Day 8 Leg 4 Lido- Montegrotto Therme 87 km

After another great breakfast at our hotel in Lido, we headed along the island to catch our first ferry, 10 kms away.

Sue wasn’t brave enough to take the seafront path, 8 ft above the water

We only waited 10 minutes and were onboard, heading for the long very, narrow island of Pellestrina. We were charged €9 each for a 500 metre crossing😤. It’s a strange system in the lagoon, but all tickets for any crossing are the same price, no matter how long; however, if you’re a local it’s €1:50🥴

Pellestrina was very quiet, and a pleasant ride.

It seemed you could build your house on stilts in the lagoon!!

Our first natural beach , not smothered with sunbeds. A great place to cool down.

We stopped for a drink at this little shack , built on stilts whilst waiting for another ferry to get to Chioggia, onto the mainland .

Whilst sipping our refreshments, the kind waitress said that the ferry boat won’t take bikes from this stop😡. No idea why??

Anyway, we had to return 3 kms along the path on the sea defence to get to the village where the boat allowed bikes to board it🥴

This was taken on the way , but we returned the same route to the town on the left. The Adriatic Sea was on the other side of the wall.

We just arrived as the ferry was pulling away, so had to endure another beer before the next one arrived in half an hour.

Having been fleeced for another €20 we headed for Chioggia, and were finally away from being boat dependant.

The town was larger than we expected and a bit of a dump. It took a while to get to open countryside, but finally we were « flying » along cycle paths with the wind behind us, along dykes and canals.