The Third Paradise
Story by Alex Crevar | Photos by Paolo Ciaberta
On the penultimate day of a weeklong journey through the middle of southern Italy’s Calabria Region, our course tilted up and left civilization behind. This wasn’t unusual. The undulating bicycle route we followed,
the 338-mile (545-kilometer) Ciclovia Parchi Calabria, was designed to guide cyclists along the tranquil, often-carless, sometimes-mountainous roads connecting the peninsular region’s remote, unindustrialized, and underappreciated interior. For hours at a time — rolling south and lengthwise across Calabria — our only companions were shepherds summoning flocks, ancient beech trees, and 120-foot Bosnian pines.
Still, as we crested this summit, something felt different — more serene. The light and air changed, becoming brighter and even more pure. Pedaling up and over, the reason became obvious: from this ridgeline atop the Calabrian Peninsula, both the Tyrrhenian Sea to the west and Ionian Sea to the east came into view, filling the panorama with a rare joint appearance.
I closed my eyes. For that rarest of moments, the world stopped. My breath merged with sea breezes cradling me from all directions. Opening my eyes, I hopped back on the saddle, began to descend, and thought back to the beginning of this journey. We’d been riding for five days. It felt like a lifetime.
Eleven of us from Pollino to the Strait of Sicily
BY Angelo Melone
There is a different Calabria from the one that monopolises summer commercials. It is different because of the characteristics of the land, beautiful, far from the famous seaside resorts and stretches of coastline that are fascinating but often flooded with obsessive tourism; it is also different in the tourists who pass through it and in the rapport the inhabitants have with them. It is the Calabria of impressive nature, of silences and forests, of lakes and roads with little traffic, of villages little ruined by speculation that conceal treasures of art and history, of the perception of the sea even at high altitudes, of hotels, trattorias (perhaps in a wood, far from everything) and inns where you are welcomed with a smile and refreshed with delicious food, often zero-kilometre, until you can't take it anymore.
We crossed it in mid-May, following a fascinating proposal for a bicycle journey: it is the Ciclovia dei Parchi della Calabria, the project that is making its way throughout Europe among lovers of 'slow travel': 545 kilometres and more than ten thousand metres of altitude difference (that's a lot: twice the height of Mont Blanc) in four natural parks and between two seas, from Laino to Reggio Calabria via Pollino, Sila, Serre and Aspromonte.
Cycle through the colourful heart of Italy’s Calabria
Angelika Hinteregger and Reinhard Maxbauer
Day 1: Lago Cecita to Sila Piccola (Pantane)
We open the door to our accommodation early in the morning. Rays of sunshine hit our faces, loud honking sounds from the streets and people are already walking energetically. “Ciao Angelika e Reinhard!” Francesco calls out to us and beams at us. We have arrived in Calabria, the southern tip of Italy! For the next five days we want to follow part of the “Ciclovia Parchi Calabria”, whose name can be roughly translated into “the cycle path of the Calabrian Park”. The route leads over the Calabrian Apennines and through four nature and national parks and since neither of us have been to Calabria before, this sounds like a tailor-made adventure for us!
The sky is bright blue, the temperatures are a pleasant 16 degrees in mid-November and the landscape shines in all imaginable autumn colors. For the first few kilometers we roll effortlessly along the lake until we turn left onto a dirt road. Due to the heavy rains of last week, the gravel path soon becomes a muddy track, and we make acrobatic movements to somehow avoid slipping into the next puddle. With success! The path becomes steeper, and we have to push the bike again and again. Didn't Francesco say there were no steep paths here? We enjoy the little challenge and pass pastures and fields, past potato farmers who are just collecting their autumn harvest from the fields and cycle along small streams and idyllic meadows. Again and again we get a view of the surrounding hills, which glow in many shades of red thanks to the discolored leaves. A little natural spectacle in the middle of the Sila National Park! Back on asphalt, there are more and more “Ciclovia Parchi” signs and thanks to the gentle gradients throughout.
Wild Calabria
by paolo penni martelli
We cycled Calabria from north to south, crossing the mountains and the four natural parks: Pollino, Sila, Serre and Aspromonte. When we finally arrived in Reggio Calabria, we had travelled fivehundredsixtysevenpointtwentysix kilometres on top of tenthousonehundredninety metres of altitude difference, for a total of twenty-seven hours and fifty-eight minutes.
We begin in Laino Borgo, the first village in Calabria that you cross coming from Basilicata. We prep the bikes for the following day and go to dinner. And already we become aware of what’s going to be one of the main problems of this trip: how not to get fat (there will be surprises at the end of the story, I promise).
We’d been told that those days there’d be the so-called ‘Caronte’ on his way around Italy, but no one had expected to read 48°C on the bike’s computer, and moreover while we were on the move, not sitting about in the sun. 48°C is a lot, too much; I had read somewhere that from 50°C upwards human life is in serious danger. All well and good: were we really only 2°C away from extinction? With all the wisdom that distinguishes us, we decided to take compulsory breaks from 1 to 4 p.m., every day, just to avoid being told off by everyone including our parents. It was like having a hair dryer constantly blowing in my face. Jeez, how I wished I had hair on my head, even just to soak it and feel the water drying off within seconds. But no, none of us had the privilege of experiencing anything like that. In our little group, we were all born in 1983. The last survivors of teenage years with no mobile phone or Internet, as children we dreamed of travelling and seeing the world. Nowadays, 16-year-olds dream of being social-media idols, without having to leave their homes. Having already turned 40, we can instead afford the luxury of feeling attractive despite being bold (because, if hair was that important, it would be on the inside, not the outside of one’s head!).
So let us introduce ourselves. Hello Calabria! We are the guys from Alvento and we’ve never met you before.
