May 21, 2024
Day 12 - Monopoli to Bari
The flattest bike ride ever to finish the tour
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Our accommodation “Studio 31” provided a free cornetto and coffee breakfast at a local cafeteria. We supplemented with an extra pastry for Rich. Not much of a breakfast, really, for cyclists.
We were on the road by 1015 and quickly out of Monopoli on pretty good roads, including some impressive bike paths.
Our first town was Polignano a Mare, which we entered on a busy street with left and right entrances. Despite stop signs, the drivers here have a tendency to honk (or not) and drive right through the stop signs. We call these kinds of roads “shooting galleries” where we feel like the mechanical bunnies.
Eventually the road dead-ended into a nice pedestrian area overlooking Plignano’s beach. It’s a cool spot, but it was pretty crowded on this sunny, hot morning.
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3 months ago
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Our planned route had us heading up slightly away from the beach to avoid riding next to the autostrada. Actually, we were finding the road along the autostrada to be pretty nice. Well-paved and with the tailwind we had, we were motoring along. But nonetheless, we turned up into the olive groves. There were some marvelous specimens of trees.
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3 months ago
This plan came to an abrupt end when we came to a railroad crossing that was on the map, but didn’t exist in real life. A large concrete fence had been erected and it looked like a new rail line had been built. It appeared to be 2 sets of high-speed tracks. We decided that humping the bike and bags over the rail lines was a difficult and dangerous task. So we turned around and went back to the autostrada.
Back on the frontage road, we made really good time. We hit another long section of bike path and blew into Mola di Bari to look for some protein to complement the pitiful breakfast we’d had.
The small bar/pasticceria “Le Ré Ve” provided cold drinks and a lovely tuna sandwich, which we split.
We encountered more nice bike paths as we exited Mola di Bari.
On the final run into Bari, we were paced by a friendly local who helped us navigate around some puzzling routing mistakes made by the trip planner. We also took an action selfie to commemorate the end of another adventure.
And finally, the selfie with a city sign for our destination.
Soon enough we were contending with city traffic in Bari.
Finally at the old town, we walked the final distance to our accommodation “Corte San Triggiano 13”. We opened the door with the supplied code to find a nice lady still cleaning the apartment. She asked for “cinque minuti” so there was only one thing to do - go celebrate with gelato!
So, it’s done. 600+ kilometers over 11 days by two senior citizens who are definitely NOT athletes. No crashes, no flat tires, no arguments. We’ve had a great time, despite bad roads, headwinds, and sometime difficult terrain.
The Italian people have been incredible. Charming, sweet, helpful and kind. We’ve eaten some great food and seen some really beautiful things.
Bike touring is just a matter of starting, and then turning the pedals until you get to where you want to go. If we can do this, so can you. We encourage anyone reading this to try getting out on your bike. It’s really fun!
The riding part of this journal will stop here. I’ll fill in two more entries a bit later. One to describe our wandering way home, and another to summarize the trip a bit. Thanks to anyone who was following along - I’ll be back with those two pages early next week.
Today's ride: 49 km (30 miles)
Total: 655 km (407 miles)
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