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.
AROUND THE POLLINO: PRAYER CARDS AND CHILLIES
The first thing that strikes us is the vegetation, the second is religion. You wouldn’t expect all this greenery in a region you imagine scorched by the sun. Religion, on the other hand, is the calling card of every village: funeral announcements, crosses and saints’ flags are everywhere. It’s a good feeling, it makes you realise how inevitable, how inescapable fate is. It’s as if all this reminds you that you should live every day to the fullest, because you never know. Whether you are a believer or not, it makes you feel protected, like when your grandmother tells you she prays for you every night. The places where people pray a lot or where faith is firmly rooted, give protection to everyone. There is some of it for everyone. We immediately start uphill and the road makes us realise that this is not going to be a walkover.
We are immediately surprised, if not amazed, by the courtesy and patience of drivers: never a blast of the horn and almost always a hint of a greeting when, in no hurry and only when it’s safe to do so, they overtake us. I know this should be the norm everywhere, but as it is not, it came as a wonderful surprise. So much so that it is the first thing we tell everyone we meet on our way. Our first lunch break is at Catasta, in Campotenese, immediately after Mormanno.
The landscape, as we go along, becomes less hilly and increasingly mountainous. The plan includes an average altitude difference of 1.500 m per day, so we know that, sooner or later, we’ll be faced with the tough climbs.
Suddenly, when we least expect it, we’re in front of a small cathedral in the desert. It is a beautiful building, made entirely of wood, or better, logs one atop the other. It looks like an environmentalist spaceship. We are greeted with home-made organic fruit juices and the typical local pastry cakes, bocconotti, filled with jam. It is cool inside, despite the temperature outside. The Catasta is somewhat of a gateway to the Pollino Park: it is not simply a visitors’ centre where you can get all the information about the area you want to discover; you can simply come here to study and read, if you can’t find the right space and time to do so at home, as I did. And you can stay here with no one asking you to order for food or drinks. Speaking of food, this is also where we first come in contact with chilli peppers, one of the symbols par-excellence of Calabrian culture and love. My two travelling companions, who are particularly fond of chilli, are eager to put themselves to the test. I actually handle wasabi better, which goes straight to the brain, compared to its red or green friend the chilly, which instead travels quickly down the oesophagus.
At dusk we reach the farmstead where we are expected for the night. The owner, the lawyer Pacelli, a retired man from Naples, transplanted to Calabria, opens the doors for us.
It’s amazing. Vineyards all have a similar, cosy and familiar feel. You could be anywhere, but with a glass of wine in your hand it feels like being in the place you have always known and loved. The evening goes by talking about wine, vineyards and life in general. I get to bed and there’s a beautiful gecko looking at me form the wall in the room. He promises to take care of all the mosquitoes.
GRIPPED BETWEEN TWO SEAS
In the morning we slip the Valle dell’Esaro and pass through the beautiful Acri. Then, quite suddenly, something changes. As if they had changed a stage set, we find ourselves in a pre-alpine landscape. Coniferous forests as far as the eye can see, the magical appearance of little mountain lakes, such as Lago Cecita and Lago Arvo. No one would believe it if you told them there’s this too in Calabria. All around us is the scent of wood and forest, the water is a cold blue colour that even in this heat would be too much for a swim but all the same time it hypnotises you to the point you cannot take your eyes off that enchanted mirror. That was exactly what we were looking for on our bike tour: to lose ourselves in the woods of Calabria and have a different story to tell, something that nobody expects.
It’s so quiet among the trees that you can almost hear them.
We arrive in Tiriolo. This is the narrowest point on the Calabrian peninsula: only 27 km of land separate the two seas. The village is high up and the view embraces the Tyrrhenian Sea on one side and the Ionian Sea on the other. The centre of Tiriolo is small and discreet. The oldest part of the town, clinging to a rocky summit, looms over the piazza.
We’ll be sleeping up there tonight. How could I not tell you about the owner of the hotel? He introduces himself and tells us we have twenty minutes to get ready. Then he will take us on a tour of the village. We are tired, really tired. Not even an hour before, I’d banged my head against branch blown off by the wind: if I hadn’t been wearing a helmet, I wouldn’t be here now, writing what you are reading.
We barely have time for a shower and the only thing we really want to do is sit down at a table and fill up on beers. Instead, we go out and wait for him at the hotel entrance. We see him arrive from afar, driving an Ape Calessino, a kind of autorickshaw. He says there are only a hundred models in the world and they made his at his personal request. He adds that another one, necessarily all white, is owned by the Pope, to whom he has sent a letter officially challenging him in a hill-climb from the centre of town to the hotel at the top.
The three of us get on the Ape and it immediately feels like Italy, immediately feels like Calabria, like the Bel Paese, a place with spaghetti mafia and mandolins of course, but more importantly a place where it can happen that a perfect stranger shows you, in twenty minutes, such unique experiences, that not even if you were paying you could’ve witnessed. Italy is a stranger who drives an Ape rickshaw accelerating with his left hand, because with his right he holds the cigarette he’s puffin on while he tells stories worth dozens of books and dozens of films. All the while he greets everyone we meet on the way, and the greeting is reciprocated of course, because there’s a difference between just greeting and being greeted in return. A subtle, but crucial difference. The moment that all three of us feared would be the death blow at the end of our cycling day turned out instead to be one of the best experiences of the trip. And this is thanks to unexpected encounters and the hospitality of locals. Without this it would have been yet another average postcard with the sea and flowering trees.
ASPROMONTE: THE TASTE OF THE SOUTH
We spend our penultimate day crossing the Aspromonte. A mountain lodge awaits us, where we will spend the night. The lodge is deliberately difficult to find. The guys who run it work to promote the area, but judiciously, keeping mass tourism at a distance. And perhaps it’s really good of them to do so.
Our dinner is incredible. All strictly local products, whose colours and flavours, wisely mixed, make us forget the tiredness that assails us.
‘Nduja, parmigiana, bruschetta, sun-dried tomatoes, ricotta, platters of cold meats and cheeses, onion and potato omelette, macaroni with sausage sauce. For the pasta with aubergines ‘mbuttunate I cannot find appropriate words: you just have to go and try it. The wine flows, and it’s these little things, these simple moments that tell you that life is smiling at you.
There is still light when the guys who are hosting us leave, turning off the small generator. We are left alone, without electricity, in the dark, enjoying everything we are no longer used to: the noises and smells of nature. A foundling dog keeps us company. His name is Libero and he is a somewhat a random crossbreed. He has a limp and is no way threatening, but his barking in the dark sounds like that of a wolf. He will be in charge of protecting us.
At each stage of this journey, we chased the sunset, with the certainty that we would enjoy a good lunch and an even more delicious dinner.
More than half of a person’s happiness revolves around sleep, food and love.
I can’t think how a peach manages to lose all its flavour travelling between Reggio Calabria and Brescia; I don’t know why a tomato fills up with water between Lecce and Milan.
In Calabria we managed to gain weight despite cycling nine hours a day. Like hardened smokers who give up cigarettes and regain the use of their taste buds, everything tasted new to us.
I’m sure you’ve had the same thought: I burn calories on my bike just so I can then eat as much as I want. That’s just how it is. We rediscover flavours that we thought we had lost forever, the pleasure of food, from appetisers to desserts, ending with liqueurs, also spicy, if you like.
Here it is. Even the hills and mountains are fed up with travelling and finally decide to dive into the sea. In front of us we see Sicily with Mount Etna peeping through the clouds, the blue colours of the sky and the sea blend into oneanother and seem to be born of the same mother, identical twins, separated at birth.
The strait that divides these two lands seems irrelevant.
Reggio Calabria is just below us. Apparently, the first thing to do when you get to the centre is to have an ice cream, possibly inside a croissant. Done.
Now what we really wish for is the sae, after five days almost without seeing it. We are unconcerned about our ice cream-filled stomachs, and jump into the water.
We swim under the famous spot that Gabriele D’Annunzio called most beautiful kilometre in Italy. Actually, it is much more than a kilometre – it is 1.700 metres – and it is a beautiful walk, a worthy entrance to the city of the Riace Bronzes.
As sunset falls, the light becomes warmer and more welcoming. The cathedral silently watches over the beginning of aperitif time in the piazza. We cannot help but be part of this picture. We eat fish, drink wine, content that we have got to know our own country a little better.
Professional photographer and cyclist Paolo Penni Martelli on his twin passions, photography and the bicycle. He is home photographer and copywriter for Alvento – Italian cycling magazine.
You can find this itinerary in the Destinations - Italy unknown / 2 super-magazine, alvento's bikepacking special [November 2023] and on destinationd.bike.
