Calabria: near Cosenza to Villa San Giovanni (the ferry to Sicily)

July 8, 2015

Monday

The hills are silhouetted against orange dawn sky and street-lights are still on down in the village. There is no movement across the way from the small house, if that's what the cluster of trees behind the parked white car hide.

I mash two well ripened bananas and mix in some muesli for breakfast; boil water for coffee and get away shortly after six.

The road "SP241" shown as "SS19" in the Google map, the road I was on most of yesterday undulates twenty kilometres further to Cosenza, a much bigger place than I'd expected: a city, though the road thankfully remains a steady uphill thoroughfare straight through, passing glass bank buildings and pedestrian café streets. There is a split just as it starts to drop downhill, causing me to halt and draw out the map even though the left looks obvious. Momentarily, a friendly van-driver sees me and pulls over and enquires through the open window where I'm going. "Reggio." In Italian he directs me left. "Direcho..." (keep going straight) and names a string of places I'll pass through; then, tilts his forearm from the doorsill and laughts, indicating the road ahead is very hilly.

I drop down and begin crossing a long viaduct headed toward a wall of a hill ahead. Perhaps there's a tunnel. But more than halfway over, see the road wind it's way uphill.

It's a stiff climb for a couple of kilometres before the road levels out and remains flat for the next dozen kilometres until Rogalano, a scattered town nested in a chaos of lofty wooded hills. Nowhere for the road to go but abruptly up.

There's a strenuous hot climb to the town centre, where I've a moments confusion wondering which is the right way onward; having to use intuition, there being no direction signs; and taking the most likely, I drop downhill again, hoping not to find I've gone wrong as that would mean another climb.

I pull in at a supermarket before dropping completely out of town. The front directly faces the sun and there is no shade, so the glass door and concrete-apron is like a radiator. Every balcony window on an apartment block along have shutters drawn to keep out the sun. Anyway I stock up mainly on fluids: six litres. The bike is very heavy riding away, which worked out not to be so necessary, because there are water troughs at regular intervals ahead.

The road is completely empty, leading me to wonder am I actually on the right road after all, as it switch-backs abruptly, with grades of one in five, quite scary, into a deep wooded gorge with a tall stilted viaduct across, looking like it may be the right road.

I drop into the narrow bottom by the feet of the viaduct, cross a bridge and begin the expected climb back out the other side. When I reach the approach to the viaduct on this side, the turnoff for it is indeed back to Rogalano, therefore the newer, leveller road.

I spend the next few hours, first twisting up and over into a huge wooded hollow within this chaos of hill, then around and up again to finally begin a lengthy descent.

I come down to a level-crossing, the tracks rusted and the gravel and sleepers off on either side support a fair crop of grass and weeds. And to the left is an old station. The ticket building padlocked and walls with graffiti scrawled upon.

As it is two o'clock I wheel the bike across the platform and lean it in the shade of the station building and sit down to lunch. I read a few pages of my book afterward, but eventually, feeling droucy, have to close my eyes and sleep. I wake up again with that funny feeling of not knowing where I am, then realise I'm sat leaning back against the bike pannier.

I ride for only two more hours, stopping at five when still in wooded hills I come to a track up to a level top promontory perfect for camping.

Tuesday

With no stealth camping involved and totally within my rights to be where I am, there is no compulsion to be up and gone before sunrise. Instead, it is well after six o'clock when I first get out of the sleeping bag and the sun is well up among the treetops when I pack up and wheel the bike down the track to the road.

The road which had been climbing when I stopped the evening before, goes on up for another five kilometres. Then come an almighty long descent, pretty steep in places and looking down upon sea mist, which has cleared by the time I start descending through the streets of Lamezia Terme, where the surface turns to a rough patch work of crumbing edges and potholes and I'm all the time watching and steering around them. It doesn't help when a car comes from behind and beeps in a way saying watch out, as it makes me look like I'm not paying attention: makes me feel stupid.

It is a fair size city and the road descends all the way through the older part. Of coarse there's no clear signage for a through-route and places ahead. This is Italy. But my map shows the road ("SS18") passes an airport and soon as I reach a flat coastal plain and the modern urban spread of roundabouts and big roads, there are signs for the airport. The road is like a boulevard with small pruned trees in a wide central reservation and there's even a red painted cycle-path on my right, but from experience I find these usually come to an end, so I remain on the road. It is rush hour and the traffic density is such that speed is well reduced on the shoulder-less carriage-way.

By the next roundabout where I'm proven right, the cycle-path has ended, there's a service café where I pull in for my customary second breakfast. A slice of pizza, cappuccino and write up my diary; then a second cappuccino and slice of cake. The total come to six euros forty.

The Italian drivers for the most part I've found have always been well mannered. However you do get the odd idiot (the same as other countries, notably Ireland) that don't driver according to road conditions; ie, on a winding road, they'll drive with their foot on the floor and won't steer properly round curses, intead will hold a straight line.

Road maintenance generally only take into account motorists; luckily I can cycle on the inside here.

I set off again upon a very much improved road from a cycling point of view, albeit with constant traffic, it has a narrow shoulder and the surface is regularly smooth and soon crosses over the Salermo-Reggio autostada where there's a sign: Reggio 130km. The modern city extention with big steel clad warehousing, link-fencing and a tractor and agricultural machinery dealership has petered out into table flat fruit and vine cultivation intermixed with fields of hay stubble.

The next twenty kilometres continues such, but with a coastal range closing the way looming, the easy carefree bowling along would soon end.

When I get as far I'm for remaining on the main road ("SS18"), which tilts up the hillside, but somehow when I've climbed a few hundred metres, I stop and lean the bike against the metal crash-barrier and look down upon the coastal road that began as a right-turnoff a few hundred metres back, looks a more attractive option than going uphill more; so I freewheel back down and go left. In my mind I would avoid a hideous hill climb. Though the coast road soon proves to have unwelcome in the increasing heat of late morning climbs up over headlands.

There's a sizable town ahead where I stop at a supermarket to stock up for the day and have a cold can of beer from the fridge, then sit outside in the shade drinking it. I remain sat for a long time rather than return out in the heat and it is almost one o'clock when I get going again.

Later lunch is in the shade of a roadside circular eucalyptus grove where I read more of my book and don't set off again until four.

I reach Tropea where I'm well inland of the coastal town and there's a split in the road. The right according to my all of Italy map while going to the coast, doesn't have any place signposted that's in the map and seems not to continue directly the way I'm going, so I decide on going left, which obviously goes uphill, as Vibo Valentia on the inland highway "SS18" that I'd left in the forenoon is on the sign pointing that way.

The climb is a twelve or more grade in places as it twists its way seemingly forever up. Strenuous in the heat. I reach and ride into a village with narrow streets and have a job finding the road on. There are a couple of cafes, but no shops and I could've done with a cold drink, the former though only serve such in tiddly small measures and charge a euro fifty, expensive and barely capable of thirst quenching.

Once I find myself back out on the road which has levelled out, I reach another place after a short rise with a castle upon a height. There is no shops here either. There is a bar and a garden shop. The latter I suspected may've been a shop which also sold plants, it's why I stop and go in and find there isn't any food or drinks. On the way out the woman owner who's returning from an open van with stock, I ask is there a shop where I can buy a cold drink, points me along to the bar.

There is a cursed steep hill around the next bend onward. I have plenty of warm water to drink, not exactly refreshing. Then after the grade has lessened to a steady five per cent, there are picnic tables in among the trees to the side. A perfect camping spot and what is more when I turn in, some kind soul has left an almost full two litre bottle of mineral water upon one of the table in the shade.

Wednesday

It was too warm to sleep much even though completely undressed lying on top of the open sleeping bag with the tent open. The sun rises about quarter to six. I'm up and breakfasted and am on the road not long after six climbing where I left off the day before.

It's well I camped in the woodland where I did, as once the road levels out upon the plateau, it's all open farmland without as much as a grove of trees to hide in.

Soon my early start is being hampered by a sea mist rolling in from the side, which becomes even thicker as the road gently rolls down again.

I stop and don my yellow reflector vest and put on the rear light as visibility is reduced further; but then, as quickly as it appeared, it breaks up into twists lingering upon the fields of ripe wheat and barley stubble.

The road goes on for seemingly quite a bit before reaching an expected T junction with SS18 on the outskirts of Vibo Valentia where I turn right. This is all downhill and meanders with rows of olive trees to the side and reminds me much like southern Spain.

I stop in an extended urban area for coffee at nine, then not far onward, there's resurfacing or something going on and temporary orange signs point to a divertion right along a narrow bumpy residencial street approaching Palmi with it's town centre on clifftops and a tough winding grade through streets there. Just short of the centre there's a small Conad supermarket on a hill-bend, where I stop and do the day's stock up and buy a bottle of Italian beer, which I enjoy on the opposite side of the turn in the street sat in a viewpoint bench by railing looking down over tiled rooftops of the town piled against the cliff up from the beach.

Supermarket that source meat from humanly and locally reared adult animals.

What this old Italian doesn't know about beer isn't worth printing here.

I'm still on the diversion leaving Palmi: the signs send me uphill again, then steeply down where the diversion route ends back on SS18 and climbs the same steep hill a second time, that I just climbed and descended.

Once over the summit to be rolling down is well overdue.

The road continues for a few kilometres gently downhill to where it meets with the autostada at a roundabout and my road is right and an abrupt drop down to the coast follows.

On the way down I meet a cycle-touring couple struggling up and seeing no traffic is coming swing across to there's side to meet them. We exchange names. They Joana and Amadeus from Poland, riding from Sicily to Vienna and tell me all about interesting sites I'll pass ahead, much of which pass over me as it'll mean much time off the bike walking up hills. And having just started their tour are full of enthusiasm for Italy, while with all the hills, bad roads and lack of signage, my patience has just about run out.

For the rest of the day I'm on a picturesque coast road with cliffs on the inside, doing much to rekindle enthusiasm for Italy.

And later even though I'd rode pass the roll-on roll-off ferry across the narrow strait to Sicily in Villa San Giovanni (the fault of poor signage as usual), the dotted line ferry crossing on my map goes from Reggio, a fair few kilometres further through a rough city street and I've to double back, some scooter riders lining up to get on the ferry take a friendly interest in my bike ride, restoring my faith in the always kind Italian character.

Joana & Amedeus from Poland on their way from Sicily to Vienna.

Descend to the Calabria coast with Sicily in sight.

Crumbing reinforced concrete railing pillar.

I don't know exactly what this means. Some kind of risky behaviour ahead, perhaps?

Today's ride: 265 km (165 miles)
Total: 6,749 km (4,191 miles)

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