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!/plugins/
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!/plugins/cache-on-save/
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/data/
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/pages/01.trips/italy-2026-demo/
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-16
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---
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title: 'Setting Off from Campiglia'
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date: '2026-09-01 07:00'
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template: entry
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published: true
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featured: true
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hero_image: ''
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lat: 43.024
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lng: 10.603
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location_city: Campiglia Marittima
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location_country: Italy
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weather_temp_c: 27
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weather_desc: Sunny
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---
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Seven in the morning and the coast road is still cool. We loaded the bikes in the car park below the old town, the panniers heavier than they should be and the weather forecast saying nine consecutive days of sun. The route heads south first — down into the Maremma, then east, then a long loop back. Eight days. Nobody goes this way in September except cyclists and people who have got lost.
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---
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title: 'Trip Map'
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template: map
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---
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---
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title: 'Trip Stats'
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template: stats
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---
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---
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title: "Val d'Orcia at Dawn"
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date: '2026-09-05'
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location_name: Val d'Orcia
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location_country: Italy
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lat: 43.078
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lng: 11.676
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hero_image: hero.jpg
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hero_alt: Wide Tuscan valley at dawn, long cypress shadows across pale gravel road
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published: true
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featured: true
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---
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We left before the heat arrived. The alarm was five-thirty and the sky outside the tent was still more grey than blue. The valley was invisible in the dark except as an absence — a vast silence below us where the shapes of hills ought to be. By six the light had changed. The Val d'Orcia is one of those landscapes that photographers wait years to shoot at this hour, and you can see why: the light arrives at an angle that makes everything look like something from a different century.
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[snap-gallery images="hero.jpg,photo-1.jpg,photo-2.jpg" captions="Six in the morning: the valley belongs entirely to the light,The Cypress Road — every photograph of Tuscany was taken here or somewhere like it,A farmhouse that has been sitting on this hill for four hundred years" alts="Wide misty Tuscan valley at dawn with long shadows,Straight road lined by tall cypress trees in morning light,Stone farmhouse on a hilltop with rolling landscape behind" /]
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The roads down here are white gravel — strade bianche — and the tyres make a particular sound on them that you don't get anywhere else. We rode for two hours without seeing a car. The only other people were two elderly men walking a dog in the opposite direction. They waved.
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[chapter-break image="photo-1.jpg" title="The Hour Before Heat" alt="Cypress road vanishing into a hazy summer morning" /]
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By nine the temperature had already shifted. The quality of the light changed — softer, more diffuse, the sky turning white at the edges. The windows of the farmhouses began to open. Dogs that had been invisible in the dark became visible on walls and in doorways, watching us with professional detachment.
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[snap-gallery images="photo-2.jpg,hero.jpg" captions="The road changes from asphalt to gravel to packed earth and back again without warning,The valley floor at nine: the shadows have shortened, the colours have flattened" alts="Farmhouse detail with terracotta roof and single cypress tree,Tuscan valley road in mid-morning haze" /]
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[pull-quote]
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The best hours of a cycling day are the ones nobody else sees. Before the heat arrives, before the cafes open, before the traffic comes. Everything belongs to you then.
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[/pull-quote]
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We reached Pienza at eleven-thirty. The ice-cream queue was eight deep and entirely justified.
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---
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title: 'One Evening in Siena'
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date: '2026-09-05'
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location_name: Siena
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location_country: Italy
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lat: 43.318
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lng: 11.330
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hero_image: hero.jpg
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hero_alt: Piazza del Campo at dusk, terracotta paving fading from gold to shadow
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published: true
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---
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[pull-quote image="hero.jpg" alt="Piazza del Campo seen from the upper rim at golden hour"]
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Siena is not a city that tries to impress you. It has been here for a thousand years and intends to be here for a thousand more. You fit around it, not the other way.
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[/pull-quote]
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We rolled in at half past six, legs finished, panniers heavier than they started. The Campo appeared without warning at the end of a narrow street and we both stopped pedalling at exactly the same moment. That particular square does something to people. It is partly the shape — a shallow bowl, a scallop shell, the way it holds you — and partly the light at that hour, which turns the terracotta pavement the colour of old copper.
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[chapter-break image="photo-1.jpg" title="The Campo" number="I" alt="Detail of Siena's herringbone brick pavement catching the last light" /]
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[scrolly-section image="hero.jpg" alt="Piazza del Campo filling with people as evening comes" caption="Campo, 19:00 — the square fills from the edges inward"]
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The locals arrive first. They know which spot faces west and which benches stay in the shade longest. Then the tourists, then the pigeons, then the long shadows.
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---
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A busker with an accordion near the Fonte Gaia. A group of students lying on the slope reading. Three children running in a circle for reasons nobody questioned.
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---
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We sat on the pavement with our backs against the warm brickwork of the Palazzo Pubblico and did not move for forty minutes. The relief of sitting still after eight hours on a bike is a specific physical sensation. It travels upward from your legs and settles somewhere just behind the sternum.
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[/scrolly-section]
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We found a place for dinner three streets away, down a flight of steps with no sign outside. The pasta was handmade, the wine was local, the bill was reasonable. We were in bed by ten. Tomorrow: Florence.
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---
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title: 'The Road to Montalcino'
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date: '2026-09-06'
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location_name: Montalcino
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location_country: Italy
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lat: 43.057
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lng: 11.489
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hero_image: hero.jpg
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hero_alt: Vine rows climbing toward a hilltop tower in early morning light, mist in the valley below
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published: true
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---
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The climb to Montalcino starts gently enough. A white gravel road, the kind that shows up cream in photographs and grey in real life, curling upward through the first vineyards. The gradient is polite for about twenty minutes and then it isn't. By the time the tower came into view above the tree line we had stopped pretending to chat and were just breathing.
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[full-bleed image="photo-2.jpg" caption="The valley floor from halfway up — on a clear morning you can see all the way to Monte Amiata" alt="Wide view of Tuscan valley with vineyards in foreground and hills receding into morning haze" credit="Day 6, 07:40"]
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Brunello country. The vineyards up here have a precision to them that you don't get further down — rows tighter, stakes straighter, the ground between them weeded with what looks like obsessive care. These are grapes worth taking seriously and the farmers treat them accordingly. We rode between the rows for a while, the vines overhead, dew still on the leaves.
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[image-caption image="photo-1.jpg" caption="Sangiovese Grosso — the only grape permitted in a Brunello. The bunches are small and tight, almost black by September." alt="Close-up of dark grape clusters on a vine with green leaves, morning light filtering through" credit="Canalicchio di Sopra vineyard" width="column"]
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The town at the top is small enough that you can walk end to end in fifteen minutes, but it has everything: a bar with a terrace facing southwest, a shop selling nothing but wine, and an enoteca run by a man who spoke no English and didn't need to. He poured three glasses without being asked and set down a plate of bread and something salty. We drank slowly. The view from the terrace was the entire reason the town exists in the position it does.
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[image-caption image="hero.jpg" caption="Montalcino from the south approach — the fortress is eleventh century; the view it commands is the reason it was built exactly here." alt="Hilltop town of Montalcino with medieval fortress visible above terracotta rooftops, vineyards in foreground" credit="09:15" width="full"]
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[pull-quote]
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Every Tuscan hill town has a reason to be where it is. Montalcino's reason is military, but after a thousand years all that fortification has become a very good wine cellar.
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[/pull-quote]
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The descent was fast. White gravel becomes tarmac becomes a smooth fast road through the valley and you can carry almost everything you earned on the way up. We were back at camp by noon, which felt like cheating. In the afternoon I slept for two hours in the shade of an olive tree, which did not feel like cheating at all.
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---
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title: Stories
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template: stories
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published: true
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---
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---
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title: 'Tuscany 2026'
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template: trip
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date: '2026-09-01'
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date_start: '2026-09-01'
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date_end: '2026-09-08'
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cover_image: ''
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---
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