The Giro d’Italia swept its way through Tuscany last week and I was lucky enough to catch a glimpse of the cyclists as they made their way up and around Assisi’s Chiesa di San Francesco.
I wouldn’t call myself a cyclist per se. Whenever I go out on the bike, I end up spending more time walking beside it than I do riding it, but all these men in bike shorts have put me in a cycling kind of mood.
The Maremma is ridiculously popular with cyclists. It doesn’t matter what season you visit, you’ll see them pumping their way up and down the hills in the region at all hours of the day and night.
I think they’re so fond of the Maremma because the landscape presents all sorts of challenges. Depending on where you choose to bike, you can encounter anything from forests so thick you can hardly pass through to hills high enough to give you vertigo.
But what you won’t find is traffic, pollution and crowds. The Maremman landscape is in many places untouched by human hands and human interference.
It’s what appeals to the cyclists the most, I think – the promise of peace and the beauty of being alone with your thoughts as you speed through the countryside.
There are more than 30 official cycling itineraries in the Maremma. The APT tourism website has a fantastic tool where you can select sections of the Maremma and see what cycling itineraries they have.
The best part is, you can narrow down your options by choosing the difficulty level, length, elevation level and road type you want. It’s all in Italian, but for a quick translate, I’ve print-screened the page:
The coloured circles are the different regions in the Maremma. FYI, I live in the Area del Tufo!
- Difficolta: Difficulty
- Facile: Easy
- Medio: Medium
- Difficile: Hard
- Lunghezza: Length
- Dislivello: Elevation level
- Strada: Road type, if you click the menu you can choose from either asphalt or mixed
- Qualunque: Any type
.
Once you’ve selected your options, you’ll get a list of itineraries for your area. Again they’re in Italian, but Google translate can make quick work of them and they’re pretty easy to follow anyway!
Gran Tour della Maremma
The longest and hardest cycling itinerary in the Maremma is the Gran Tour Della Maremma.
This 405,000km track is absolutely torturous. We’re talking mixed road types and a maximum elevation of 4,500km.
But like its name suggests, it’s a grand tour of the Maremma. It passes through all the major centres, Grosseto, Manciano, Massa Marittima, Castiglione della Pescaia and Pitigliano.
Follow it and you get to see a side of the Maremma most tourists don’t. And I’m not just talking about the natural beauty. This bike route passes through a lot of smaller, more country towns, so you get to experience a real taste of Tuscan life along with all the tourist hotspots.
That’s probably why all the cyclists I know love it. When they do decide to attempt the itinerary, they set themselves a minimum number of ks to cover each day, book agriturismi in all the places they’re going to stop overnight in and soak up the Maremma in the most organic way possible.
You have to train pretty hard to complete it, but it’s worth the effort I say, especially if you’re itching to see the Maremma completely natural and wild.
Cycling Events
But it’s not just the tourists that seem to enjoy touring the Maremma on two wheels.
There are plenty of competitions that are open to amateur and professional cyclists alike. Pitigliano has one that winds through its Vie Cave (the ancient Etruscan super highways), Massa Marittima has the Maremma Mountain Bike Cup and the Argentario has its Gran Fondo Mountain Bike… and that’s just to name a few.