Day 4 (81 miles)

The dominating theme of today was not hills and wasn’t flats either. These ‘things’ could only be described as the pinnacle of pain. These mountains we’ll call them were just simply massive! Lots of very long steep ones. It was our first mountain range that we had crossed and given that we started from sea level we really felt every meter of ascent serge through our pulsating legs.

Our route took us up through some pelting rain to Pontremoli, and it was relatively gentle (though all uphill to there). It was a very different story after. Jack and Archie set off from Pontremoli expecting more of the same, but how wrong we were. We climbed for a total of 18 miles, continually going up switch backs. We reached a max altitude of 1100 meters, nearly 1/8^th of the way up Everest. It was very hard and truly relentless climbing. A fair smattering of showers didn’t help either. By the end we where up in the clouds, and were treated to some glimpses of the wonderful view far far below us.

Thankfully we had to go down after all that climbing, so whizzed into Fornovo Di Tarvo, after a wet lunch cooped up in the hearse.

Jack and Freddie were last up for the final shift of the day. This again was up hill but nothing on what Jack and Archie faced that morning. So we soldiered on to campsite Arizona where the pool awaited and some well earned bananas.

Thank you for reading and I wish you all a very happy day!