Arrived (Tim)

And so we made it. 520 miles. We pulled into the car park of Villa Balbi hotel at 17:00 to a lovely reception of congratulations from our friends and conference organisers. We were hot, smelly and delighted to have got here. We never doubted our plan but nevertheless were amazed that it had gone so well.

As we made the final couple of miles into Sestri Levanti I reflected on our achievement so far (I say 'so far' because we are only half done- we have to ride back home too!)
What we had done was nothing particulary original - many people have riden scooters to Italy before (the Piaggio museum is only an hour away from here and that is a vespa rider Mecca). And I wondered if we had cheated a bit by taking the train from Dusseldorf to Bolzano? Or wether we should have made the challenge harder for ourselves by maybe bringing a donkey with us or visiting everyone called Scott on the way etc etc
However, in the end as the sea and beach outside our hotel came into sight I concluded for myself that actually we had done an amazing thing - neither of us had more than 500 miles of prior riding experience and we had been hopeless in our planning - but we'd made it without disaster. We never doubted it. Did you?