I’ve just got back from a few days in Finale Ligure, Italy, I first visited about 18 years ago as a climber. I haven’t been back since. Carl and Sian had been there a few times with their mountain bikes and talked highly of it. It happened that a bank holiday weekend coincided with a trip they were doing down there so we took the family down with all the bikes and camping stuff. It ended up being quite a party because Sara, Guy and Phil from FlowMTB where there for a few days too.
Thankfully the weather was good so I was able to abandon the family on a couple of the days and go for a ride with all of them. Carl was guiding and this is what he showed us.
Roman Bridges (Ponti Romani), 27km, 40/60 singletrack/otherstuff
This was super convenient as it virtually left from the campsite, it involved a complete mix of the riding and terrain found in the area and included a singletrack perched above the sea and sandy beaches. This is fairly close to riding heaven for me.
Guy’s GPS log of the circuit is here
Caprazoppa, 8km, 70/30
This starts off with a hot grunt out of town to the hilltop west of Finale, here there is a church and a café (if it’s open), we managed to upset the café owner, when we arrived at 1220 the café was closed, we decided to make use of the tables and chairs to stuff down a couple of Mule Bars and take in the scenery, the owner then turned up and let us know that he wasn’t too impressed. A shame as we had wanted to give him some of our cash!
From there it is pretty much 100% singletrack back down to the valley bottom, some of this was just a little hairy for this early in the season!
La Briga, 6km, 50/50
After pizza’s and salad in town we road climbed up to Manie, we caught up with a couple of Americans on hire bikes out for a gentle ride, I only saw the back side of a silver haired guy riding in flipflops, a dropped back and rode with his wife which I could just about manage, considering that her son is Geoff Banks this means she is pretty much old enough to be my Mum, ouch. Anyway, the descent was pretty much all smooth singletrack followed by a few hundred metres of cobbled path to finish in the town. Brilliant.
So all in all a brilliant few days, makes me think about endlessride doing some mtb trips down there after the Morzine mountain bike season is over. It’ll have to be in late September or October and will obviously involve a hotel and some local guides, though it looks like the hunting season would impact on this.
The GPX file for the second day
You can buy the Blu Bike guide from the local shops and the local 1:25,000 map “Alp cartoguide 2″.
