A visit to Shangri-La

Okay, here is the posting that I've been waiting to get to. This is where I biked through after Rome and one of the unknown places in Italy that I most highly recommend visiting: The Sibillini Mountains. Part of the mountain chain that divides Italy East and West, The Sibillini's are named after a Roman goddess and contained in a national park on the west edge of the Marche region. Northeast of Rome and Southeast of Assisi.

The mountains are great for hiking, mountain biking, parasailing, skiing in the winter, lots of Italians doing lots of outdoors things. The high peaks form a circle surrounding two flat plains at about 1200m, the Piano Grande and the Piano Poco. On the edge of the Piano Grande sits the town of Castelluccio on a hilltop at about 1400m.

I started my trip from Rome, taking the train to Spoletto. My goal was to reach the town of Norcia which is at the base of the mountains on the West side. I had not wanted to pack my bike between Siena and Norcia... just because I was lazy. So I made up for that laziness with the extra work involved in finding second class trains on which I could take the bike. Which was fine.
After arriving in Spoletto, I anxiously waited around for a couple of hours for the bus... I left Rome at 4:00, arrived in Spoletto around 5:30, and the bus to Norcia left at 8:00. While sitting next to the station, I glanced over and finally noticed this huge metal sculpture standing in the center of the roundabout in front of the station. Had to be a Calder! Sure enough, I found his signature. Which was pretty cool, he's one of my favorite artists and I'd run across him in Finland as well. He and Alvar Aalto used to hang out together.

I was anxious because I was not sure the bus driver would let me put my bike underneath and, if he didn't, I was going to be stuck in Spoletto for the night. Which was *really* going to pay me back for not packing the bike. But he did, and I did, all of which was good because there were long tunnels through the mountains leading to Norcia and I could not have ridden through them.


Okay, so now we are on our way up to Norcia with just a few people on the bus. There are some college students with backpacks and I ask them if they know how to find the hostel, which I'd looked up the web and which had looked very nice. They say, "yes, we know where it is, but we are a group of geography students having a meeting there this weekend and we've booked the entire place!" Durn! This is going to cost me a hotel in Norcia!

So I arrive in Norcia about 9:00pm, just gotten dark. Norcia is a pretty town, a ski town. It reminded me of a small Aspen or something. It is a hill town... there are walls and all. But it clearly has a much better economy going than most of the Marche towns. I don't know where I am going but hear some voices down one street and so wander down that way. Turns out it is the hostel, and indeed filled with about 30 geography students from all over Europe. I stop in and ask if they know of an inexpensive hotel to recommend, but none of them are local. But they are really nice and end up inviting me to stay over anyhow, they have about three empty beds left over. So I stay, have dinner, buy a tee-shirt from their group. Have a great time visiting.

In the morning I head up. Norcia is at about 600m elevation, the pass I have to cross is at 1500 and about 20km away. It was a long slog climbing all the way up there. Campers and motorcycles. But a beautiful day and the road was not so steep as to be awful. Just a long long climb.

You finally reach the pass, with mountains on both sides of you. No trees up here. Just grass and rocks and sky. There was a restaurant near the pass which I stopped at to have a coffee and buy some more water as I was out. Three mountain bikers there with some sort of electric assist on their mountain bikes! (I kind of thought that was cheating). They took pictures of my bike and trailer. It was nice to be the object of the photos for once.

Once you cross the pass you look down about 300m to the flat Piano Grande, and about 5km away to the town of Castelluccio on the other end. It is completely spectacular. Sort of coming down into Death Valley but green. And the mountains all around are beautiful. From the pass you blast down the hill and out across the valley floor. And after an easy ride across, climb back up to the town at the end.
Castelluccio is a very small town. I got in pretty early in the day as the ride was not long in km. Just long in hills. I got cleaned up and took a break, wandered around town for a while, and then sat and started trying to do a watercolor painting of the town. Something I don't do enough of and I'm really jealous of the other folks here who do a lot more of that. I'm still finishing the painting... will post it when I'm done.

There are three rooming houses and lots of folk hanging out. I was pretty lucky to get a room as we'd had so little time to make arrangements that I had not gotten a reservation ahead of time. Think I got one of the last available rooms. The three rooming houses also have restaurants. The worst thing about traveling alone in Europe is that when you go out to eat they always give you the lousiest table as far away from the windows as possible.

The first restaurant was crammed (Sunday night with locals just out of the church I think). They offered to let me sit by myself outside but it was too cold. (Food looked great and otherwise I would have taken them up on it).

The second restaurant was about half full with a nice dining area. They took me into a side room with about a half dozen tables and nobody in it, set up a new tiny table against the back wall (had to kick one of the owner's kids out who was sitting there coloring) and offered that. I said no thanks.

The third restaurant finally gave me a table in the main dining area, with other people. Still at the back wall and the couple who showed up a few minutes later got to take a 4 seat table next to the windows. But at least I could *see* the windows from where I was! Food was great, I was tired, went to bed.

The next day I was planning to make it about half way back to Macerata. But I was unsure about how far I could actually cover in a day. Not only was I a bit inexperienced about distance with my trailer, but also not knowing the route, conditions, hills, etc. But it was great fun blasting down out of the mountains. The road was smooth and well paved. Then I started heading north along the edge of the mountains. Since the river valleys in the Marche run west to east, going north involves crossing the river valleys and the ridges in between them so there were a lot of ups and downs. When I got to the town I had intended to stay at, it was still only around noon. I had lunch and set my sights on another town a ways further. Which I made it to around 5:00. Sarnana. A nice town. But again I don't know where to stay and I'm getting tired of traveling (not to mention my grubby clothing), and I realize that if I make it over just one more ridge I'm in the Fiastra river valley which I can follow down to just below Macerata. So I did. Flew down the last 40km or so and doing about 100km for the day. Made it home at about 8:00 and was happy to be there. A truly great 2 days of biking. You can see more pictures here...

- B -