Experience Italian Adventure

If you are like us, you are always keen to find that out door experience that is uniquely Italian.

We will cover some cycling and walking experiences we can recommend or others have recommended.

1. Cycling

Here is an article by some other Kiwis that have done some Fat Tyre Touring in Italy.  It is a great tale of adventure, touring Italy on and off road on mountain bikes.  If you are keen on mountain biking in Italy, check out this site.  It has a lot of great information about trails.  If it doesn't open in English, don't forget to click on the Union Jack!

We also stayed for 3 weeks in Montefalco, a small hill top town in Umbria.  I did some great cycling in the surrounding Tiber Valley.  You can hire "cross" mountain bikes from the Commun e in the Piazza and I was able to do two rides in the surrounding countryside.  I really wanted to make it to "Bastardo", a small village nearby, just to say I had been there!  The ride was just idyllic, riding without meeting much traffic at all through fields of sunflowers or straw bales. The odd car that did drive along the road slowed respectfully and passed me quite deliberately.  I thought I was in heaven!  Particularly after enjoying a nice coffee and cake in a "bar" in Bastardo.  My second ride was with a local Italian cycling enthusiast and was one of my life long memories, where he took me places I don't think tourists had ever visited, including an ancient communal washing house where the water (still) flowed from one tub through to the next etc.  Apparently, the first tub was for clothes, the second for sheets and the third for sheets of the dead! He didn't speak much English and my Italian was stretched to its limit, but I loved every minute of it.  So, if you can find a local to team up with on a ride, it is sure to be an unforgettable memory.

2.  Walking

One of the most famous walks in all of Italy has to be the Cinque Terre.