Italy on 2 wheels

Bicycling headlong into a strong, cold, wet wind atop a treeless berm with not the slightest cover, you may ask yourself, "What the #@*! am I doing here?" But that thought occupies only an instant, because if you stop pumping the pedals you fear the wind will bring you to a standstill, or even roll you backward!

It is Day 4 of our bicycle trip from Venice to Florence, Italy. It is a "self-guided" tour so my wife, Deena, and I are on our own: no fellow riders to cheer us on; no guide to offer water or snacks; and no "sag wagon" to pick us up if the desire to stop fighting the wind gets overwhelming.

It is our fourth such tour in Europe, following the Burgundy wine country, the Danube and Netherlands in tulip season. Self-guided means a tour company provides bikes and route maps, reserves hotels and transfers your luggage each morning to the next hotel. You have a phone number for emergencies. Alas, a brutal wind is not considered an emergency.

In truth, this tough trek along the route from Ferrara to Ravenna in Northern Italy was the worst of the trip. Other rides were longer and one was wetter, but the wind is discouraging as there is nothing we can do about it. Happily, we found a warm, deserted beach café where a sandwich and a beer bolstered us for the final push through a pine needle-floored forest to Ravenna.

Bicycle touring is a great way to see Europe. Walking is too slow for us; trains or cars separate you from the people and the landscape. Cycling you see and smell the world you are visiting up close. The sky above is open. If you see something interesting you can stop or turn back.

Some people do bicycle touring on their own, carrying everything in saddlebags and finding shelter each night. Others go high-end with guides and a comfy van following behind. These tours can be glorious, with interesting people and fascinating stops, but they are pricey. With a self-guided tour you set your own pace and need not worry about being the fastest or slowest in the group. And the price is right.

Our trip began in Venice and after a few days on our own in the city, we reported to our starting hotel in Mestre, the mainland town that faces the islands of Venice. Four other couples were starting that day as well, all German. Josef, the affable tour company representative, briefed us in German and then English, and organized our bikes. And we were off.

We traveled the long Freedom Bridge from Mestre to Venice but the "Floating City" does not allow bicycles, so we veered off to catch a car ferry to Lido di Venezia, a sandbar island that protects Venice Lagoon from the Adriatic Sea.

We cycled along beaches and through fishing villages to catch a second ferry to another sandbar island, Pellestrina. The day’s third ferry returned us at last to the mainland, through Chioggia and on to Sottomarina, a beach resort town and the end of Day 1. The long day of travel has only taken us 22 miles, one of the shortest days of the trip.

Now a drive from Venice to Florence takes just more than three hours by freeway. We took five days to cover roughly the same territory, zigzagging from the Adriatic Coast inland across the flat open Italian countryside and back to the coast again before turning inland. The wide Po River estuary provides the perfect landscape: farm country crisscrossed with country roads and berms to ride upon. And it is flat, our one absolute requirement.

The bicycle touring company, Euro-Bike, provides maps and a turn-by-turn description of the route in English. Best of all, the path is marked with small round stickers with the letter E that is turned to show the way, straight ahead, left or right. The route is exceptionally well-marked, although no system is foolproof and getting lost is a part of the pleasure, sort of.

The vast Po River valley is home to nearly a third of Italy’s people, with extensive farming for famed products like wine, olive oil and vinegars. The towns along the route are less well known than Rome, Florence, Milan and others that are more common destinations.

But here the Italian countryside is wide and open, with berms and dikes to protect the land from flooding. We rolled past fields with giant rolls of grass and fruit trees being tended by farm workers on a tall truck. On a small river branch we saw the banks lined by fishing cottages, each with a large net contraption that can be lowered to catch whatever fish wander by. The towns have separated bike routes that took us by lovely, brightly painted homes.

Most days of riding through this magical countryside were a pleasure, sunny and bright. The touring bikes were excellent but we had one small mishap.

As a precaution before each past trip I took a tire repair course at Island Triathlon & Bike in Hono­lulu. This year I skipped it and — "bachi" is the only explanation — this year we had our first flat tire. In the bar where we stopped for help, a genial local man took time from his espresso and card game to take us home to blow up the tire.

Our route takes us to Rovigo and its 10th-century castle with two remaining towers, each leaning as precariously as the tower of Pisa. Entering Ferrara, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, we pass through 15th- and 16th-century city walls, the best preserved Renaissance walls in Italy. The most iconic building is the imposing Castello Estense at the very center of town with four massive bastions surrounded by a moat. Ravenna is another World Heritage Site, packed with history, where Lord Byron lived in the 1820s and continued the writing of "Don Juan."

Culture and monuments are all very well, but the most memorable part of the visits to these towns was the food. With the help of Tripadvisors.com and the helpful front desk folks in our small, comfy hotels, we found terrific places to eat.

In Ravenna, for example, our hotel recommended Ca’ de Ven (the cave of wine) which is so popular we could not get a table until nearly 10 p.m. It is set in an old supermarket with a cavernous front room where everyone eats at communal tables and a more intimate back room.

For the last day (Day 6), the tour company provides a train ticket from the tiny foothill village of Brisighella over the Apennine Mountains to Florence. We opted for a no-bike day and rode all the way to Florence.

We spent four more days revisiting Florence, where we married 11 years ago. But that is another story.

It was a great trip, despite the sometimes daunting bicycling days. Bicycle touring is clearly not for everyone, but if you are interested there are dozens of tours available across Europe with varying lengths and levels of difficulties. Search "self-guided bicycle tour" with the name of any country you want to visit. Some athletic ability and training is necessary, of course, but you don’t have to be a top-notch athlete (goodness knows we are not) to have a great time.

We booked our tour through a site called biketoursdirect.com and the actual tour was provided by eurobike.at, which has been doing it for 20 years and has learned to do it right.