MotoGiro D'Italia 2017 - Day 1

• Day 1 Spoleto - Spoleto Distance 287Km

Starting off in Spoleto, the stage started with one of the many 'special stages' which was where your timing was important (as we found out on day one) The special stages consisted of a small area with timing beams at the start and finish, that was marked out with cones with straights, tight turns, s bends and within this were various lengths of marked sections that you had a certain time to get through. Some we the same distance but you had to go through the first section in 10 seconds and the next same length section in 2 seconds. I hope that kind of makes sense? You were given the overall time it should take you at the start of the special stage and it was down to you to ride at this pace whilst negotiating the twists and turns through the cones. So it took until day 2 and lots of gestures and some Italian from the marshalls for me to understand what was going on in these special stages, but once it clicked I made a better effort and started to climb up the leaderboard. It became obvious why all these little Italian bikes had about 4 or 5 stop watches on the handlebars, it was to help the rider go through these various sections at the right time, but these were the professionals and me and Bill were certainly not in this league!!

First stop of the day was in Ponte where the road into the stop was lined with locals and school children waving flags and cheering the race on. I have never seen so much enthusiasm for classic motorbikes like this, it just isn't something we see here in the UK, quite the opposite really as motorsport on the road has declined and seems to be frowned upon these days with all these noisy old bikes going through villages and town centres, but not in Italy!!

We then had a stop in Sutri, with the local Motorbike club putting on a display in the town centre along with a great selection of food and drink. We rode into the square through that archway, which became one of the highlights of this event to me as we rode our bikes up ginnels, into town centres, under magnificent archways and buildings, into Castles, basically everyday during the Giro we were able to go places that I'm sure motorbikes would never normally be allowed to go.

We were heading towards the outskirts of Rome at this point with our halfway stop at Lago Di Bracciano which was the west side of the lake at the Italian Airforce Museum. It was a nice leg stretch out of the saddle and gave us chance to have a look around all the wonderful airplanes that were in this massive Airforce Museum. Plenty of interesting stuff to look at.

We were now heading back towards Spoleto, however the rules state that if you see a nice little cafe, then you must stop, well that was the case in mine and Bill's rule book, so we did. On several occasions. Each time when other riders saw our bikes parked up on the road side, they always stopped to ask if we were ok, but we just gave them the universal sign of tipping your hand by your mouth, clearly indicating we were on a brew stop! The day took in some stunning roads and views, I was really taken back by how well the route was signed by the organisers, how well the local support was making the event a completely new experience for me. Back to the Hotel Albornoz for a well deserved beer and Habana cigar.

Day 2 to come.....