I only told you to blow the bloody doors off

A day of searing heat and high drama in the tortured fractured hills of the Romagna Apennines.

We started at tennish with the climb out of the casentino valley by the Calla Pass which tops out at 1296 metres. A long and delightful climb away from the heat through majestic beech, pine, alder, ash and hornbeam woods.

We stopped for a coffee with the biker boys who love these winding, precipitous pass roads. Then down into the broken vertiginous hills of Romagna.

I was intent on traversing the hills as near the top of the main Apennine ridge as possible. One tortuous road was beautiful as it climbed higher and higher but a sign then told us it was closed due to a landslip. We pushed on to the landslip which had truly blown the road away.

Then later after a long detour and the temp climbing to 33C and a lucky stop by a delightful stream we followed a tiny road that turned into a gravel road  that wound up through the ever-present woodlands. At one point under a towering cliff of wire-netted friable rock we stopped to take in a sweeping a view.

Looking up I realised what the rumbling was - a big truck and trailer loaded to the gunnels with woodchips I reassured the Boss that he had plenty of room to get by the parked car but the camera gives it a certain Italain Job/Deliverance  drama. He swept by with a nonchalant wave (see extra). It was one of the two vehicles we saw on the 10km stretch that eventually took us back to San Benedetto in Alpe. (I've added an second extra of the Boss surveying the huge landslip as the tarmac ran out.)

I'd started the day early with log sorting and hauling up our ever challenging gradients.  The horseflies were bad again.