10/11/24
The hotel included breakfast in its low price and despite not being able to enjoy the wide variety of cakes they had on offer we did at least have some toast and jam, cereal, and cappuccinos with soya milk.
It had definitely rained overnight but it was dry when we started rolling out of the popular spa town, past the Fonte Bonifacio VIII, some kind of park/bathes. Pope Boniface famously asserted that drinking the Fiuggi water cured his kidney stones. Cue the setting up of many ‘terme bathe’ to extol the virtues of the water.
At the bottom of the hill we passed the Acqua di Fiuggi bottling plant, then we started cycling past what was supposed to be Lago di Cantena. The lake didn’t appear immediately though, the water level was very low. Perhaps they’ve bottled it all we thought.
The road turned away from the lakeside and we started climbing around the hill. It was a nice, steady gradient and we had pristine views of the snow capped mountains that stood behind Fiuggi. The side of the road was strewn with rubbish all the way up. We wrapped up at the top before descending into Ferentino. It was a long descent, as we were losing altitude from the previous day too.
As we entered Ferentino the promised rains began. We made it to the cathedral, by travelling up the winding streets but it wasn’t as momentous of a building as we’d hoped. Maybe our visit to Roma had desensitised us. We added shoe covers and waterproof mitts to our outfits before descending through the cobbled streets to rejoin the route. We had to bump the bikes down some shallow stairs and meander down the cobbled lanes to rejoin the route.
We continued downhill and headed into the valley. The route followed narrow roads first before following a larger SP. As we left the mountains behind the rain subsided and we glimpsed the disc of the Sun behind the clouds.
It wasn’t long before the Sun came out in full force and we could abandon our waterproof garb. We had left the busier SP and were sauntering along a quieter road. Suddenly there was a loud twang that emanated from near the black Surly. We pulled over to work out whether a bolt had fallen out from somewhere or something had pinged under the wheel.
After a few minutes of inspection we were about to assume it was nothing when Jonathan spotted one of the rear spokes was now unsecured at one end. Darn it. We taped it to one of its nearby friends and decided to make it to Ceccano in time to find a bike shop before the lunchtime siesta. There were still 35 spokes intact so it should be fine especially as we transferred a little more weight to the green Surly, such as the bike lock and a few tools.
We made it in good time, but alas the owners of the bike shop and taken their break early. We tried calling another shop but they refused to talk to us when they realised we were English. Seriously, they wouldn’t allow us to translate and just kept repeating ‘No parle inglese’ down the phone.
We planned to get food here, but not wanting to add any extra weight to the now weakened wheel we decided to wait until we were closer to the house we were staying in. We continued to ride cautiously and couldn’t help but wonder why the spoke had broken. It had broken right at the nipple. Was it a one off, or were all the spokes fatigued? Could it have been all the rough gravel? Was it because of the weight?
Fortunately we were on small roads that weren’t in too bad condition. There were a few small hills but the Sun was shining brightly now and we felt lovely and warm. The next town was Madonna del Piano, and it had a Conad City, a smaller supermarket, that was marked as open on Google. Except it wasn’t open. It had shut for the siesta and wouldn’t be open for another couple of hours. We debated what to do and decided we’d press on, get to the house, then travel three kilometres further on to the shop to get food after four‘o’clock.
Just up the hill however, was a little vegetable store that was open. We eagerly went in and bought potatoes, some salad and an expensive jar of passata. It wasn’t far now to the house and we were feeling tired even though there’d been little elevation.
The house was a nice little place, with concrete floors and bunk beds suspended above the main double bed. It had a large open kitchen and dining area. It was only £40 for the night, which we felt was good value. Before relaxing though, we had to set about fixing the broken spoke. The next two paragraphs are technical and maybe not everyone’s jam!
Replacing a spoke is straightforward, theoretically, but first requires the old spoke to be removed from the hole in the hub. J-spokes have a J shape on the hub end and so need to be removed at a tight angle. Both the cassette and the disc rotor had to be removed. The latter was easy and is just secured by 6 bolts. The former was a little harder as it had dug into the hub and needed a little jiggling.
Both the tyre and inner tube had to be removed, and the rim tape pulled back, so as to remove the old nipple where the spoke had snapped. Next the new spoke (Surly’s come with 2 spares attached to the bike) had to be pushed through the hole in the hub and manoeuvred into place. It required some flexing of the spoke, which feels like it’s going to snap, to bend it into the correct gap and match the lacing pattern. All that remained to do was insert the new nipple, which temporarily got lost inside the wheel but was retrieved. There’s no way to know the correct tension, so we tightened it up to match the existing spokes and hoped for the best. To reduce weight and as the tyre was already off, the Marathon Mondial that had been carried since Pfzorheim, Germany, was installed.
For dinner we had a delicious meal of roasted potatoes, with tofu and seitan, served with a tomato sauce. As we didn’t have any flour or bread, we cooked the leftover pasta we had and stirred chocolate through it. It worked quite well and we knew we couldn’t possibly be the first people to make dessert pasta.
Surly They Won't Make It 