The spur of Italy's boot is mountainous: The limestone mountains of the Gargano, which emerged from the Mediterranean millions and millions of years ago, rise a good thousand metres into the sky. A surprise awaits around almost every bend. You have just rolled through groves of ancient, gnarled olives on undulating terrain, and suddenly nature transforms into a rugged, stony karst landscape. A few bends further on, lonely little roads lead across a fertile and almost deserted plateau. Peaceful silence surrounds the cyclists, broken only by the tinkling of bells from sheep, goats and cows. The tours along the coast are also breathtaking in the literal sense of the word, where the roads rarely run straight and level along the sea. Between Vieste and Mattinata, the coastal road "Litora nea" makes capers, winds around white limestone cliffs, winds its way down to dream beaches and then immediately climbs back inland over serpentines.
You can find these routes in the PDF download:
Tour 1: Through the shadow forest
(94 kilometres, 1,700 metres in altitude, maximum gradient twelve percent)
Tour 2: Over land and litoranea
(53 kilometres, 490 metres in altitude, maximum gradient of eleven per cent)
Tour 3: Mare e Monti
(89 kilometres, 1,800 metres in altitude, maximum gradient of twelve percent)
Tour 4: Pilgrimage
(116 kilometres, 2,285 metres in altitude, maximum gradient of eleven per cent)
GPS DATA: TOUR offers the tour data for free download. You can download the tracks in GPX format directly onto a GPS device or view them on your computer in Google Earth or Google Maps.
