Italy South by Southwest: Bari to Cosenza.

July 5, 2015

Thursday 19.30. Passengers begin arriving for the overnight sailing.

Friday

The sea is flat and grey when I first glance out and it is a grey morning. It is still very early, so I lay back down upon the floor in my sleeping-bag underneath a row of seats. There are other passengers doing the same. No one else stirs.

Even though I'd slept well, I sleep more and the next I'm aware is people are up and moving. The sun gleams in through the windows and then there's a crackle in the tenor speakers: an announcement in three languages, the last in English "Good morning ladies and gentlemen. We will be arriving in the port of Bari shortly......." I look out and see the city sky-line complete with dominant church spire, dockside cranes and low undulating hinterland of the Italian southeast coast just ahead in the morning sunshine.

Later I'm out where lots of other passenger line the deck-side railings, looking down as the ferry turns and backs up to the quay. Lines are dropped and men on the ground secure them. Then I and everybody head inside awaiting an announcement to disembark.

I breakfast on muesli and natural yogurt bought back in Bar, sat upon a block underneath a palm-tree along the waterfront promenade. Then cycle on through an arch gateway in the old city wall and stop at a café for what turns out to be a very expensive cappuccino and cornet as they call croissants here, three euros fifty. I wish I had of waited and stopped at an Eni petrol station café, where the same would only run to one eighty. The reason I stopped here was they'd "Free Wi-Fi". But logging on, additional details are necessary: there's a landing page which, being in Italian, and in any case would've no doubt meant creating an account requiring me to fill in a telephone number, something I do not have, I couldn't get beyond.

I ride a few blocks to stock up for the road at the small supermarket which I used back in May, around the corner from the hostel I stayed in then.

Ready to leave and the street I take thinking it'll take me quickly out of the city, goes one way then back. I've come an awful way alongside rail-lines before going underneath and back in the same direction as previously, all the time swerving this way and that, avoiding potholes and recessed drain-covers. The reality of Italian roads and what is more, there is no signage showing the way, except that is for the autostrada. The rear-wheel inadvertently slides sideway into a hole and the tyre presses hard against the abrupt edge on the way out almost touching the rim, reminding me I need to stop and put more air in my rear tyre.

I have to follow my instinct. "Via Napoli" the bumpy road from a roundabout looks about right. Having been this way before, I'm keen to get on the minor road through rolling countryside, avoiding the straight highway "SP96" toward Altamura. The road with dry-stone walls to the side, olive groves and low rock-outcrop hills soon ends in chaos with road-works approaching a town reducing the way to a single lane and a traffic-light alternatively letting queuing traffic go on green. Already it is just too warm to be stopped waiting for the light to change. The tarmac radiates hot air.

Then the town has diversions sending me along narrow streets and eventually I see direction signs, or "Tutti Direcones" When I'm back on the right path, I'm on the SP96, the one I tried avoiding; a straight fairly busy single-carriageway climbing up and over each undulation in the way, although with a narrow bike-wide margin much of the way, making it possible to cycle with care; until, a long section where they're building a second carriageway alongside wherein, the metal crash-barrier on the inside has been replaced by a hideous orange plastic-mesh fence enclosing the newly rolled soil and hard-core, reducing the shoulder to near zero. One moments lack of vigilance, or a truck passing too close and I'd ride in against the meshing with for instants, a strap closing on the front-pannier catching. Resulting in a nasty-painful fall.

By Altamura I pass the right uphill turnoff for town, remaining on the bypass and take the left turning for Matera, a road with all the characteristics of a motorway, dual-carriageway with a good wide shoulder that I begin to suspect that it is. Though I haven't passed the usual signboard: no horse-drawn or slow vehicle, pedestrians, motorcycles under a certain capacity, or of coarse, no-cycling. Just as I'm wary of a traffic police patrol car coming along, I see a service road on the outside, which I join at the next slip road off. A few kilometres on this leads me to a hypermarket, where it is good to get into cool air-conditioning. And later with some added items to my earlier shop, I lunch in the shade at the front.

When I was here in May, I referred to it as "gentle green Puglia". whereas now it can only be descripted as a harsh yellowish orange. The Barley has ripened and been harvested leaving rows of fragrant straw propped up on stubble, or rows of round bales.

The road pass Matera, now a more usual non-motorway highway, heads toward the coasts. I'm hoping to join the road between Taranto in the east and Reggio in the west, but when I get as far, this road although not shown in the map as such, is a motorway with the usual no-cycling sign. So I find my way onto a good wide and smooth road northwest toward Potenza, hoping to making a route through the hills further north.

When it is time, I pull into an old unproductive olive grove to camp for the night. Exhausted. My nose is burned having pointed southwest into the sun all day. And my right foot is painful, the foot having expanded with the heat inside the cycling shoe.

Saturday

Lots of rural houses like this one lay empty.

It was early when I woke up. The time on my watch half five when I get out of the sleeping-bag. The yogurt bought yesterday I've with my muesli, is a disappointment in comparison to the rich creamy yogurt I bought and drank daily in the former Yugoslavia.

While eating in the opening of my tent, a blue Renault Traffic van pulls in off the road and halts on a farm track not more than a hundred metres from my tent in the lee of an overgrown olive tree. I'm almost sure they see me as a man opens the passenger side door and jumps out. He slams the door shut and the van revved up, lurching further along the track. The short thick built man left behind stoops and begins gather large stones that'd rolled onto the track and throws them to the side and continues the way the van went. Either they haven't seen me, or if they did, they don't care.

I'm on the road before seven continuing upon this wide smoothly surface road to Potenza until a left turnoff toward Stigiano, which rings a bell, having passed that way in May. This takes me along a narrow minor road: the surface a bit rougher, but with little traffic as I reach a split and go right to avoid a steep incline to a hilltop village, continuing around and over undulations pass stubble fields and sweeping down into a wide valley pass an olive grove, then a large block of pine plantations. I cross a long bridge over a dry river and at a water fount on the other side, drink plenty of cold pure tasting water and fill all my water bottles, totalling five litres.

There follows a stiff climb up from the bridge and dropping down the other side by Tursi spread up a sheer hillside, I turn right onto road "SS653" a dead straight smooth highway with a pipeline on stilts alongside, which I know to be drinking water, as further along the road climbs up by a reservoir. This is the same road I came in May. Only that day I's riding the other way and turned off when the reservoir was a green line on the horizon coming the other way.

It takes me until two to get to where I turned off that day, the petrol stations, builders suppliers and other industrial units spread along the road which is Francaville in Sinni. Today I turn off southwest toward Rotonda and a national park Pollino: a large green patch on my map with pictures of bears, reminding me that I saw a pair of large wing-span birds hover overhead a little earlier. I think they may've been Falcons.

I'm climbing most of the afternoon, though in wooded canopy, keeping me in the shade and the temperature bearable.

By evening I've come to a water-fount and trough with a steep track up through the trees to a level-topped promontory with a long picnic table. Plenty of water, a flat place to put the tent, a table to sit and eat and later write upon.

Looking at the map I'm making good progress, having almost crossed the Italian peninsular in two days

My right foot inside my cycling shoe was in agony most of the day.

Road SS653: a descent Italian road with a safe shoulder to cycle upon.

Notice men on the shore fishing have a sun-parasol as temperatures approach forty degrees.

In the afternoon my route climbed into a national park area.

The shade makes cycling a lot more pleasant.

When it was time to camp I found this spot.

Sunday

All this climbing amounts to very slow going and Rotonda is a lot further than it seems on the map. I thought I'd get as far yesterday afternoon, but I only get as far shortly before nine this morning after a long drop into a hollow. Before entering town my road takes a sharp left and goes up a ramp, something in the order of fifteen to twenty per cent gradient and once over a crest, it goes on for quite a bit more before levelling along a valley, but with a mountain ahead, more climbing. As the road tilts up again, I'm glad to see a water trough with fresh water flowing out of a pipe. I pause here drinking a litre of cold water.

When I get going again it doesn't feel too bad and the climb remains a steady seven per cent turning back on itself through a number of bends with pine-trees to the side.

Soon I reach and cross a saddle and wind back down with chest high yellow wildflowers field to the side. And below a light brown dryer country with the straight line of the Salermo-Reggio autostrada ploughted through; which, eventually I drop down parallel with before another big drop.

Approaching noon I reach Moreno, a tradition small town which the road narrows through and straightaway come to a halt outside a street-side café with a picture board advertising a delicious looking Panini sandwich.

Inside behind a bar a grandmotherly matron and a ten year old boy hold fort while a couple of locals stand with small cups of espresso on the bar. The old lady askes gruffly the boy what language I'm speaking when I order. And just as I think she's trying to communicate that I can't have a sandwich, she takes over from the boy who's practising his English, quickly listing the various fillings I can have. I say mozzarella and she goes through a door into a back room.

While I wait the boy stares intensely at a phone and I look at the many framed black and white cityscapes on the wall. There's New York Brooklyn Bridge. There's the Eiffel Tower with a skyblue Citroen 2VC with a couple stood in embrace through the roll-down canvas inserted upon the cobble-street. There're also fifties movie scenes and stars. There's a large portrait of Marlin Monroe and a Carrie Grant still.

The old lady returns clutching a plat with my sandwich, crisp toasted on the outside with succulent cheese, ham and tomato oozing out. It's a meal and afterwards I've a cone of pistachio and forest fruits ice-cream and have a second cappuccino sat out front while watching more locals come and go.

Ten kilometres further I reach Castrovillari and have a hard time of it finding the road on. A small town by Italian standards but, that means the main street through is three kilometres long gradually downhill and at the end of it the way fizzles out into narrow streets leading nowhere, so I've to return back a kilometre uphill in thirty-eight degree heat to where I'd passed through a cross in the middle of town where I go right and cycle a few kilometres more before I'm back upon the road on.

Then by Spezzano I turn right onto a dual-carriageway closely parallel again with the autostrada and even though I'm cycling at twenty kilometres an hour, hot air radiates from the tarmac and metal crash barrier on the inside is debilitating. The barrier has no gaps to get through even if there was a tree to stop under for shade, which there is not. Though I do come to a bus-shelter: a metal structure which is like a sauna inside, but beside it is an opening with steps down into a sub-terrain pedestrian walkway under the road. Sitting on the top step is refreshingly cool as a draught breezes up from the underground cavern. I drink two cans of Fanta and have some wine. Riding on there is a café open and I spend a half hour over a cappuccino in there in cool air-conditioning. And further still there's a big Eurospar open, yet another chance of refreshment and waiting out the worse of the afternoon heat.

Late on the chances of a good place to camp are looking slim as the road now climbs arduously away from the autostada through scattered villages and agricultural land.

I come to a point where I sweep down through a built up area and immediately begin climbing again and think this is silly, so passing a gap down off the road into a barley stubble field I turnoff down, wherein is level with a roadside hedge shielding a possible stealth camp. But as it is only a few hundred metres up from the nearest houses in the place I passed through, I lean the bike in against the hedge and sit down to wait until dark before putting up the tent.

While waiting I cook pasta and write my diary.

After eight a white Fiat Panda shows up upon a fern enclose track by a cluster of trees along the top of the stubble field. I don't think I'm seen as I remain still against the darkening profile of the hedge. The car remains and I assume there must be a house within the tree cluster. Anyway I wait, reading my book to well after sunset before moving to put my tent up.

During the day I resorted to pedalling with my Keen sandals, my off-the-bike shoes, such was the pain of expanding feet inside my cycling shoes.

Resurfacing going on upon the Autostrada.

A lot of Italian agriculture is upon extremely steep slopes.

Today's ride: 373 km (232 miles)
Total: 6,484 km (4,027 miles)

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