Salve, salve, salve!" shout the cyclists whizzing past us on a sunny morning in the Ticino village of Morcote. We count twenty or thirty, the long swarm of cyclists refuses to stop. The morning cyclists are friendly, but we actually want to cross the road to take the other pavement for the lake tour around Lago di Lugano. We wait two or three minutes, then run across. We keep coming across cyclists until we reach the hills. We realise the absence of cyclists, the 18 percent gradient advertised on a sign is the truth.
A sign on the hill announces the "Trattoria dell'Aquila", the eagle restaurant. That's fitting, because we cyclists are now as hungry as birds of prey. The sign outside the pub reads "PRANZO DI LAVORO 10 €". Pranzo di Lavoro is the workers' lunch, we remember the expression. Cyclists are also workers. Road labourers! The landlord serves rabbit stew with potatoes. To digest, we take the descent to the north shore of the lake. There we are back in the world of this morning, sharing the road with cyclists, cars and motorbikes.
You can download the entire article and the GPS data for these four tours below:
- Tour 1: The Eagles of Lanzo (98 km, 850 m elevation gain, max. 18 per cent gradient)
- Tour 2: To Lake Maggiore (148 km, 700 m elevation gain, max. 9 per cent gradient)
- Tour 3: Wilde Regina (100 km, 500 m elevation gain, max. 10 per cent gradient)
- Tour 4: Suffering at the Wall (59 km, 1600 m elevation gain, max 24 metres ascent)
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.
