Beautiful out this morning. I woke up early and hiked down the stairs for another look around town in the sun; and then clam bored back up again, wondering whether living in a place like this would be more likely to lengthen your life by keeping you fit, or shorten it by breaking down the moving parts.
After enjoying another fine B&B breakfast and taking in the wonderful view over the top of the city, we packed up and worked our way out of town and eastward toward the Hyblaean Mountains (or Iblean, as they are also spelled). For the first half of the ride we followed the SS124, a low traffic secondary road, as it rolled it's way gently up into the hills through a string of small towns: Grammichele, Vizzini, and Buccheri. The riding was brilliant - one of the prettiest.cycling stretches of the tour, through country quite different than any we have ridden through before. The Hyblaean Mountains are a large limestone/karst formation, producing a landscape that reminded me of parts of Croatia or southern France.
The three towns were brilliant in their own way though, and unexpectedly so. What guidebooks ever mention Grammichele, for example? We stopped there to shop around for materials for lunch, but stayed awhile to admire it's beautiful central plaza, architecture and street art. Vizzini surprised us too, with a painted tile staircase nearly as impressive as the much better known one. I think we would have been more admiring of Buccheri also if we hadn't been so confused about its labyrinthine network of very steep streets - they helped us keep intact our string of days we were forced to dismount and push.
We finally found the right road out of Buccheri, and headed east toward Pantalica, a UNESCO protected Roman necropolis. It is a long dead end ride out to Pantalica, but we planned to make a partial loop of it by branching off onto a different minor road toward Palazzo Acreide on the way back. When we reached this road though, we quickly concluded that we weren't interested in riding it - our map listed it as paved, but that's an over generous rating it's more like a roughly paved cobblestone path. Looking at the clock, looking at the 1000' drop to the river to see Pantalica and the climb back again, we decided to shorten the ride rather than lengthen it.
We turned around, returned back to Buccheri, and took the most direct route to Piazzolo Acreide - a minor road that drops to the river and then slowly cand steeply cimbs out of it through the striking, limestone cliff lined Anapo Gorge. Once in top, we rolled along through more lovely upland landscape, with the lanes and fields defined by beautiful grey stone walls. Arriving in town, we were fortunate to have saved a bit of energy for the end - just enough to push up the excruciatingly steep five blocks to our B&B. When we arrived, our lovely hostess Lidia told us that we should have asked directions so we could have found the easiest route to her place.
Dinner was a blowout. I've been having a hard time keeping my weight up, so we decided to order an extra dish at dinner - we ordered the appetizer plate, a side of grilled vegetables, and pasta. Servings of all three were huge; we were served an entire loaf of sliced bread for the table, and brought a heaping bowl of steamed mussels as an extra, because it's what they were having themselves, and they were delicious. Unbelievable, and painful. I felt like I needed to hole up in a cave and hibernate for a month or so.
The beautiful public square, Grammichele - actually, a perfect hexagon - the town was replatted on a hexagonal grid when it was rebuilt after the earthquake. The Chiesa Madre and town hall are opposite. The statue is of the town's founder, Carlo Maria Cafara. He must have been a Renaissance man - the steps leading to his statue are inscribed: Arte, Science, Lettere, Filosofia, Politica
Our route to Vizzini followed the tracks into the Hyblean Mountains. I think we saw more red poppies today than in the rest of all our travels combined.
Vizzini is yet another town with an impressive staircase with hand painted majolica tile. On this one, the Salita Marineo, each riser has a miniature painting of a Vizzini palace or other fine building.
Looking on a navigation error, on our shortened ride to Pantalica. We had thought we could return along this paved road, until we saw that it was rough cobblestones. We weren't up to ten miles of cobblestones, so we doubled back the way we came in.
