Etna – Giro d’Italia

During the night, about 2:30 am, there was much activity to be heard out on the road. Lorries were pulling up, lots of shouting and banging around etc. By morning it seemed like the road had been transformed into city of Giro d’Italia! Two storey buildings had appeared on the back of lorries and barriers everywhere. Guy had got up at 6:00 to try and get a photograph of Etna – Rufus and I thought he was nuts till we saw the photo! He did get back in bed and snore till 9am though.
The race wasn’t due to finish till about 5pm so we had a lot of hanging around to do. Rufus had a walk and the road steadily filled up with people. Guy wanted to see the race about 2km down the road on a double bend but we couldn’t decide whether Rufus would make it there and back and if it would be too busy for him. In the end, he was fast asleep so we left him. Walked down and sat on a wall for what seemed like hours. Didn’t expect to have thermals and gloves on in Sicily but was so glad of them as it got colder and colder. When the race finally came there was much chaos (as expected) …I don’t know how the cyclists manage to carry on without hitting people as there are spectators everywhere, running alongside them. It was a big build up but then over very quickly. Nearly got run over several times as they took the barriers down before the race had finished! We decided to have our dinner and then move down the road so we didn’t have to ask our host if we could stay another night. An old chap came to tell us he was locking the barrier, so we had to wolf our food down and get out quickly. We called to give Paulo ( the kind man that let us stay on his land) a bottle of wine and he immediately ran inside and fetched us a load of fresh eggs! Had a difficult conversation with him and his wife which made us think we need to learn more Italian. We are now in a lay-by just down the road and just got a good picture of a fox on the way.