We woke to a beautiful sunny day and, as we had suspected, spectacular views down into the valley and across the mountains. After breakfast and another Italian lesson we rode back down to Allua and I realised just how precipitous the road really was. Considering how heavy the rain had been, and how tired I had been, I concluded it was just as well I'd had to do it in the dark. Being able to see a hundred metre drop a few feet away at the side of the wet road doesn't really help at times like that, I find.

We continued south, heading for the coast. The mountains turned into hills rolling away greeny blue into the distance. The furthest green on the horizon looked like another sweep of pine trees until we spotted the white slashes of speed boats and realised it was the sea. The road curved and dipped and I wondered if the reason Italian bikes are so sleek and curved and stylish is that they're trying to live up to the Italian roads they're being ridden on.

Too quickly the road dropped down into the resort town of La Spezia and we turned north-west along the coast. Beautiful tree-lined towns, the Med sparkling beside us, just lovely. For the first time in a long time we had to deal with heavy traffic, although it was very different from the sort of congestion we'd experienced in Asia. All the cars were shiny and expensive, and the most common vehicle on the road was the famous Italian scooter. Most of them were shiny and expensive too, with a shiny expensive young Italian perched on the back. The scooters, well, scooted, in and out of cars and always up to the front at traffic lights. They were like shoals of little fish, all darting about in unison. None of the car drivers seemed to object to this at all, perhaps because all Italians have owned a scooter themselves at one stage.

We stopped for lunch near Portofino, generally accepted to be one of the most beautiful towns in the world and I wouldn't argue. We'd gone shopping in a supermarket (another exciting European development) and sat on a bench beside the sea eating crusty bread and soft cheese and tomatoes and strawberries. My dream lunch. If someone would only point out to the people of Syria and Iran that they could be eating this sort of food, surely they would give up the kebab in a second. People called out 'Bon appetit' as they strolled past. As we were packing up one old man came up and asked about the bikes and where we had been. Dave chatted to him and he shook his head smiling as if to say 'If I were 50 years younger...'.

We carried on alongside the sea, the road hugging the contours of the coast, and began to see lots of other bikes, mostly Germans but also quite a few Italians on shiny sports models. We were still travelling at our standard 85kmh and as they zipped passed us they would often stick one leg out straight for a few seconds. I naturally assumed they had cramp, as I had had for most of the trip (contracting deep vein thrombosis due to long days sitting on the bike had become a real worry by this stage). Then Dave explained that this must be some sort of Euro bikers leg-salute which did make sense when I thought about it.

It still felt strange to be the slowest vehicles on the road but, apart from some of the older scooters, we were, by a large margin. Other bikes sped past but the winding roads didn't allow much overtaking by the cars and I was surprised that this didn't seem to bother the car drivers. They would just sit behind us, waiting a good distance back until there was space up ahead, and then gracefully pull out and glide past.

We came to Genoa, planning to ride straight through it but it turned out the city was being all but rebuilt and we got caught in a tangle of roadworks and badly signed diversions. Edging along, with the sun blazing down, I kept waiting for the DR to give up completely but it kept going, edging forward 20 metres at a time, until we finally got clear of the city. We stopped at a little petrol station and had a chance to practice our recently learned Italian skills with the owner and his friend. Working on the theory that if you just choose the French-sounding, rather than the German-sounding, words from English, wave your arms around a bit and give a little Gina Lolobridgida, accent-wise then you will be understood. (My Gina Lolobridgida side is usually kept well hidden, but 'when in Genoa...', as they say.) And it totally worked. We chatted about our trip (fantastico!), the state of European football (tragico!), and the relative merits of racing drivers Michael Schumacher and David Coulthard. The owner and his mate disagreed vehemently on this last point - arms waving, voices raised, I thought I'd lost them at one point when one of them started miming with has hands forming a square around his face. Were they talking about a TV program, and not motor-racing at all? But Dave explained that no, David Coulthard just has a remarkably square face, which was being mocked by the Schumacher fan. Of course, just when it looked like the whole thing would end in tears, it ended in laughter, as all arguments should.

We were shattered after dealing with the heavy traffic so we turned off the coast road when we saw a sign for camping. The winding road took us up into the hills, past the most beautiful farms and villages with bright bougainvillea hanging down over their roofs. We found the campsite, which, I have to admit, was pretty nice. It was terraced in narrow steps down the hillside, with hedges and trees giving plenty of privacy. We pitched our tent on a secluded grassy ledge and I set about washing clothes while Dave worked on the bikes, changing the brake pads on the DR (doesn't he realise that it is starting,not stopping, that is the problem...). We got tokens from the office to have a shower, and had one of those camping showers where you are so worried that the water is going to finish that you wash your hair and scrub yourself clean in the first 30 seconds and then just stand there feeling a bit stupid for the next minute and a half.

The campsite had a tiny little restaurant with a menu consisting solely of pizza and red wine so we went there for dinner. The pizzas were cooked in a huge oven by a tiny old lady with bandy legs and a saggy floral dress. She looked a little frail but she chucked the pizza dough around like a pro and when they arrived smoking from the oven the pizzas looked fantastic and were absolutely delicious (squisito!).

Day 100! We got up and headed back down the little road to the coast, then turned to the west and towards France along the Italian Riviera. Again, there was busy traffic, all of it faster and shinier than me (mind you, a well cared for Morris Minor would fit that description). The road hugged the coast, dipping down and then rising up to speed along clifftops. Huge, gorgeous houses looked down over the sea and it was hard to imagine how much money some of these people must have. Speedboats and jet-skis raced about on the water - we were certainly in the territory of the beautiful people but before anyone actually asked us to leave we arrived at the French border. No customs formalities or checkposts, which still seemed strange, and we crossed straight into France.