White roads: a ride through the Lessinia

Leave Verona before the city wakes, point the bars north, and within an hour the buildings fall away to vineyard, then chestnut, then the open shoulders of the Lessinia. The roads here turn pale — the famous strade bianche of the Veneto — and the only sound is tyre on gravel and your own breathing.

This is the country a Chesini is built for: unhurried, capable, quietly beautiful. A steel frame that soaks up the road and gives back the view.

Stop at the top for a coffee that costs less than the climb was worth, and freewheel home.