To Porto Cesareo & Galatina

April 10, 2023

To Porto Cesareo

The original plan for the day was to bike from here to Galatina, 42 miles to the south, where we’re booked for another two night stay. We scrapped this plan though once it became apparent that it was going to rain most of today. We could bike 40+ miles in the rain of course, but we don’t really want to. After all, this was part of the reason we sold our home - so we’d have the financial flexibility to bail ourselves out of unpleasantries like this.

Instead, we find a cheapo B&B in Porto Cesareo, at almost exactly the midway point. We’ll bike there today, bike to Galatina tomorrow after sunny skies are due to return, and if need be write off the cost of the first night in Galatina.

We’re pleased this morning to see that with luck we have two dry hours if we leave early, which should just about get us Porto Cesareo dry if we’re lucky. We get down to breakfast early and are out the door at 8:30. Before we leave we send a note to Sabrina’s B&B requesting as early a check-in as possible, since we hope to arrive by 11.

Prepared for the worst, hoping for the best, taking what comes.

Conditions are as we hoped when we bike out of Manduria. It’s dry for now and lightly overcast with occasional bright spots breaking through. It’s windy, but in our favor for the first half of the ride as we bike nearly straight south toward the coast.

Looking back at Manduria - which, unlike Oria, is not a hill town.

She’s almost too quick for me. I just catch Rocky before she rounds the bend.

This looks like quite a fair day, but it’s a misleading shot. Skies are much darker behind me, and coming our way.

Making tracks toward the coast, helped along by a brisk wind.

The rural architecture grows more interesting as we move south.

In Salento. We’ll see lots of scenes like this in the coming days, I believe.

And like this: stone walls, olive trees, and wildflowers.

I don’t remember what these structures are called, but they’re reminiscent of the trulli we’ll start seeing in a few days.

This was interesting. There was a lineup of these enumerated shrines along the road here. This is number 13.

Queen Anne’s lace maybe? We’re racing the weather so I didn’t slow down for a closer look.

The sea comes into view. Soon we’ll turn east to parallel it for the next ten miles, and the camera will get stashed away when light showers break out.

Ten miles into the ride we reach the coast and turn to follow it almost straight east for the final half of the distance. Almost as soon as we turn the conditions do too. The tailwind we’ve enjoyed until now is suddenly a crosswind of course, and it’s quite chilly - the expected high today is in the mid-fifties at the most. And, within the next mile or two we start feeling the first drops of a light sprinkling that will accompany us all the way to Porto Cesareo.

Video sound track: Adrift, by Yasmin Williams

We’re both chilled and ready to get off the road and find shelter when we pull into town, and feel very good about our decision to stop short here. A few blocks from our room we take shelter under a canopy in front of Riviera Bar to check our phones for messages from our host. We each fish our own phone out because they’re buried for protection from the rain, and we’re pleased to learn that Paola is waiting for us at the room and we can check in at any time. We of course head right over, and after walking and biking up and down the street for several blocks looking for #16 without success because virtually none of the doorways have numbers above them we’re saved when a woman on the sidewalk asks if we’re her guests.

Paola is very nice. She speaks almost no English, but just enough to apologize that there is no place for the bikes other than in our room, and then points up a long flight of stairs. She carries all four panniers up, while I carry my bike up and then Rachael and I team up on hers.

Another pointless up and down, as we’ll soon realize.

She orients us to our room, discusses arrangements for the breakfast in the morning, and then leaves us to it. We soon realize that we need her back though when we try to warm up our freezing unit and discover the controller is totally unresponsive. Well, not quite - you can at least turn it on and activate the fan, but the temperature is frozen at 15C and it just blows cold air.

Ten minutes later Paola is back, starts to show us how it works, but soon sees it doesn’t work for her either. She experiments for about five minutes, then gets on the phone with a man who coaches her through some ideas that come to nothing, and soon he’s on the scene too. Another twenty minutes, and they give up. It’s out of order, they can’t repair it, and we’re all trying to figure out what comes next. They offer us another B&B a mile out in the country, which doesn’t appeal to us. Instead, Rachael remembers that we still have that unit in Galatina, now only another 20 miles away; and with an improving forecast for the afternoon it looks like we could hang out here for a couple of hours and then bike the rest of the way.

Our apologetic hosts tell us we can stay here until the rains cease and then let ourselves out, which sounds perfect. We plan to have lunch at the restaurant across the street that Rachael had been eyeing while I was carrying my bike upstairs, and then come back here and digest until the rains cease.

An interlude

We start gathering up the usual items - phones, wallet, keys, glasses - to leave for the restaurant, when one item turns up missing: my wallet. We have stuff strewn around everywhere in kind of a mess, so I just start looking around - puzzled at first, then increasingly concerned and finally desperate. It’s not here. We both look at each other when we finally give up the hunt, feeling sick to the point of nausea.

With nothing else to be done but feeling little optimism, we head back to Riviera Bar, the last place I’m certain I had my wallet. I know I had it then because I had put it and my phone together in a ziploc bag this morning for protection from the rain. We walk into Riviera Bar, I look at the staff and ask if anyone speaks English so I can pose the question, and two guys’ faces light up before I can say more. One pulls out the wallet still in its ziplock bag, which they found outside the restaurant beneath the canopy.

No words. There are just no words for how this feels.

After shooting both arms above my head with glee I offer profuse thanks and put a generous tip in the tip jar, and then we start looking around for what’s on offer so we can at least give them some business. We select cheese and salami sandwiches and beverages, and just sit and consider our fortunes for the next twenty minutes.

Perfectly dressed for the setting, as always.

I was surprised that Riviera had an IPA available (pronounced eepa, so I’ll know how to ask next time). But a Hemp IPA? That’s a new one for me, but apparently it’s a growing market niche.

A half hour later we’re back at the room waiting for the rains to cease while Rachael huddles under the blankets trying to put a stop to the shakes she’s been experiencing ever since we left the restaurant. It really is cold!

About an hour later the rain stops as promised, we pack up, schlep everything down those stairs, and are off on the unexpected second half of the day’s ride.

To Galatina

The first third of the ride follows the coast on SP286, which even though it gives us sea views we find just a little too busy to really enjoy. We’re pretty happy when we finally come to our turnoff and head for the interior, even though it comes with the big climb of the day. I’d noticed this apparently steep little rise when I mapped out the route but couldn’t see a reasonable way to route around it - there’s no escaping an abrupt elevation change when you leave the shore.

But there’s nothing to it. I’m still waiting for the climb to start when we stop to take our coats off because it’s warming up finally, and am surprised to see we’re halfway up already. The big challenge of the day tops out at maybe 4%, and lasts a few hundred yards.

Leaving Porto Cesareo, which would have been fine as an overnight stay too if there’s been heat.

Looking back at the big climb of the day.

The rest of the ride to Galatina is quiet and scenic, in an understated way. We enjoy a nice tailwind for much of it, and the miles get checked off easily as we bike past stone walls, orchards, and curious stone structures. It all feels just a little wilder now that we’re further south on the peninsula.

We’re on very quiet roads like this for most of the rest of the day.

Another castillo for Kelly. Actually, these probably aren’t really castles but fortified masserias (farms).

Our progress slows down considerably though when we come to an unpaved, muddy stretch. RideWithGPS had promised us that today’s ride was 100% paved, but it’s more like 97%. Not much difference really, but we find these 3% to be particularly annoying as we repeatedly dismount and try to find the least treacherously slick path around or through the next puddle.

Nope, not paved. It does have a familiar feeling though.

Yup. Definitely gives off that Sicilian vibe.

After we’re out of it we take five minutes to bang our shoes together and wipe them in the weeds to get the mud out, and then I find a squashed rusty tin can to trim the mud off the tires.

Five miles from Galatina we’re back on pavement and making good time so we stop to call the host and let him know we’ll be there in a half hour. Five minutes later we come to another unpaved, soggy stretch that slows us down but at least does service by rinsing most of the mud off the tires as we wheel the bikes through.

Stunning. We saw several fields like this as we neared Galatina. Is lupine ever planted as a cover crop?

We arrive in Galatina not long after six, and only about ten minutes later than the time we announced to our hosts. they’re waiting in the doorway when we arrive, and then show us up to our splendid apartment - spacious, kitchen facilities, coffee, heat!! It will be an excellent place to stay for the next two nights. Now that we’re here we feel really lucky that the B&B in Porto Cesareo had a broken heater.

Only one drawback - there’s no elevator, and these stairs are even steeper and more precarious than the ones in Porto Cesareo.

Seems like piling on to have to lug the bikes up a second of these staircases at the end of the day.

Galatina itself looks amazing, as we see when we cross through the gate to its historical center and wander through its quiet streets on the way to dinner. Our hosts described it as like a smaller version of Lecce, but without the crowds. And they’re right - it looks so to us too. We’ll look around tomorrow though. Tonight, it’s enough to enjoy our meal, celebrate the fact that we’re alive, and reflect back on another day utterly unlike any other we’ve ever experienced.

Celebrating another absolutely unique day with a calice of Puglian primitivo.

Heart

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Ride stats today: 41 miles, 1,000’; for the tour: 438 miles, 27,900’

Today's ride: 41 miles (66 km)
Total: 438 miles (705 km)

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Keith AdamsI suppose that it's inevitable, given your nomadic lifestyle, that things will periodically go missing but your luck with your wallet is, in its way, even more remarkable than the saga of my tires last summer. I'm glad that it once again turned out alright in the end.
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1 year ago

Scott AndersonTo Keith AdamsIt’s pretty phenomenal luck alright. That’s twice in the last year - you might remember the one I lost in Wales that a good soul found and then contacted me to come get. I need to tighten up my act. I don’t think I can count on being thrice lucky like this.
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1 year ago

Rachel and Patrick HugensGood Karma that your wallet is returned!! We've been lucky with the weather so far, haven't had to pull out our rain gear once.
We think that is about to change.
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1 year ago