83 seconds of reasons why Usain Bolt doesn't train on Silk Cut and beer...

The Red Lion Bikers usually refrain from doing touristy things like having our photos taken next to well known monuments or indeed other attractions. However, Pisa isn’t really know for much else than the result of some dodgy 12^th century Tuscan workmanship and therefore on Thursday morning and after a leisurely breakfast we took the bikes to the leaning tower and posed like the other hundreds of gawkers. Pete couldn’t see anything wrong with the tower... though if you’d seen one of Pete’s sheds you’d understand why he might think that.

Possibly more by accident than design, and as described previously, we have been blessed with some fantastic roads on this trip to date and Italy is proving no exception. The journey to Siena yet again took us up and down twisting mountain roads under clear blue skies and 30 degree temperatures (that’s Celsius, not Fahrenheit for those of you shivering away back home). Siena is the mountain top walled medieval city in the heart of Tuscany and, though it pains me to say it, Tony Blair got it right when he spent his (scrounging freebie) summer holidays here. The main ‘square’, the Piazza del Campo, is the location for the Palio horse races in July and August and with the thought of what a spectacle that must be we encamped ourselves at a very accommodating bar on the Piazza and spent quite a long time enjoying what is a remarkable and beautiful place. Rumour has it that at a point later in the evening three men in shorts and flipflops were seen ‘sprinting’ around the perimeter of the Piazza in an effort to settle a childish bar bet as to whether it could be done in under a minute. I would ask you to ignore any other rumours you may get to hear as to who may have come last... but at least I did it and it wouldn’t have been polite to whip Pete’s ass so close to his 50^th birthday. I genuinely believe that the resultant red faces were due to the sunshine and not down to the influence of fags and too much beer on trying to run for the first time in years.