Roads and rides

Harlan and I found that even as we dug the rides and worked hard and happily our average speed was lower than at home. We could think of an array of reasons for that.

Calabria is much more mountainous than we expected, amounting to at least 1,000 feet of climbing every 10 miles. A fair bit of this climbing was on long steady ascents; out of Catanzaro we went uphill for a good couple of hours and could have made a meal of a couple more hours to get into the heights.

These next couple pictures are so much better wide that I'm posting them that way; you may want to scroll to the side a bit.

Plenty of the climbing is seriously steep, with a 10% grade coming as a welcome relief from stretches of 13-20%.

Descending such steep stuff, especially between switchbacks, doesn't let you recoup all that much average speed. Note the way the road here drops away a couple turns ahead:

Harlan's rear valve stem pulled away from the tube as hard braking on steep ramps caused the tire to slip on the rim.

Our speed was tempered a bit by wet November weather, but even when dry the road conditions are wildly variable, so that perfect pavement can change suddenly, often coming out of a tight turn, to broken and cracked, caved-in, or dirt.

The collapsed pavement in this shot, right at my rear wheel, is not unusual.

We may actually have been lucky in the weather, as there had clearly been storms sometime in the previous couple weeks with rain heavy enough to wash a lot of soil onto the roads. Mostly this was sandy, just tricky to ride through, but one ride involved several stops to clear mud out of the brakes.

There is plenty to look at, of course.

There are photogenic views in the villages, olive groves all around.

And ridge-top towns into the distance.

Truly impressive bridges:

Farms with cows, goats, sheep, usually at least one of these with a bell ringing for the full pastoral effect:

We see wind turbines at home, but you can ride right up to the base of these, no fencing or security around them as far as we could see, for a full dose of their size and drama.

Water towers range from mundane to graceful, some with attention to decorative detail.

There are the occasional castle ruins.

And you can almost get used to the classic town piazzas with clusters of older men talking things over.

We saw no women on road bikes, so I was an object of some curiosity, especially when we stopped for coffee at one of these bars, probably all the more because of my age. Here several of the men to the right in this picture are hanging around at least partly to look at me, just outside the bar to the left.

We felt lucky one day to get a look at mammatus clouds.

We had one particularly scenic ride from near Cosenza through rolling country to the hill town of Santa Severina.

There's a castle in the old center at the top.

You can get great views out over the country from the summit--this is another pano to scroll:

Santa Severina has an interesting maze-like garden/park next to the castle.

And at least four places to get coffee on the lovely piazza.

Traffic overall was very light once we were out of the town centers. Getting out could be pretty, um, interesting. This is a fairly typical view of traffic in Catanzaro--the taillights on in the dusk add to the drama, but the density wasn't unusual:

Harlan's rear camera captured some of what could be involved in negotiating these streets.

A word about Italian drivers, who, yes, seem to drive as fast as possible any time nothing appears to be in their way. What impresses us is how, if there is something--a bump or cyclist or slow vehicle or pedestrian or animal--they share the space. They don't seem to feel that anyone not in a car better just get out of the way. Forgive my perhaps rosy generalizations, but even on their narrow roads, at speed, we feel more comfortable than among American drivers.

Where at home a driver will tailgate to "send a message," we have the impression someone sitting on your rear bumper in Italy is looking for a chance to pass, not threatening you to pull over. The vibe lacks American drivers' fear and anger. In Naples we had a hair-raising taxi trip that we knew was a bit over the top when we saw the bus driver who nearly hit us head-on throw up his hands. Yet, when we stopped several cars back from some sort of snarl, our driver jumped out to walk up to the stalled car, pausing to talk cheerfully with another driver along the way, who joined him in walking forward, where they both chatted with the stuck driver, shared a round of laughter, then strolled back for a little wait as things unwound ahead. In the midst of all the crazy driving, no yelling, no cursing.

Cycling in the US, you worry most about whether cars and trucks coming from behind will pass too close to your elbow or too far over into the oncoming lane in blind turns. In Italy, riding or driving, you turn your attention forward, alert to oncoming motorists in your own lane. If you are approaching a hard right turn, you know that if a car emerges from the turn it will be partly on your side of the centerline. If you head into a hard left turn, you watch for a vehicle at least partly in your lane just beyond the apex of the turn. All this seems to work out as the Italian drivers dart quickly to where we Americans think they "should" be, you just have to allow a little bit of time/space for them to do that. We felt this was an acceptable tradeoff for not having to worry for our very existence on the road.

I should note, too, that we witnessed a hit-and-run collision, a grown man on a motorbike running into a teenage girl crossing the street with a group of friends. The man buzzed off after the briefest stop, as everyone nearby was rushing to the aid of the girl. She was not badly injured, but it was a reality check.

Lovely narrow roads are not confined to tight quarters in town.

We saw just a few other riders, maybe because of the season. We didn't expect to see any at all in Naples but a fair number of people ride there on mountain bikes, whether for the cobbles or the steep hills. I was impressed to see a Sunday group ride assembling inside the Galleria Umberto, a beautiful 19th-century arcade.

The Relive "videos" of a couple of our rides are sort of fun:

-- A loop from Scalea to Marmanno 

-- San Basile from Catanzaro 

Calabria? Where?

Harlan and I spent most of November in southern Italy, in the northern half of the southernmost province, Calabria. 

We landed in Naples and went south as far as Catanzaro.

Our loop after Naples was from Scalea to Cosenza to Catanzaro to Crotone, then back north along the east coast through Trebisacce, turning west again through Matera (off the top of this map):

A couple years ago we spent some time ago in the countryside south of Naples so we figured we had good grounds to expect dramatic rides on switchbacks through hilltop hamlets with light traffic and real espresso along the way, and fabulous food. We got those in spades.

We also had revelations in spades.

The country is much more rugged than we imagined, higher mountains, right out of the coast, dense with deep valleys, gorges, high peaks, and remote forests. It put me in mind of a Big Sur and the Ventana. 

There are even fewer tourists than we expected. When we asked around in Naples for any advice on what to see in Calabria we were directed to beaches on the west coast, but otherwise drew blanks. We found the beach towns were sleepy and the few summer-camp-like places we saw in the mountains were closed up. No souvenir shops. We were asked why we were there, the assumption being that maybe we had family roots locally. The one small group of Americans we crossed paths with were seeking out relatives.

I found it interesting that towns were mostly of concrete and relatively modern construction, that is, there were fewer stone buildings or intact ancient monuments than one might expect to see from millennia of human habitation. A big reason for this is the repeated earthquakes over the years: a sign at the cathedral in Catanzaro, dating from 1120, lists the recorded events damaging the structure: 1509, 1517, 1638, 1744, 1783, and 1832--and then there was WWII bombardment. But the olives and the roads bear witness to centuries human work here.

Calabrian food exceeded our high expectations. It's easy to eat pasta and pizza every day when it's so good and so varied. A surprise was how the salads are spectacularly fresh, the lettuce is sweet, the tomatoes like ripe fruit, a bit of mozzarella like fresh cream. Local dishes were more novel than we expected: spicy peperoncini, 'nduja sausage, chickpeas and fava beans, panzarotta--cousin to the calzone, cheeses galore, acres of pastries, and of course gelato. 

Calabrians captured our hearts with their gentle friendliness, so many of them ready to go out of their way to be helpful. As we went south, not many outside the hotels spoke English but those who do seem to dig the chance to use it.

We spent our first few days in Naples, getting our feet under us, literally, with lots of walking. We liked it better than we expected, finding it more colorful than we recalled from our last visit and more congenial. Harlan noted that parts of it feel so much like an opera stage set that you almost wouldn't be surprised if someone were to appear on a balcony and break into a Puccini aria. Vesuvius and the Mediterranean are more present than I expected any time you get a little bit of elevation for a view.

We fit in a trip to Herculaneum and a walk around that site with a guide.

From Naples we headed about three hours south to Scalea, in the northwest corner of Calabria. This beach town, sleepy in November, has a small old quarter, the original town, on the hill above. 

We had a spacious apartment with sea views and found easy access to a couple of wonderful rides into the mountains on remote roads that occasionally turned to dirt, and alway had long steep stretches up and down.

After four days we drove yet another glorious backroad into the mountains and then picked up the modern freeway, all bridges and tunnels through these mountains, south to Cosenza. This city sits in a fairly close valley with an ungentrified ancient town at the confluence of two rivers and a fair bit of modern sprawl and suburban development. The warren of narrow streets in the old quarter are pretty rough, not all cleaned up for tourists, many no more than 5-foot corridors, with lots of stairs. 

Cosenza has a lively passegiata on a wide shopping street with a collection of modern sculptures as an outdoor museum. There's some serious energy here to bring art and culture to the city. 

Weather moved in so we did one short loop from Cosenza on roads winding through the hamlets of the greater metropolitan area.

After getting to know and like Cosenza for a few days, we moved on southward through even higher mountains on empty wintry roads to Catanzaro, the provincial capital. This little city is absolutely crammed on top of a hill maybe a couple of kilometers long and half a kilometer wide. The island-like sense of place is reinforced by the impressively tall bridges that cross the surrounding gorges and the views out all around across the countryside and out over the Ionian Sea. 

The narrow, stone, one-lane streets are jammed with little cars, so crowded that even as much as we love the Italian roads and drivers, it took us a few days to adjust to the intensity (intimacy?) of traffic here. 

We did three great rides from Catanzaro and saw tantalizing routes to go back for when the upper stretches into the mountains aren't so wet. 

Onward to the port city of Crotone. We are glad we paused there, and had one of our very best rides into rolling countryside from there, but Crotone might be more attractive in warm summer sun.

Finally we headed north along the eastern coast, sniffing out by pure luck a quick picnic lunch spot at Trebisacce right on the water.

Then we turned west for a few days in Matera, in the province of Basilicata. This got us back onto the tourist track in a beautiful little city with a fascinating history. In the 1950s the government evacuated peasants from their cave homes there, as the site had come to be known as "the shame of Italy." Now Matera is sprinting to put finishing touches on its resurgence of the last dozen years as it becomes the 2019 European Cultural Capital. Many of those shameful caves are now trendy restaurants and hotels.

The New York Times just published an article about how Matera is changing, and fast. 

Our one big ride from Matera took us through gorgeous fields fallow from the summer crop of wheat and a big change from the forests and olive groves farther south. Traffic was pretty light on all our rides, but this loop had long stretches with virtually none followed by long stretches with none at all. Even in this rolling countryside we found a mile of steady 13% grade, and hilltop hamlets with their castles--and coffee!

So that's an overview--plenty of pictures and stories to share yet...