges to take you to other parts of the city. There are also lots of ferries, fishing boats and pleasure craft. Otherwise Taranto is quite an industrial looking city, a bit grungey in spots.
We stayed in a B&B that was a refurbished apartment on the 2nd floor so we just put the bike on the balcony where I also strung a clothesline in the hot sun.
We skirted rather than climbed Montescaglioso in the heat.
A lot of acreage being devoted to solar arrays
One of the two channels to go inland, this one with a swing bridge
A useful balcony
An arragonese castle in Taranto
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