(PS if you tap our photos you will get a short caption/description.)

From a quiet agricultural village to another ancient beautiful Italian city.

There was no discussion about the weather this morning. It was raining hard. The forecast was dreadful. However, we can do rain and we got well wrapped up and set off picking up Ruth and Masoud from their hotel on the way out of town. R&M are the most cheerful about the rain and weather 😍. We decided to avoid all non-tarmac tracks so our route was a variant of the published route (which is mostly along gravel topped flood banks which are very puddly and muddy at the moment). As a result, we sped along cheerfully at a good speed singing songs as we went. We decided we enjoyed cycling in the rain. We even decided not stop at one of the rare caffè bars which was open on an Easter Sunday. We crossed and re-crossed the Via Francigena from time to time and we pulled into a village with a pilgrim hostel. At this point it dawned on us that the rain had stopped 😱. The sun came out 🌞😱. We saw blue sky 😳. We had a picnic lunch on the church steps. Ruth had packed away a lot of the hotel buffet breakfast 😂. We took off waterproofs. We went cycling. It was hot so we took off fleeces 😱. A new cycling experience 😍.

We then joined an excellent tarmac off-road cycle path which whisked us into Piacenza for 2pm.

One of the (many) good things about cycle touring is that you can cycle into a main square, cycle around it looking at the buildings then park your bikes by the tables of a cafè in the square and have a drink. So we did that. Aperol Spritz all round.

We then did some light sight seeing on bike around the city. Examined the relics of some saints in the cathedral and then made it to our out-of-town hotel. Just reached it as it started to rain 🌧️.