Yesterday, we did a bike ride. The sheet of paper giving the rough route, kindly provided by the campsite said “It’ a easy route”. They lied. The first couple of hundred metres should have been a big enough omen of what was to come.
It would have been a great ride but for the fact that recent & current forestry work had all but destroyed much of the trails, with 3 foot deep tyre & caterpillar track ruts in many places.
Oh, and the impossibly steep climbs! They’re ok; you can push up them, but when you have impossibly steep climbs with huge ruts it’s a different matter. Joy started getting concerned about the thought that we’d have to come back down those climbs going in the opposite direction!
In truth, it was a great ride with the highest point being at 1210m above sea-level. The weather held out long enough for us to have a picnic in the sunshine at a slight clearing at the top. We never met a single other person on the trail except – right at the top, we saw the couple from the caravan opposite us at the campsite: they had walked up with their dog. We went on a few hundred metres before heading back. Oddly, we didn’t pass them again so not sure where they went (but they were back in their van last night!).
In some parts, we followed the Roman road (Flaminia Militare): some parts exposed and protected by signs, but most of it still buried. Perhaps a good thing as the unprotected parts have been eroded and most of the stones washed away where they are liberally strewn across the trail.
Here’s the route we followed.