The skies are unsettled this morning - patches of blue alternate with heavy cloud formations. Our ride today is to Piano Battaglia, a ski area in the heart of the Madonie - we'll need some luck if we are going to have a dry ride. Before leaving, we walk around town a bit and stop in at a market to pick up sandwiches for lunch. Petralia Soprana is a beautiful ridgetop village - all narrow stone streets, few people or cars around, and blessed with inspiring views on all sides. It made a great place for a two night stay. Our only regret (other than that last night's restaurant didn't serve cannoli for desert, which greatly disappointed Rachael) is that we couldn't enjoy the view of Mount Etna. From the photos we've seen, it must be spectacular on the right day.
Here's the view we didn't see this morning - maybe when we come back some year:
Our ride begins with a very steep descent off the backside of the ridge to Petralia Sottano, the sister village to Petralia Soprana about four hundred feet below. Parts of the descent are cobblestoned and over 15% - too steep to bike safely, so we begin our climb to the highest road in the Madonie by walking our bikes downhill.
From P. Sottano we begin the 2000' climb to Piano Battaglia. I didn't prepare for today's ride very well - I didn't notice how high we would be climbing, didn't thinks about the cold, and didn't bring along my rain jacket. At about elevation 4000' I start becoming concerned because we are riding up against the base of a band of clouds blowing through a gap in the mountains. Not knowing how high we are going, I start fantasizing that we will slip through the gap and stay beneath the clouds; but of course we just keep climbing. Soon we enter a dense, cold, windy fog and I start worrying that my foolishness will require us to turn back. It is eerie bicycling through the fog - Rachael disappears completely just fifty yards in front of me. At one point I am startled by a group of five cows grazing on the shoulder of the road - they seem huge and a bit menacing as they abruptly emerge from the fog.
Petralia Sottano, the sister village to Petalia Soprana, sits about four hundred feet downhill. It looks like it would have been a fine place to spend the night as well.
On the climb to Piano Battaglia, at elevation about 4000'. We are right at the transition into the cloud layer, biking into a cold wind. For a time I thought we might just slip beneath the clouds, but no such luck - we still have another 1400' to climb before the summit.
The fog never turns to rain though, and after a mile or so we break through it to the other side. The rest of the climb to the summit is often in the sun. The mountains break though, and are spectacular. It is a fantastic climb. Partway to the top we find a good spot to stop in a lovely meadow, savoring the views along with our sandwiches.
After a few miles of biking through a cold fog we suddenly broke through into the sun again.
I think this is either Mount Carbonara or Mount Antenna, the twin peaks whose 6,500' elevation is the highest in the Madonie, and the highest in Sicily other than Mount Etna. When we reach the summit of the pass, they look close enough to be a fairly easy walk to the top.
We found this plant in the meadow where we stopped for lunch, at an elevation of about 5,400'. I've never seen a plant that looks quite like this one. An update: Randaell Holland, my botanist for this tour, identified this for me as a Euphorbia Lathyris. It has several common names, including caper spurge (an odd name, since it's poisonous) and mole plant (since it is supposed to be a mole repellant).
We finally crest the summit at about 5,300' - not all that far below the highest mountain tops, and about a thousand feet higher than I had thought we would climb today. Once we stop climbing, suddenly it seems cold. With a few thousand foot drop ahead and no jacket, I resort to the old trick of stuffing a newspaper down the front of my shirt for some extra insulation. It works - I'm chilly, but stable.
The descent is as wonderful as the ascent, but it whips by us so fast we can't fully appreciate it. I would love to come back here again some year and ride this loop in the reverse direction. When we come to Polizza Generosa, the first village on the way down, we are cold enough that we decide to pull off and warm ourselves up with a hot cup of tea before riding further.
At the summit, layering up for the descent. I had stupidly left my jacket behind this morning, but fortunately I remembered that I had a newspaper fender on my back rack to provide some additional insulation.
Beyond Polizzi Generosa our route continues to drop another thousand feet, dropping us well below the level of our hotel. By now we have left the mountains and park behind and are cycling through cultivated and pasture land. Somewhere along the way the route I mapped from home leaves the secondary road for a smaller one that is beautifully quiet, save for a pair of energetic puppies that decide to chase us down the road - when they can keep their minds to it at least. They keep breaking from the pursuit to engage with each other, tumbling around and rolling on the pavement before picking up the chase again. I'm about to the point of feeling the need to scare them off so they won't get lost or bond with us, when they finally peel off on their own.
In a bit though, our nice quiet road turns into little more than a steep rocky path. We stare hard at the map and conclude that we'll come back to a real road again soon if we just push through the rocks for a quarter mile or so. So we continue on, and soon enough are rewarded with a return to the pavement. Rachael wonders though why I thought this was the right choice for the day.
Finally we bottom out just before the village of Blufi, and begin the final climb for the day - 1,700', back up to Petralia Soprana. I've found a dandy small road for part of this leg also, so we spend a bit more time pushing our bikes up a 15-20% incline. So, we end up walking the bike three times today - once because it's too steep downhill; once because it's too steep uphill; and once because the surface is too terrible.
When we arrive at the hotel, we find that it has been colonized in our absence - by bicyclists. One is traveling the island solo, and a group of about ten is on a week-long death march across southern Italy, from Bari to Palermo. They've allowed just three days to cross Sicily. The last few stragglers are just arriving when we head out for dinner, clearly exhausted. To each his own, but it's not my idea of a good time - they can't be experiencing much of the island this way.
Total elevation gain: today, 5,400'; for the tour, 99,500'.
This little fellow and his twin buddy followed us uphill for about a half mile. It was a pretty disorganized pursuit - they kept losing focus, stopping to cavort with each other before scrambling to catch up again.
