Italy (all)

A tour of the Alps - 2190 km and nearly 50km gain in 16 days.

Now accompanied by a biggish Photo Album.

iVoyage en bicyclette de Losone (Locarno) à Palerme via Bologne, Florence, Bolsena, Rome, Naples, Pompei, Paestum, Taormina, Cefalù.

L'idea di questo viaggio è da attribuire a Pietro Angeloni di Golino per degnamente festeggiare i suoi 50 anni. [...]
Il tempo è sempre stato molto clemente, senza pioggia, la temperatura sino in Calabria è stata piuttosto fresca ed il vento generalmente in nostro favore. La foschia e la parziale mancanza di sole ha un po' penalizzato la qualità delle fotografie (in particolare le vedute della Costiera Amalfitana) ma non si può avere tutto!
Man mano che si andava verso Sud il traffico diventava più caotico, il lato stradale meno pulito, i prezzi più abbordabili e la gente più calorosa.

L'idée de ce voyage est à attribuer à Pietro Angeloni de Golino qui désirait fêter dignement ses 50 ans. [...]
Le temps a toujours été clément, sans pluie. La température jusqu'en Calabre a été plutôt fraîche et le vent généralement en notre faveur. Le manque de soleil et une légère brume ont un peu pénalisé la qualité des photos (en particulier sur la côte Amalfitana), mais on ne peut pas tout avoir!
Plus nous nous dirigions au sud, plus le trafic devenait chaotique. Les bords de routes étaient moins propres, mais les prix plus abordables et les gens plus chaleureux. Cela se confirmait, on ne peut pas tout avoir!

Il giro è molto bello e non eccessivamente faticoso. Si trovano delle ottime cartine fino a Maribor (Da Dobbiaco è tutta ciclabile, la Drauweg), un po' meno in Slovenia e Croazia, dove ciclabili praticamente non ce ne sono, ma ci sono parecchie strade secondarie senza traffico. In Slovenia agli uffici turistici si possono trovare cartine della zona decenti (noi ci siamo accontentati di quelle, ma consigliamo caldamente di procurarvi una carta almeno al 200.000, possibilmente con le curve di livello?) e un paio di pubblicazioni interessanti, anche in Italiano, su ``Slovenia in bicicletta'' e ``Le strade secondarie sono più accattivanti di quelle principali''. Aiutano molto. Non fate troppo affidamento sui cartelli segnaletici delle presunte piste ciclabili (``kolesarska pot'', in sloveno) che a volte mancano. Sulla strada che abbiamo scelto noi abbiamo incontrato traffico solo in alcuni punti che non avevano alternative, andando a ficcarci in strade impossibili solo un paio di volte, evitabili.

Passes in Switzerland, in France and in Italy are described on this site. The most important information for cyclist in figures and texts, of course some pictures and partly historical backgrounds. In addition tips to accommodations, maps and (at the moment mainly german) links.

Tabular data and altitude profiles of mountain passes all over Europe.

A photo album of mountain passes in the Alps

from Donauworth in Germany through Austria to Ostiglia and Altino in Italy includes cycling information

A site filled with tours all over Europe, Africa, Asia, and America.

Several cycling travel stories and detailed descriptions with profiles of 17 of the most beautiful climbs in 7 different European countries.

A great photo archive. Each page includes no more than 3 photos, on average, 25,000 bytes. We hope you enjoy them. There is a help page if you are having difficulty viewing the images. The photos are not of printable quality - if you wish to use any of these pictures in a hardcopy publication, please contact us and we will supply a high-resolution file.

Reports and pictures from various mountains of Europe, America, and Australia. Partly in Dutch.

A huge collection of altitude profiles of cols and climbs.

Extensive data about Patrick's extensive tours in the Alps from 1991 to 2005: includes reports, maps, diagrams... a must-see for the Alpine cyclist. Contains a list of passes in the Alps and the Jura, true stories about cycling, and some pictures.

Two days: Green meadows and scattered masi (wooden small houses for the storage of hay) is the characteristic landscape of Comelico valley; the road continues along the Piave river (mild climb) up to Salafossa mines (closed) and a tunnel puts us on the climb to Sappada. This reach of road is excavated on the rocky side of the valley which here is a very narrow gorge and there is the impressive sight of the Orrido Acquatona in which the river Piave flows on the bottom of the gorge (here very deep and narrow).

For those of you who're planning to go to Italy by bike and specifically to cross Lombardia region near Como's lake, you can't miss such a place: there are many types of reason that can get you to go there.

You know, this is an ascent that from both sides has the last part quite demanding although short: a good test to evaluate your ``grimpeur'' attitude. At the top look at right side of Como's Lake and at the two mountains named Grigne in front of you.

Even if you're not catholic, do enter the little church (free entrance) : it's also a cycling museum. It's up to you saying a prayer before starting the visit as a sign inside suggests. You'll find here the originals used by Bartali, Coppi, Merckx: looking at the Merckx one, see the gear he used ... There's also the bicycle Moser used in Mexico City in 1984 to improve hour record and last, sadly, the Fabio Casartelli's bicycle used in Tour 1995 (Fabio born not so far from here). Again there's a lot of original maillot (pink , yellow, rainbow) belonging to all time champions. Every year on december 24 there's a religious meeting celebrating great champions that are no more here in this world.

For three years ``Lombardia 's Tour'' has been choosen to be the last race of World Cup and even if its path has been changed, it always includes Ghisallo: take the opportunity to ride along a piece of one most popular Italian cyling races.

La Flaminia Minor, ancora oggi oggetto di studio, fu costruita dalle truppe del console romano Gaio Flaminio nel 187 a.C., due anni dopo la fondazione di Bologna avvenuta nel 189 a.C. Questa strada aveva il ruolo importante di unire le aree a nord dell'appennino con quelle a sud, partendo da Claterna (odierna Maggio, frazione di Ozzano) fino ad arrivare ad Arezzo.

Alberto has ``read all the books'' and writes beautifully (alas, in Italian). This travel story from the Alps in the North-East, West across the Alps, and then South to the Mediterranean on the coast of Tuscany, is a must.

Firenze - Siena - Montepulciano - Assisi - Gubbio - Urbino - Rimini. Km.: 550 - Giorni: 6 - Periodo: Maggio.

Rick and Monica's plans are stymied by awful weather at first. But they make up for this with a great tour of Tuscany, including San Gimignano, Pisa, and then Trentino and Lombardia. Very nicely illustrated.

San Gimignano is the most striking of the walled cities. It has a skyline of towers built centuries ago that has earned the nickname of ``the Manhattan of Italy''. The town can be seen for miles and miles away and is truly a ``not to be missed'' site. Our maps paid off as we cycled over the seldom used back roads throughout the Tuscan region. We passed hundreds of manicured vineyards. We rode by ancient castles, olive groves and fields ablaze with sunflowers. We enjoyed the hills, the scenic narrow roads and the warmth of the Italian sun. At last the weather had improved!

A small guide to getting out of Torino without being run over by too many cars.

A two days ride among great mountains. Green meadows and scattered masi (wooden small houses for the storage of hay) is the characteristic landscape of Comelico valley; the road continues along the Piave river (mild climb) up to Salafossa mines (closed) and a tunnel puts us on the climb to Sappada. This reach of road is excavated on the rocky side of the valley which here is a very narrow gorge and there is the impressive sight of the Orrido Acquatona in which the river Piave flows on the bottom of the gorge (here very deep and narrow).

Has a section for on road and off-road tours in Sardinia (Sardegna)

Includes Rome-Venice, Amalfi Coast (including a video clip), Genoa-Pisa-Florence, Aosta Valley.

Everything you have ever heard about bicycling in Italy is true. The weather, terrain, roads, and cities are all perfectly suited for bike touring.

Viaggio in stile islandese?

Perché la nostra esperienza dei viaggi in Islanda ci ha fatto inventare un nuovo modo di viaggiare in MTB: il viaggio assistito. Tu viaggi leggero con il GPS e noi ti portiamo i bagagli, i viveri e l'occorrente per il viaggio. Con questo spirito abbiamo progettato uno splendido giro di 2 giorni.

In sintesi il viaggio proposto:
partenza dalla nostra sede di Brisighella il venerdì sera, sosta per la cena e la notte a Casa di Ponte nel comune di Tredozio; via per i boschi del fantastico parco delle Foreste Casentinesi; sosta con cena e pernottamento a Fiumicello nel comune di Premilcuore; secondo giorno in quota per toccare il monte Falco e il Falterona, famoso per dare vita all'Arno, e discesa adrenalinica fino alla valle del Sieve per prendere il treno e fare ritorno a Brisighella.

Tutti i particolari li trovate sul sito: www.ibasprengisandur.it

An insider look at one of Italy's most beautiful areas from a backroad cycling point of view. Do the names Montalcino, Chianti, Pienza, Montepulciano ring any bells with you?

Cycling in Northern Italy? Visit this new website offering both accommodation in, and information about, the stunning region hosting the 2008 Road Cycling World Championships. Resources include detailed itineraries for spectacularly scenic mountainbike routes, photos, links to local weather forecasts, train timetables and much, much more.

Alpencross-Bericht einer Mountainbike-Extremtour von Oberstdorf zum Gardasee, 7 Tage (davon 4 Regentage)/440km/14000 Höhenmeter.

Alpencross Bericht einer Mountainbike-Extremtour von Oberstdorf zum Gardasee, 7 Tage (davon 4 Regentage)/440km/14000 Höhenmeter.

Photos and reports of transalp mountain bike tours from Bavaria to Italy. Alpine traverses between Oberstdorf and Lake Como and Tegernsee and Lake Garda.

Trailsource has started a collection, among others, of European Mountain Bike Trail Descriptions. Mountain Biking TrailSource is your online adventure guide to the best mountain bike trails around the globe! You'll find over 4,000 singletracks in 100 countries.

We flew from Stockholm to Geneva. Then we biked along the southern shore of Lac Leman, crossed Pass des Morgines, headed up the Rhone valley, and made a side trip to Zermatt. Then, we continued to Brigg, Davos, St Moritz, Livigno, Canazei, and Cortina. From Cortina we headed south to Lago di Garda. Reaching the Plains of Po approaching Milan we spontaneously decided to take a train to San Reno, and continue from there to Monaco, Nice and up through the mountains to Chamonix, ultimately heading back to Geneva for our return flight to Sweden. There are plenty of excellent reports on cycling along these roads [...] and we feel we have little to contribute. Instead these pages are focused on the possibilities of single track riding.

Includes trail descriptions in Switzerland, Italy and France.

We flew from Stockholm to Geneva. Then we biked along the southern shore of Lac Leman, crossed Pass des Morgines, headed up the Rhone valley, and made a side trip to Zermatt. Then, we continued to Brigg, Davos, St Moritz, Livigno, Canazei, and Cortina. From Cortina we headed south to Lago di Garda. Reaching the Plains of Po approaching Milan we spontaneously decided to take a train to San Reno, and continue from there to Monaco, Nice and up through the mountains to Chamonix, ultimately heading back to Geneva for our return flight to Sweden. There are plenty of excellent reports on cycling along these roads [...] and we feel we have little to contribute. Instead these pages are focused on the possibilities of single track riding.

I live in the middle of the largest flat area of Italy [...] every time I want to do a nice ride I have to go by car at least as far as the nearest Prealps mountains. So, having planned a mountain bike trip for a Sunday of late autumn, I left from my flat city that day, even if the weather was not so good. [...] I arrived at my planned bike starting point (Rotzo village, on Altopiano di Asiago, Veneto region) while the sky was releasing a nice amount of rain. [...] I took a downhill road, the speed increased along with the humidity of my clothes; soon my hands (protected by not so good cycling winter gloves) became colder and colder and so my feet. [...] The downhill road is very long and I went down fast enough to lose the sensitiveness of my hands and feet. Even my limbs, after a while, became hard to move! [In the end] my fleece sweater was quite wet and so my polypropylene jersey but my body was still warm! Of course it took a bit of time to recover the complete functionality of my legs and arms, hands and feet but I was helped by a good fireplace and a big hot wine glass!

La Val Casies una stupenda valle laterale dell'Alta Pusteria, lontana dal turismo di massa anche nei periodi di punta [...] agli amanti della bicicletta, ed in particolare della MTB, [...] offre opportunità veramente uniche di stupendi itinerari tra il verde delle malghe ed il silenzio dei boschi. Tra questi itinerari abbiamo scelto un classico, la ``Via Romana'', che si presta, per le due varianti che descriveremo in seguito, sia a biker mediamente allenati, che ad esperti amanti del single-track tra radici di abete ``spaccapolsi''.

I'm pretty sure that no matter where you live, there is one trail among your home ones that is generally considered as the trail, a classic of the genre.

For Trento, the place where I live, the choice of most local bikers would fall on the Santa Colomba trail. Easily doable starting from the town, not really difficult but with some challenging sections, it offers a small selection of the standard ingredients of an off-road ride. Mind you, it is not a spectacular trail, such as the ones you can find higher up in the Dolomites. But it's an excellent choice for a half-day ride, which means that on Sunday afternoons you have to line up to ride it!

This is a tour over the spectacular Passo San Giacomo, between Italy and Switzerland.