October 6, 2024
A fairy tale landscape
Lorica to Villaggio Mancuso
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It rained again overnight but the morning was crisp and clear with not a cloud in the sky. Our ride today involved two decent climbs with the end point being Villaggio Mancuso set high up in the mountains. In the 1930’s a builder from Catanzaro (where we are heading tomorrow) had unsold timber because of the economic woes of the time. He purchased a vast wooded area in Col Della Poverella and decided to build an entire tourist village based on a town he had visited in the Dolomites as a child. In the words of my guide book ‘Eugenio Mancuso wanted to create a fairy tale landscape’
We started with two espressos at our hotel as we weren’t sure what would be open as it’s a Sunday. The hotel gave us some salami buns and a banana each and we were on our way. Straight out the door we descended through more pine and beech trees forests. The morning sun was streaming through the logs, there were no cars and the road surface smooth, so absolutely perfect riding conditions.
After ten kilometres of gradual downhill we reached the first of two mountain lakes we skirted on the days ride. The first of them was Lake Ampollini which had a 1500 metre bike path around it, the first of our trip. As my guide book described it ‘it is an exclusively pleasant stretch’. It did lead to a lively lakeside bar where had another coffee and cake.
Whilst most of the shops in the villages were closed we passed several barbecue tents set up along the way with crowds of locals thronging to what must be a Sunday tradition around here. It smelled great, but we pedalled on, through rolling farmland before the big hill of the day.
The riding for the last few days has been all you could ask for, smooth roads, amazing scenery and vistas around every bend. Life seems pretty simple in these mountain villages but I’m sure it’s a pretty tough existence winter. You really notice the scarcity of people under thirty and I can’t recall seeing a baby or toddler in any of the places we passed through.
After passing yet another barbecue gathering we headed up the climb and stopped along the way for lunch by a stall selling vegetables. It was quite a narrow two lane road but by the stall there was plenty of room to pull in off the road. The guy was doing a roaring trade but cars just pull up on the road and put there emergency indicators on forcing cars to the other side of the road. At one stage they were stopped in both lanes almost opposite each other causing a mini traffic jam. Great to watch and so Italian
With a bit more climbing after lunch we were over the summit and had a cruisy downhill run through more native pine forests before a short climb up to Villaggio Mancuso. Despite Rob’s protestation I booked a Spa Hotel on the outskirts of town and had a somewhat disappointing Italian massage as a reward for a week of riding. I couldn’t convince Rob to do the same.
We have one more day of riding before a rest day in Catanzaro, a city of 80,000 people and hopefully at least one laundromat.
Today's ride: 61 km (38 miles)
Total: 381 km (237 miles)
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