After talking with our local cycling friends yesterday, we discovered, after some road research, that it would be an easy ride to Ortona on quiet roads .. so off we went!
We found a small country road that dumped us out on the busy SS road 100m from the front door of the Moro River Canadian War Cemetery. Easy!
It was quite an interesting and moving cemetery as 1375 Canadians are buried here representing 86% of the burials.
There are lots of plaques and tributes hete to a number of different Canadian regiments.
We met Francesco the grounds keeper who is 70 years old and has been working here for 35 years. He showed us all the pins and souvenirs he has collected over the years including many letters of thanks from Canadian government officials and politicians. We would not have learned any of this without Marion's Italian!
After our visit, we found another quiet road into Ortona (4 km from cemetery) and enjoyed having our lunch on a bench overlooking the habour.
About this time we ran into 3 more cyclists (men, older ..) who were also alot of fun. The one cyclist had a flat and we watched with amusement while the engineer and doctor put all four hands on the wheel and worked on getting the flat repaired. The 3rd cyclist said it would take them quite a long time to fix it! (Maybe he was the accountant?) They invited us to join them to pick figs from their favourite tree about 3km down the road. We declined and went to find a café!
Ortona is a very nice town with an interesting pedestrian centre which we quite enjoyed!
Retracing our route put us back in Lanciano well after rush hour and we found a nice patio in the shade for a beer!
