Lago di Como (Bellagio) to Lago di Lugano (Melano): Significant climbing

but not sure how much!

Friday September 14, 2018, 34 miles (55 km) - Total so far: 6,151 miles

(9,898 km)

Another wonderful day of cycling. Come this way if you can!! More dramatic than yesterday in parts, and also wonderfully clear after the storm. Plenty of small towns in which to stop for coffee too. The view of Como as you approach is the best bit - tourist hell once again.

And that is the end of our Italian chapter! Summary and route to follow!

After dropping Carol off at the station, we headed up up up to Switzerland. I didn't plan the route very carefully, so we ended up on fairly busy roads - this was fine, but I was sorry we'd missed hopping onto Eurovelo 5. We found it once across the border. although it's not signed as such. Look for route 3

• bike signs are red and fairly obvious!!

Lots more up through pretty vineyards, and we were just about done in. We're camping at Monte Generosso campsite, right on the shores of Lake Lugano. It's a lovely spot, if blighted somewhat by road noise; not sure we'll be escaping that for a little while! They have tent only pitches which meant it came in at just over 40 swiss francs - not as bad as we'd feared (it's a lot more in peak season though). We were also pleased with our budget shopping - we spent just over 11 francs on post-ride food, dinner. lunch and breakfast. A lot of it is pasta.....but we were also very happy to find cheap oats!!

We'll be following Eurovelo 5 for the foreseeable future. We have the app which has some use; more useful is the downloadable GPS track from the biroto website: https://www.biroto.eu/en/cycle-route/europe/eurovelo-via-romea- francigena-ev5/rt00000409. We plan to stick with the route at least until Luxembourg, after which we may deviate and head into the southern part of the Netherlands. But we'll see!