Bluey

The e-bike

I know a certain someone who is a bike fanatic and a cycling purist. She’s one of the best people I know and I know won’t mind if I share that she is currently working with a disabled equally purist cycling fanatic and together they take off into the mountains of Scotland on huge tours, and send me smiley pictures against glorious backdrops with not a battery in sight. Ange, are you shaking your head right now as you realise that we have gone ahead and bought a couple of e bikes. I am not a cyclist. As my other good friend friend, Fiona, will testify, we once went out on a morning ride in the rolling Sussex countryside and after about 30 minutes, I realised that I biking was not my forte and I kind of gave up, refused to change my clunky gears and began complaining at every hill. I think I must have really infuriated Fiona and we never took another bike ride together. Fiona is running a half marathon soon raising funds for charity. She’s another one of my lovely inspiring friends, always being nice to other people and living from the heart. Like Ange. I miss them both. But that’s not the reason I bought an e bike. Marty had been banging on about getting bikes for sometime. We’d managed to take my regular mountain bike into the hills to the laghetti just once and it was a burden. I’m a two feet strider up into the hills and far away, enjoying an ambling pace where I can spot local residents, like snakes, well ahead of the game. Then Marty, egged on by his brother, took our UK, left hand drive car down the narrowest street he could find into Dolcedo, and scratched up all the sides. It was time to stop relying on the car as the quoted repaint of 2800 euro drew an exasperated gasp from me.

Not knowing anything about bikes or e-bikes, I blundered behind Marty into the only bike shop we knew and put my full faith and trust to the owner, Luca to guide us. He could see I was a bike idiot, so showed us the entry level Cube tourers, not really suitable for hills and trails, then switched to the Cube Reaction e-bike. Affordable and solid we put our money down and a few days later caught the bus back to the shop. Having not taken the bus from Dolcedo to Imperia before, this was another pleasant surprise. The buses run infrequently so you do have to check timetables, but they are cheap and get you where you want to go. We picked up the bikes just before lunchtime closing, yes, they do that here, which enabled Marty with his very short attention span and inability to take instruction, a quick get away. We had a quick cycle up and down the steep road next to the shop and then were free to go.

It was sunny and hot so we cycled along the “pista cyclible” in a celebratory mood to San Lorenzo and dined just off the bike path. This was the first cafe/restaurant we had found back in May when everything was new and we were explorers. The play list, in the words of my children, was banging. Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Cure.

Yes! We were outside eating pasta, in Italy, in September.

The owner’s son was a very chatty guy and he told us the best routes back up through the olive groves and mule tracks through the ancient town of Civezza to our ancient village of Lecchiore. We paid and left, and headed out and up. Marty soon realised that there was something wrong with his gear change, it was clunking and the chain looked loose. He was disappointed, but game fully put it to one side, he could take the bike back after the weekend to see what was going on. Myself, on the other hand, instantly connected with the bike. A lively turquoise blue made me coin the highly unoriginal “Bluey” as a potential nickname. The tyres are chunky and the lack of mudguards or any adornments make this a clean lined very satisfying bike to look at. I was going to get along just fine with Bluey.

If you have never ridden an e-bike before, like me, it’s tempting to think of its potential as a slow moped, but this is not the case at all. You still need to pedal. This has been an eye opener for me. I am keeping a steady pedal (between 78-80 rotations of the pedal per minute I was instructed at the shop) and turning the boosts on for when I feel like giving up. The hills leading up into the mountain where we live are brutal and the bike made such easy work of them. I love my bike. I am now a cyclist. In the short few days of acquiring the bikes, we’ve since nipped down to Dolcedo to the commune to apply for our identity cards. The lady, Tiziana, at the commune is my friend now. She has been super helpful over the last few months and she playfully said that my new career ought to be as a thief since the finger print machine was incapable of capturing my prints. I do, I swear, have lines on my fingers, and never have I tried to erase them with acid as I once saw someone do in a crime drama on TV. Anyway, soon we will receive our ID cards, which will truly make us legit here in Italy and we will be able to do more exciting admin things like paying the rubbish tax and for our business like logging the passport info with the local police station. We also nipped all the way down to Imperia to the beach today, swam, had ice cream and a coffee at la Foce beach, all within 4 hours. I can see more nipping around trips on the horizon, like down to the shop in Dolcedo for supplies, although I want to keep some destinations for hiking only, like Monte Faudo and Valloria.

The e-bikes are a big success so far and maybe our guests might like to try them out, although, I am quite certain that Ange will be bringing her own bike from Scotland. In fact, I think she’s planning to cycle ALL THE WAY from Scotland on it. She’ll do it too.

Tomorrow we have another visitor arriving, Marty’s sister’s niece, from America. She’s been on extended travel around Italy and I am curious to hear her experiences. Tonight Dani is staying in Pisa and tomorrow we’ll meet her off the train in Imperia. I am loving welcoming people here, happy to offer them a home from home and to show them the highlights of the surrounding area. This is something deeply important to me, it turns out. I can remember growing up how my parents would do the same, lavishing guests with food, drink and hospitality. I feel like I am carrying on some sort of tradition from past generations on down through the ages and I feel like it’s what I’m supposed to be doing right now.

I think back over the past year.

How everything has changed and settled in a mere year. A year that felt like I was tossing everything I knew high into the sky to simply watch where things landed. I glance back at the past year, 1 year ago I didn’t know Lecchiore, had never visited Liguria other than driven through to other places, and had no idea this beautiful house was waiting for me. In fact, a year ago I was sleeping over on the ward my mum was in, watching and waiting for a turning point that would mean she would avoid surgery. She was very, very ill and I finally understood what it meant to step up and take charge of an aging parent. I never thought Mum would need caring for in this way, her being the strong, independent German woman, she’d always been, simply so strong. This past year of her recovery has shocked me into the truth of her aging. Aging. The aging I never saw in my dad when he suddenly passed on 20 years ago. “Never get old” mum would say to me, trying hard not to complain about her aching arthritic joints. “I won’t” I promise, not intending to die before my time, but by keeping moving, listening to my body, meditating, eating well for my dosha and by continuing to live from the heart.

And what better way to share my happiness at having stumbled into a stunning part of the world with a community that have taken us in with curiosity and gentle warmth, than to extend this out to others?

The owls are hooting at night, and the sun sets a little earlier now. These things mark the passing of the seasons from summer into autumn, the air dry and the leaves starting to curl. I gaze out in the evenings, from the room at the top of the house, quickly named ‘the nest’ by us both. I see the red and yellow blazes and streaks of the sun casting its hues over the next mountain ridge, and I know I am home. This earth, these olive groves, these hills and rushing waters crashing over rock somehow suit me perfectly.