Bike tour at Fiastra

Last friday, Matteo and I went on a mountain bike tour around the lake of Fiastra (Marche). It was kind of exhausting but great fun. I hope to do it again sometime soon (perhaps with a GPS receiver this time... ).

Click on the map to see the complete map of the tour on Live Maps (3D mode suggested).

Arrival at S. Lorenzo sul Lago

Click on the small maps to see the exact point using Live Maps. Again, 3D mode is much better and also shows height information.

I left Bevagna at 7:40 in the morning and arrived at the lake a couple of minutes after Matteo. We met at the big parking in the residential area, where we also left our cars.

We hadn't decided for a precise route: I was insisting on climbing the Monte Fiegni and then going downhill through Rio Vallone (on the left side of the valley) as seen on an internet forum, but just looking at the mountain seemed a bit discouraging. So we decided to go towards Podalla and then eventually to the town of Monastero, on the right side of the valley.

Ready to go!

But where do we go?

Road to Podalla

Podalla is a very small town on the side of the mountain. After turning right on the main road to the dam, we had to climb uphill for about half an hour on a nice paved road through the woods.

Podalla

We got to the church of Podalla and did a short stop in order to shoot some pictures. A nice lady confirmed that there actually is a road to Monastero and this settled all questions about our next destination.

To Monastero

We took a small and steep gravel road winding uphill to the top of the mountain. It was past eleven and it was getting warmer.

Halfway to the top

After a couple of turns the road reaches some kind of plateau, where I shot this beautiful picture (stitched together with Windows Live Gallery):

Signpost

After a while we reached a lonely signpost in the middle of the plateau. We weren't exactly sure on which road to take: the gravel road going straight ahead was going uphill and - seemingly - in the wrong direction, while the path through the woods was going downhill towards Monastero.

We picked the gravel road first, went ahead for a bit, but as it was getting harder and harder to get forward and we started thinking to be headed for the wrong side of the mountain, we turned around and went through the forest...

Of course the first one was the right road to take, with hindsight!

Through the woods

The ride on the very narrow path through the trees was quite entertaining, except for the fact that we went downhill for half an hour in the wrong direction... When we reached the bottom of the valley we found no clear way uphill and had to go back pushing the bikes.

Panorama

Into the woods

Matteo even had to repair one tyre

Downhill to the dam

Discouraged, we decided to go back to the lake and then take a short break nearby. Then we would take on the "Lame Rosse", which after all is what we always wanted to do in Fiastra since our last bike tour.

Short stop for lunch

Lame Rosse

The path to the "Lame Rosse" was very tough (at least for me). The road is extremely narrow in some points, full of stones and gravel and it goes always steeply uphill.

We almost gave up at some point, but by sheer will power we arrived to the end: a huge white gravel valley (ghiaione). We went uphill by feet and reached the wonderful red rock formations.