Italy: By road bike through Abruzzo - Abruzzo: 4 road bike tours in southern Italy
It's a quarter to one in the morning and the owner of the small fish restaurant is finally clearing the last of a dozen plates. Before that, there was everything from the Adriatic that can be grilled, fried and nibbled, plus three types of dessert and fresh, cool white wine. "Another coffee?" The active members of S. C. Ovidiano stretch their legs under the table, their bellies are full, really full. "Anything else?" A highly satisfied wave of the hand. But yes, a coffee is a must, because now things are getting serious: it's the club evening of the cycling club from Sulmona. So membership fees are collected in cash and the jersey designs for the next season are discussed. At two o'clock, the group strolls home, chatting and very slowly over the ancient, polished stone slabs of the old town centre. The air is mild, the promenade still full of people. People show their faces, greet each other, chat casually. Shoes are polished, hair is styled.
It is the Italy that people from north of the Alps long to visit when the summer cheerfulness crumbles away. But it's also the Italy they rarely visit - a thousand kilometres by car from Munich is quite a statement. Tommaso Paolini, grey-haired and the "professore" in the club, wants to change that. He teaches tourism at the university in the provincial capital of L'Aquila and has published a lyrical reference book about the region: "Cycling in paradise". And of course the professor has a few tour tips to prove his proud thesis. But where to start, in a city that is virtually surrounded by national parks? The decision is made in favour of the south-west, where the road bike tourism experts installed the "Wolf Bike Tour" in summer 2014. According to the map, the circuit is so logical that it could be described as "without alternative" in governmentese.
You can download the entire article and these tours as well as the GPS data below:
- Tour 1: Over the Kaiseracker (130 kilometres, 2,200 metres in altitude, max. 11 % gradient)
- Tour 2: To the log cabin (80 kilometres, 2,050 metres in altitude, max. 13 % gradient)
- Tour 3: Through the Maiella (90 kilometres, 1,400 metres in altitude, max. 11 % gradient)
- Tour 4: The green mountains (124 kilometres, 2,000 vertical metres, max. 10 % gradient)
The Abruzzo region is geographically part of central Italy, but for historical reasons is categorised as one of the regions of southern Italy. To the west, it borders the Lazio region with the capital Rome, to the east the Adriatic Sea, along which stretches a flat coastal strip that merges into a hilly landscape. However, two thirds of the region is taken up by the Apennine Mountains, which are home to three national parks: the Gran Sasso in the north, the Maiella to the south and the Abruzzo National Park in the far south. The Gran Sasso massif is also home to the highest mountain in Abruzzo, the 2,912 metre-high Corno Grande ("Great Horn") - Italy's highest mountain south of the Alps apart from Mount Etna in Sicily. On 6 April 2009, the earth shook in the region, the epicentre was south-west of L'Aquila and 308 people lost their lives. The once splendid old town centre is still partly in ruins today.
Despite their southern location, Abruzzo often gets plenty of snow - this is where the ski resorts of the Romans are located. The highest point of our tours is above 2,000 metres. All tours include long and fairly even climbs, often with flat sections. Only the Giro ascent towards the Blockhaus is well over ten per cent steep. Outside of the often very hot summer holidays, many sections are hardly used, only the SS 5 towards Pescara and short sections on the SS 17 around L'Aquila require nerves of steel. The road surfaces are generally good to satisfactory. If you also want to ride tours 2 and 4 from Sulmona, you will have to plan for many additional kilometres with heavy traffic.
