• Tour on a bike: Milano-Sulmona

From Milan to Sulmona on a bike #3

The first climbs, we face the Apennines. Third stage of our tour to Sulmona: from the "scholarly" Bologna to the elegant Florence, through depopulated towns and a nature true protagonist

Ercole Giammarco

From Milan to Sulmona on a bike #3
FACING THE APENNINES

The ‘tigelle’ and the ‘crescentine’ that we ate last night were good (and to be honest also who served them was good…) But also tonight’s fried brain that we are going to eat in a little hotel overlooking the Fiesole hills 10 kilometers from Florence, seems to be good. But let’s start from the beginning.

This morning we pedaled on a climb: 2000 meters in total to overtake the Apennines and pass from Bologna to Florence. Do you know Sasso Marconi, Roncobilaccio, Firenzuola, in other words those tool booths on the Sun Highway that always make you think “who does exit from Roncobilaccio tool booth?!” But above all, what do you do in Roncobilaccio (unless you are travelling from Milan to Sulmona on a bike)?!

So, today we rode in those places and on others godforsaken towns of the Bologna Apennine where the sweet accent of the bartender and his jovial smile don’t cancel the sadness of a place that every year is less populated and forgotten. In Monzuno, for example, there is nothing, except for a dreamer butcher who seems to have transformed his art in a faith profession. But it was closed.

With the towns depopulate, the nature takes back its territory: oaks forests grow near the few wheat fields still cultivated, a buzzard follows us with its slow and circular flight, an emotionless wolf crosses the street in front of us. The last one isn’t true, but plausible given the places.

We go up to the Futa mountain pass.

FACING THE APENNINES
THE MAGIC 'FIESOLE'

Almost on the top there is a German war cemetery, where are buried 33.000 soldiers of the third Reich. In those places Germans and Allies have fought, and the civil population was in between: Marzabotto is situated few kilometers from here, the Gothic Line used to divide the Apennine in this area. We stopped to visit the cemetery and I stopped in front of a random grave. He died when he was 33 years old that soldier: who knows what he had planned to do in life, if he would have had children, if he had left a woman who would have loved him forever, if he wouldn’t had been murdered when he was 33 years old. That’s war… 

At the cemetery we met two Holland cyclist travelers who from Amsterdam were going to Rome (ten years before from Rome they went to Bosra, in Syria. When Syria still existed).

From the mountain pass begins the descent towards Florence. From a cycle point of view, the best part of this stage. Large curves, beautiful gradients, perfect asphalt. Three conditions that together allow the rider, rather than "going downhill", to take a nosedive as a peregrine falcon. And after the pass the landscape changes: it’s Tuscany, with its classical elegance and the unique balance between the natural landscape’s sensuality and the human landscape’s composure.

The end of the descent leads us to Bilancino Lake and from there, after twenty kilometers of bad traffic, to the majestic landscape of Fiesole, from where I’m writing.

Tomorrow San Sepolcro, Anghiari and other things like that. If you know what I mean.

 

Ps: today we had the proof that Aldo had calculated the distances of this trip in miles instead of kilometers: the kilometers of the first stage should have been 130 and they were 160, yesterday’s stage should have had 110 kilometers and we have done 130 kilometers. Today 100 kilometers were expected but we have done 125 kilometers. As they say in Rome “annamo bene…”

THE MAGIC 'FIESOLE'
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