Sail round the world in two easy legs... NOT

The rather heavy e-bike and helmet ⛑ were handed over to me, my biggest worry was that the brake levers were reversed. In the group, were myself, a Swedish couple named Robin and Emma, with Pasquale and his 77 year old father as our guides, they both were riding very light but none powered bikes. We set off on our summit attempt of the volcano 🌋 mount Vesuvius, so for the first part we were riding on the roads, which became very steep, with many switchbacks. Our guides seemed to make the climbing look rather easy, which I can say wasn’t. When we got to the entrance to the national park we had to get our tickets 🎫, to my surprise mine was free yet again, we then peddled another 300 metres more, where we had to park up and leave the bikes propped against the wall, being guarded by Pasquale and his dad.
The next bit was the final part uphill, which was on foot, now it’s getting very steep so I along with a lot of others grab a couple of walking poles (cutoff broom sticks costing about €1.00 each) for this privilege they only ask for a donation in my case €4.00 (100% profit just from me) I trudged up to the rim with hundreds of other people. At the rim I took the obligatory photographs, after a few minutes we made our way back down to the bikes, a round trip of about 90 minutes. The total assent made including bike and walk was 3540 feet, or 1080 metres. The temperature was a whole 10c degrees cooler up up here at the rim.
Back at the bikes, I opted to ride the full off road downhill. Right from the off, it started very sketchy, I was riding a very narrow trail with bushes and brambles overhanging on both sides occasionally I was catching my arms, the trail surface was volcanic ash which was very loose and up to 15cm deep, which made my heavy bike almost uncontrollable, this part of the trip was the absolute best. After about 20 minutes we met the others who opted to descend by road. Next came a part that was great fun with steep well packed ash and many many fast and tight switchbacks. We got to the bottom and I looked like I had been attacked by a mad axe man, my arms were covered in blood from my brush with the brambles ( in reality I had a couple of scratches on each arm). At the bottom I washed the blood away at a water fountain then I just looked normal. Lastly came the almost flat 5 km ride back to the start point, where Pasquale gave us some of his own grown and brewed espresso coffee ☕️, which was just the best. We all had the high fives my guides said the were very impressed with my crappy skills. Today was by far the best day of this part of my journey around the world 🌎.