Today we had a planned short ride – just 44 km – as we need some recovery from the previous two days, and also it was forecast to rain in the afternoon. We had a few more (small) hills today.

This was our best ride on the trip so far – we are getting into the tourist areas now. The start took us around the lake, past little holiday towns, with lots of hotels and holiday apartments and even some amusement parks.

As we moved away from the holiday towns at the lakefront, it became more rural. We began to see some grape vines and olive trees. We even rode past two men pruning in their olive orchard.

We passed by this interesting town called Peschiera, which is built in the middle of the river with fortified walls all around. At first we went past and I took this photo of the walls. 

Then we realised we had to enter over the bridge and through a narrow stone gate. This is how it looks on the other side.

At Volargne we found ourselves in a light industrial area and were really interested to see lots of marble works, with large thinly sliced slabs of marble being stored on their sides.

We missed the supermarket so ended up buying our food for the evening at a small village store.

We reached the Adige river and began riding along it, between its steep rocky cliffs. We spotted this interesting old lock (called Ceraino’s Lock – I cannot find much more info on it).

Soon after, Kris spotted a bike path on the other side of the road, and we were soon enjoying a new wide off road path with wonderful river vistas

The Fort Ceraino looks very picturesque above the bike path and the vineyards. I learnt later that it was originally built by the Austrians (in 1850-1851) and became Italian when Veneto was annexed to Italy in 1866.

We got to our comfortable B&B (in Ceraino) at around 12. It is situated in an old restored monastery and has a lovely garden with a view of the fort Ceraino from our hill. We were immediately directed to the garage to store our bikes. The friendly hostess also brought us some espresso and chocolates as we settled in!

We spent the rest of the day relaxing and catching up on the blog. Our rooms are huge and there are no other guests.

The bathroom is massive (we can shower side by side) and is lined with marble – they must have had a good deal from the nearby quarries.

Our timing was good as it began to rain soon after we arrived and continued for the rest of the afternoon.