A Village Too Far

Yesterday was our first full day of cycling across northern Sardinia. We were shuttled out of Alghero to a small village about an hour's drive away, and that became our starting point.

View from the small village park where we began the day

The route ran across the wide open scenery of northern Sardinia. Lots of rock, some wheat fields and wind turbines.

It's a sparsely populated area, so our lunch stop was at an "agritourism" place on a hilltop (of course) where we were treated to a small cooking lesson of traditional Sardinian peasant food and tucked in to a lunch of said peasant food (sort of a pita-bread pasta with mushrooms, etc.) and some homemade wine.

The afternoon ended up being a little longer than it needed to be. Bob and I rode with Steve and Nancy, a couple from Toronto, Ontario. I was enjoying the ride because it proffered the kind of rolly-polly ride that I don't get at home. In Salt Lake, one basically rides either on the flats of the valley or goes up into the canyons. Yesterday was up and down and around, which made for lots of variety.

Nancy, Steve and me

Unfortunately, we all missed a turn about mid-afternoon that took us past and through and out of the village of Perfugas (pictured in the lead photo above), the prettiest village we had seen all day - but alas, not on our designated route. We were four miles from the turn we should have taken before we realized our mistake. It only added eight miles and a few hills to our route, but with the heat and the climbs we had yet to do, it kinda sucked a little.

It was H-O-T and windy yesterday afternoon.

We finally pulled into our hotel around 5:30, having ridden just under 60 miles and climbed 4000 feet. Then, it was time for showers followed by cocktails before dinner.

Our day ended with dinner at a cliff-top restaurant overlooking Castelsardo. It had been a very full day.