Day 148: Babaneuri Marani to Tbilisi

A very eventful day

Yesterday evening we learned a lot about kvevri wine making – the traditional way of making wine in Georgia, going back thousands of years. The earthenware amphora, or kvevri (pronounced “query”) are sunk into the floor of the winery and replace the tanks, barrels and press of European winemaking methods. 

The winery - not a tank or barrel in sight, just the heads of the kvevri on the floor

Vakho, the winemaker at Babaneuri Marani talked us through his process as we tasted the wines, which were all very different to the wines we are used to. Tannic whites that were a golden colour from the kisi grape. Deep dark reds with intense flavours from the saparavi variety. All novel names and tastes to us – not a merlot or chardonnay to be seen. 

Vakho talks is through his work with a passion that was infectious

A quick stop at a very impressive abbey. The head honcho jumped into a Sikorsky helicopter whilst we were there – presumably being whisked away to bless someone or something very important.

In the morning we set off for what we knew would be a hard day. We needed to get over a range of mountains between us and Tbilisi, our destination. They weren’t small either – in 25km we needed to climb 1,200m and then descend into Tbilisi for a total of 110km of riding. That’s a big day for us, with all the bags we don’t go fast up hill. 

However, we managed to make it a little more tricky. Before we’d even reached the start of the climb the derailleur on Tiger’s bike suffered a catastrophic collision with the spokes of his back wheel. It was mangled beyond recognition – we were facing a “taxi for the McNamaras” situation.

We had a go at bending it back into working order, and we did quite well, but in the end the derailleur arm’s junction with the parallelogram was too damaged and it came off in my hand. Oh well – single speed it is then.

The mangled derailleur. It’s not meant to point in that direction.

We shortened the chain and set it up on the largest sprocket and the smallest ring, because we knew we were going to climbing, and we set off again.

Tiger’s new single speed set up. He’s such a hipster.

To start with being locked in his lowest gear was no impediment to Tiger. We climbed up through beautiful forests with the gradient ramping up to over 10% as we went. Then we emerged into the windswept grasslands above the trees and the gradient rose further – peaking at 13%. With all our panniers, that’s a real challenge.

Tackling the steep switchbacks on the Gombori Pass

We made it to the top though – although it took us three and a half hours. We needed to get a move on now or it was going to be dark when we got to Tibilisi, still 60km away. We were fine on the steep initial descent and we’d knocked off 10km in 10 minutes, but then we started hitting the flats and slight drags. Tiger’s super-low gear was no good here and he could only crawl along.

We tried moving his chain to the middle ring, and that worked ok for a while, but it was inclined to wander across the cassette and occasionally locked up with the chain bar tight.

More successfully, Tiger perfected holding onto our rear panniers so we could tow him along. Heading down a slight descent we couldn’t even feel the drag for bringing him along too. It was a different story on the false flats, where we could feel the extra weight, but it was the only way to proceed at a sensible pace.

Atop the Bombori Pass, quite proud that we’d made it.

The winding road to the summit

Eventually we rode into Tbilisi, which was great, except this added traffic to the mix. Tiger did a fantastic job of surfing along holding our pannier – splitting off to freewheel a little on his own to avoid a car or bus and then maintaining enough speed to catch back on again. Amazing bike skills on a heavy bike with no functioning chain by this point.

We passed a number of amazing new buildings on our way in to town, so tomorrow’s a rest day to go and check them out.

The profile for the day