April 16, 2023
Taormina to Randazzo
We woke to rain this morning and some howling wind too. The rain was as predicted; I’m not sure about the wind. In any case, the rain was predicted to ease off around 10, conveniently our check-out time. And it did! It was even sunny! Though we knew it wouldn’t stay that way.
Given the forecast and our experience at elevation on Monte Lauro, we decided to change our planned route to stay low in the Alcantara valley. As the day progressed, and the rain started and stopped, we didn’t regret this decision because every time we looked up to the shoulder of Etna, it looked miserable up there.
We started by retracing the route we’d taken to Taormina, down to sea level and then up the valley through the scented citrus groves. We crossed the river and pedalled up past Gole Alcantara, which looked very different from this direction and moving slowly. I’d missed all the tacky tourist stuff as we zoomed down after having visited via the community stairs.
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1 year ago
When I created today's route on rwgps, it really wanted us to cross the Alcantara again and ride through Gravà. This would also involve about 2 km of unpaved surface, according to rwgps. We could, of course, ignore this and stay on the highway through Francavilla, the way we’d gone on Friday.
The weather was nice at this point so we decided to go for it. The road through Francavilla hadn’t been attractive at speed and would be even less so riding uphill.
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It started out well, with asphalt in good condition through Gravà. Then, as expected, the surface became gravel/dirt, sometimes rideable, sometimes not, but an easy walk. We had just agreed that this was pretty nice, if slow, when it wasn’t anymore.
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It was only 2-300 metres of heavy-duty pushing and then carrying our bikes (actually, Al carried the bikes and I shuttled the panniers) until we regained an actual proper (paved!) path. Oddly, just at this point, we encountered a couple of German hikers trying to find the trail they wanted on their way up to Castiglione. It seemed that there were several paths in this area that had been washed out at some point and never restored.
The paved path, labelled UA1 on my Garmin, took us to SP 7 at the multi-arched bridge over the Alcantara, and we were on a proper road again.
We turned onto another UA designated road that paralleled SP 7ii for a bit more peace and because I wanted to see the Cuba di Santa Domenica, also known as the Cuba Bizantina, since we were passing by so close.
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We are our snack here, the same thing the German family there was also doing. They said they had been trying to hike in Sicily but had pretty well given up because the trails only seemed to exist in guidebooks. On the ground, they kept vanishing.
Back on our bikes just in time for the rain showers to start again. They were off and on so we never soaked through (we’d brought only rain jackets on this trip) but it was a chilly headwind the rest of the way into Randazzo. We found our accommodation, Ai Tre Parchi B&B, with no circling around or wrong turns. A record! Nice and warm inside as the rain started again. We have two nights here so will see what tomorrow brings.
Today's ride: 43 km (27 miles)
Total: 1,222 km (759 miles)
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