Today began splendidly. An early train to Sibari put me where I should have been last night had it not been for TrenItalia. No matter, in cycling terms I hadn’t been delayed really and by 9am I was already off the train, full of cappuccino and creme cornetti (dangerously I seemed to be ordering these in twos now 😂) and flying along towards Policoro with blue skies and a tail wind that I fancied was saying scusa signor for yesterdays rain.

My route today was about 32 miles and as usual I was navigating from a route I’d planned yesterday. Nerdy mapping alert-unlike Google maps,which uses real time information and dynamic routing (highlighting things like traffic jams,diversions etc) the app I was using was based on something called Open Street Maps,which is a static database relying on individual users to update things like closed roads, broken bridges etc. Even when this happens, it can take a while to be reflected in the mapping.

So far so good. Why not just use Google? Because despite its real time usefulness it’s algorithms are designed to always take the quickest route. Not the quietest, or the most cycle friendly route, and its cycling option is unreliable at the best of times .

In contrast, my app is designed specifically for cycle touring and is programmed to always use quiet and minor roads, cycle ways, unpaved tracks and greenways, always as opposed to using more busy roads, and often at the expense of the “quickest” journey time. Great .

The downside of that is that I was sometimes routed away from a perfectly rideable “busy” road onto a bumpy off road track ,which actually slowed progress and risked stress on my spokes and on my nerves as I bumped along .

I was beginning to be more discerning about following the app-from the first few unsure days in Spain where I slavishly followed the route,often defying common sense and the evidence of my own eyes, to now where I was ignoring it at times and freestyling at others.

But today I’d forgotten all that as I whizzed along, stopping only for a Coke on the beach

Forgotten that is until I found myself,not concentrating and missing a turn, seemingly in the middle of a (not on the app yet) major roadworks scheme with lorries passing me closely and constantly . Before I knew it I was on a slip road and about to become the star of one of those “stupid foreign cyclist gets arrested riding on a motorway” stories that we all shake our head at

Every cloud though…the resulting enforced diversion took me up to some of the nicest views I’d had in Italy-a massive climb to ride inland and parallel to the new motorway that now dominated the coastline, it took me through small villages and farms with some really engrossing sea views

Eventually I dropped back down to sea level and for a while I was free of the motorway . As I neared Policoro though,there seemed to be no way round it, or it’s junctions and feeder roads, none of which I wanted to be anywhere near.

Luckily (😳) the app had suggested an off road shortcut to avoid a hilly twelve mile detour. How quickly I forgot it’s navigational idiocy earlier today and how feebly I allowed my aching legs to overcome my own common sense! Yep, two hours later and I was riding round in circles, gruntingly lifting my bike over a locked gate, dragging it up a muddy bank and climbing over crash barriers, and wondering whether I was going to get shot for trespassing or savaged by one of the many murderous wild dogs that patrolled my so called route. Or both. 😊

For a day that had started so nicely it had ended a long time later, with an extra twenty diversionary miles, in the dark, with my bike covered in mud and legs covered in bramble cuts.

Still,it was only one day,tomorrow will be better. My accommodation was nice, a simple B and B with the second B being provided from the bakery next door,owned by the same family .

And I got to park my bike next to a Ferrari too…..