Italy on the Ferrari of bikes (helped by some batteries and beer)

I am in a cake shop high in the Apennines halfway between Florence and Rimini. My legs are tired and my cycle shoes are killing me. Happily, the place is also a bar and nestling between the panini and the doughnuts is a chilled keg of beer. I order the equivalent of a pint plus a medicinal brandy for my aching feet. Then I remember brandy was the last thing to pass the lips of British racer Tom Simpson before he collapsed and died during the 1967 Tour de France.

At this point I should confess that, like Simpson, I am an unashamed dope fiend. While Simpson was an amphetamines man (there were no controls in his day) I mainline from the national grid. I am riding a Pinarello Nytro road e-bike that has a cunningly disguised motor buried in the crank, a battery hidden in the tubing and a second battery disguised as a water bottle. It looks like a thoroughbred racer and yet it eases you over the steepest mountain passes until, of course, the power runs out.

And this is what has happened. Darkness is encroaching and I still have 15 miles of tough riding to do before reaching my hotel in the ancient spa town of Bagno di Romagna. But the kind owner has allowed me to bring the £16,000 bike into the shop to charge. “You can’t leave it out there. Someone could pinch it.”

Pinarello is the Ferrari of the bike world and soon the handful of drinkers are admiring its sleek carmine lines and expressing surprise that it is hooked to a plug socket. I order another beer.

Every year the world’s greatest cycling event starts in a country other than France and this time it’s Italy’s turn. I am here in the unexpectedly brutal mountain range to check out the first two stages of this year’s Tour de France and put a new e-bike through its paces.

The first stage leaves Florence via rolling Tuscany, through country that looks like a backdrop to a medieval painting, before going up, up and away into the mountains of Emilia Romagna. After traversing the roof of Italy, much of it in the footsteps of the great Italian poet Dante who was fleeing Florence for exile in Ravenna having fallen out with the Pope, the route beetles down to the Adriatic port of Rimini.

The next stage or étape follows the coast up to the Renaissance stronghold of Ravenna then winds inland to Imola before doing a few tough loops in the steep mountain range around Bologna, ending at the world’s most ancient seat of learning.

But I am taking four days to do this 260-mile ride instead of the two that the professionals take. It may not sound much to some of you, given my extreme doping, but it proves enough for me.

Back in the pasticceria there’s now a reasonable charge in the battery but the sun is fast sinking. I take a chance, turn on the lights and wobble faintheartedly into the crepuscular light towards Santa Sofia and up the winding mountain road.

I arrive in Bagno di Romagna a couple of hours later, the boost of the cakes and beer long gone. The Hotel Thermae Santa Agnese is an ancient spa hotel and soon I do what they’ve been doing here for more than 2,000 years and sink my tired limbs into the warm thermal pool.

Bagno has been a spa town since Roman times and be-robed health tourists waft around like fluffy ghosts, attempting to reverse the ravages of time with botox lifts and expensive products like Timeless Prodigy cell rejuvenation cream. I lock the bike in my room and make my way to the restaurant where the hearty menu and excellent wine list wipe clean any slate of virtue accrued during daylight hours.

I tootle off into the Emiglia Romagna national park and soon encounter the first climb of the day out of Mercato Saraceno up to Barbotto. It is three miles of lung-busting ascent, some of it at 18%. Near the summit a man on a normal bike breezes cheerily past me. My Pinarello, by the way, delivers “medium” assistance, so you’ve still got to give the pedals quite a bit of welly on the steep bits.

But I am still making good time and stop at the top of another climb to admire the medieval village of San Leo, which crouches atop a 2,000ft escarpment of limestone, commanding staggering views across the outlying mountains and plains towards Rimini, and the sparkling Adriatic.

Owing to its strategic position, San Leo became a stronghold where Christians took refuge from the persecution of Emperor Diocletian in the 3rd century, and where a renaissance fortress still stands. I have a coffee in the cobbled street next to the Medici Palace.

I have arranged to meet a group of cyclists in nearby San Marino for a late lunch. Among them is the legendary Bernard Hinault, five times winner of the Tour de France in the late 70s and early 80s, and by far the greatest cyclist of his generation. They are here for this year’s PR launch of the 2024 Tour.

San Marino comes at the end of my fourth climb of the morning. My battery has just enough juice to make it to the top, where I fall off the bike in front of a crowd of tourists at the castle gates, having neglected to release my exhausted feet from the pedal cleats.

San Marino is an independent state completely surrounded by Italy. Founded around the same time as San Leo, it too was a haven to Christian refugees and is the third smallest country in Europe after the Vatican and Monaco, weighing in at only 23 miles square.

We have a rather good and lengthy lunch and plenty of San Marino wine to wash it down before heading back down the alarmingly steep descent and over the border into Italy.

I take a day off to visit Rimini and go cycling with the legendary and thoroughly charming Bernard. Afterwards we have dinner together with some French cyclists at the Lungomare Bike Hotel in Cesenatico, where we are all staying.

What’s the key to being a champ, I ask? “A mix of physical and mental strength. Once you’ve established that you are actually any good, of course,” says Bernard, tapping his head. He’s not a big guy but clearly as tough as a woodpecker’s lips.

“And don’t forget to lubricate the cogs daily with GOOD red wine.” I raise my hand and order another bottle. “Do whatever it takes: the main thing is getting out there and enjoying being on a bike.”

Cesenatico is next to Rimini and has a stunning medieval port designed by Leonardo da Vinci.

The cycling today is fairly flat and unchallenging, ending in the motor-racing Mecca of Imola, via the accident department of Faenza hospital, after another fall in which I open up an old elbow wound and bruise my hip and knee after failing to stop when a dedicated cycle lane comes to an abrupt halt.

But all is well and the day ends at another wonderful cycle hotel, the Donatello, on the outskirts of Imola. I had planned to explore the old town, but swathed in bandage and dressings, I can’t be bothered and end up having an epic dinner of local seafood and game in the hotel’s superb restaurant.

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My journey ends the following evening in Bologna, a short hop from Imola, but with some tough climbs in the surrounding hills before swooping down into the city. I check into my hotel, lock up the bike and go for a well-deserved meal at the splendid Caminetto d’Oro in the via de’ Falegnami, in the heart of the ancient city.

This is a favourite of Hollywood director Martin Scorcese, and one can see why. Indeed, the place is a foodie haven, with hams, wines and cheeses bursting from a jumble of doorways in a myriad of alleys and streetlets, while trattorias of obvious excellence beckon like sirens to the inner glutton of even the most pious of cycle puritans. As I finish dinner a text arrives from Bernard’s French contingent to see if I’d crossed the finish line.

I spend a final day sightseeing and vow to come back for the film festival next month (June). Long live the e-bike and the freedom it has heralded, even for an old fatty like me; long live unspoiled Emilia Romagna, far from the madding crowds of Tuscany; and long live Bernard Hinault and his friends, aristocrats of the road!

Mark Porter was guest of Emilia Romagna tourist board. emiliaromagnaturismo.it/en 

Lungomare cycle hotel organises tailor-made packages from £520 with bike and pick-up from Bologna. 0039 0547 680 666.  From £75 (room only). lungomarebikehotel.com/en-GB

Easyjet Glasgow to Bologna (easyjet.com).

Hotel Terme Sant'Agnese, Bagno de Romagna: termesantagnese.it/ from £65.

Hotel Donatello, Imola: imolahotel.it/ from £50.

Hotel Tre Vecchi Bologna: zanhotel.it/hotel-tre-vecchi-bologna from £106.

Where to eat:

Hotel Donatello. ristoranteimolahotel.it/

Traditional in Bologna hcaminettodoro.it/

https://www.osteriadelcappello.com/