Day 408 – EU – Italy [Ferrara to Rovigo]

17/05/21

38km

  From Ferrara (Italy) to Rovigo (Italy)

Europe

Crossing the Po River into another region, Veneto, on a pleasant run to Rovigo

Crossing the Po River into Veneto

Running north out of Ferrara, I crossed the Po River and entered the Veneto region. Italy is split in 20 different regions and I have now crossed 13 of them (Ligura, Lombardy, Piedmont, Emilia-Romagna, Frulio-Venezia-Giulia, Tuscany, Lazio, Campana, Apulia, Molise, Abruzzo, Marche, Veneto). I will have missed only the south regions and islands as well as Aosta. I am very pleased with how much I have seen of Italy, the country is beautiful, very welcoming, an ideal terrain to run – and don’t get me started with the culinary tradition!

Quiet, flat and beautiful

After I crossed the Po I ran on country roads and cycling paths nearly all the way to Rovigo. It was a dry, warm and windy day, ideal for high pollen count. I don’t have the readings, but I filmed a short video (posted on Instagram) which shows it felt like being in a snowstorm! I’m not suffering too much from it, just sneezing a lot more than usual and my nose is irritated. That’s when having to wear a mask comes very handy.

Vittorio Emanuele statue on the main Piazza, Rovigo

I finished the run in Rovigo, another beautiful town of venetian and medieval architecture. I went to Piazza Vittorio Emanuele for lunch. A magnificent town square surrounded by porticoes, the Roverella Palazzo and Roncale Palazzo. In the middle of it stands the statue dedicated to Vittorio Emanuele himself, the first King of united Italy – a contemporary of Garibaldi, hence why they are often associated (I find a lot of monuments to the one and the other often nearby in the towns I visit). I am traveling north-west over the next two days, towards the town of Verona.

PS: My Garmin device had stabilized since the incident where it recorded my run below sea-level. It seems to have gone beserk today again, as the last half of my run goes as far as -15m below sea level… Now I’m gonna have to look into the issue of calibration very seriously…

PS#2: Correction (which I will reiterate in tomorrow’s post as I am writing this one late). I read tonight that the Po Valley ranges in elevation from 550m+ to 100m- below sea level. Therefore the reading of my Garmin may be right today, placing me 15m below sea-level…

Check my daily run GPS data on or

Here is the map of today’s run: