DIY front wheel stand

Old South Italian motorbike trip

 

The guy above is yours truly Orestis, many years ago somewhere at Brindisi Italy. How come I post this now? Well, the "cons" of being a well travelled guy like me: There are still unpublished trips🙂

A bit funny how I got reminded about this one though:

A few days ago a lady commenting on how impressive is MY MAP with all these places I've been (most of them on my bike) said "you should visit South Italy with all these Greek elements around Puglia etc". How could she know that I've been there too but always thought I didn't have enough material to make it worth sharing. This made me browse my archives a little closer this time. Turns out that I had more stuff about it than I thought so...let's turn on the time machine and go!

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Just before summer is almost gone I decide to make a last short trip still in good weather conditions. Ι've never been to South Italy before and some Hellenic elements there make the whole idea even more attractive to me, including the volcano of Etna at Sicily which is the biggest and highest active one in Europe.

Since I am southbound Italy wise I choose Brindisi as the point of entry to Italy. I wave Patra goodbye and take the last shots before the ferry leaves the local port:

The only good thing about the trip with the ferry is the very calm Adriatic sea. The ferry is terrible with the rusty deck semi captured by retired equipment that wasn't recycled yet. Beyond gross so I focus on the sea instead.

Here's Rio bridge as we head West - the black smoke you see comes out of the dying ferry's engine:

Bela Mare:

The ferry enters the port of Brindisi the next morning in really sweet weather:

As I drive South the route from Brindisi to Lecce has nothing exciting but farther South the bits of Hellenism are obvious. Not only in the name of the villages/towns but in the signs too. For example, here I am at Calimera (means "good morning" in Greek) and the following sign means "welcome" in Greek:

And of course it's not the only sign around a Greek can resonate with:

The whole area looks quite poor and abandoned which is the feeling you get from South Italy in general. I didn't have the chance to speak in Greek with anyone there except only one guy who approached me asking for money to buy “Cafe – Nero” (coffee and water). The local Greek community is recognised by the Italian state as a linguistic minority and their language is called Grecanico.

Here's my iron horse parked at Martano while I seek for some short of breakfast:

Heading West this time, the signs reading “Magna Grecia” at Manduria, Sava (ancient name is Amphipolis) and Taranto reminds us that the whole area was a destination for the Greeks since the 8th b.c. century in their quest for new commercial sites:

Taranto is the biggest city around there and has some interesting spots but the traffic is too heavy and this puts you off when you want to explore it. Personally speaking it looked to me like some mediocre version of Patra.

The route up to Rocca Imperiale going Southwest is not so exciting. This village is interesting though and lies on a hill with a castle:

The locals are quite helpful but even more interesting for me is to experience the the sound of their speech and their behaviour in general: almost the same like the one you can find at the mountainous villages of Crete! Only the words they use are different and not all of them. This might apply in general for all South Italy but I find it more intense at this specific place.

South Italy is far behind from the central European average and this can result to not so pleasant experiences: for example as I stay at a 4 star hotel at Sibari, not only they have no one speaking English there but they try to cheat me as well on the use of internet. One guy tells me it's free and later when my connection goes down another one tells me that the free period expired and I should pay 2 euros per hour! Of course I refuse to do so and after fighting for a while trying to explain them that I am not as dumb as they might think I have free internet again. Oh, let's not forget he didn't miss cursing me in Italian, stupidly thinking that people from abroad (especially Greeks) can't get that. However, being solo with a bike unattended outside at night I decide not to pull this as far as possible...

In order to continue Southwest the most reasonable choice is to take the E45. Unfortunately the road network is not so developed and even some roads that are close to the coastline are not as scenic as they may look on the map. The route from Sibari to E45 is a bit interesting especially around the lake Tarsia,

but the whole scenery looks semi abandoned like this unmaintained football “stadium”:

Of course not all fields are left neglected:

Ε45 is a good road but a boring one, at least till you reach the Cosenza interchange. From this point some bridges and tunnels start decorating the route and later on it becomes quite scenic when it reaches the coastline offering a nice view from above as the road goes through high bridges. This part of the edge of the Italian boot that is close to Sicily has nice little cities by the sea with beautiful beaches like the one at Scilla:

From San Giovanni you can take the ferry to Messina Sicily which takes only 15 minutes to get you there. A bit weird system they have here that the ones driving a car solo in order to get a ticket they have to follow the queue that enters the ferry and if they're are alone it is not so easy as they block the vehicles behind them if they stop there unless they have a passenger to do it for them. On my bike I am more flexible (as usual). I just stop at the kiosk, get my ticket while the cars overtake me in the queue but I take my revenge later and overtake them again whenever I find space to split the queue's lanes.

Messina looks nice already from the ferry:

and the whole east side of Sicily offers a very pleasant view with lots of beaches like this one at Izola Bella:

Nice hotels too. Not so affordable though. I tried hard to finally find a room for 50euros (being solo) at a stinking old hotel at Ali Mare with no view and this seemed one of the cheapest choices I had around. Sicily is much more expensive than the rest of Italy's South and unfortunately the service is not that better. Good thing is that they speak a little English from time to time.

The most interesting part for me at Sicily (since I have lots of nice beaches close to my house) is the Etna volcano, one of the main reasons I did this trip. The first look I have watching this huge mountain with the smoking top is quite impressive:

It is 3350m high and while I am here it hasn't exploded for the last 8 years. Is it about time? Hope not. The perimeter of its base is 140km and that makes it 3 times bigger than Vezouvio. The numbers are as impressive as the view of Etna itself. There's a good tarmac road offering a nice route around the mountain where you often ride between the black soil of the Volcano:

The view of the sunset by the sea on the same day at Ali Mare is a bit more colourful:

I liked the route from Messina to Catania following the coastline (SS114). There is a toll road as well but I found no reason to use it.

Time to take the ferry back to the boot of Italy so I take some more pictures of Messina:

I'm driving on the Italian boot when my jaw drops dead on my tank as I enter Bova Marina. I knew about the Hellenic heritage around but had no idea that this town has all the street signs in Greek and Italian:

Never seen/heard of anything like this before!

I choose to take the SS106 following the coastline heading East from the South side of the Italian boot this time. It is very impressive to see how many km in a row of beautiful beaches lie in this area of South Calabria:

However, this doesn't mean that the road is as scenic as you might think unfortunately. The area is bare and unpopulated, probably cause the local mafia doesn't allow much? Don't know but felt often spooky despite the unbelievably long beautiful virgin swimmable coastline.

I have time to kill around Brindisi waiting for the ferry since I arrive early the next day hence the following pictures:

In my search for a good lunch I find a biker who has a business appointment. He tells me that next door is the best restaurant around hence the "business" meeting will take place here. Sounds to me like it will probably be a "meating" for them instead but you can't go wrong food wise in Italy especially following the local's recommendations so here I am in this cute traditional 100% untouristic restaurant:

The meal was nice, the wine too but that dessert steals my heart in a heartbeat:

As I digest this beauty I picture my iron horse later in the city:

At the check in for the ferry I find another travelling biker from Belgium who's also a guitar player so it was almost like one waiting for the other. Luckily cause the trip is an absolute nightmare and the reasons I'll never do this line again: the ferries of Endeavor Lines (unfortunately the only company on this line) not only are terrible, dirty and expensive but in addition, they tell me that they decided to go to Igoumenitsa instead of Patra due to truckers on strike blocking other truckers at the tolls of Patra (when I passed through Patra I saw nothing thing like this). They claim that their ferries mostly serve truckers so they had no reason to go there. Unbelievably disrespectful to the rest of the passengers who had to do 260km more because of this I ask them at least to give me some money back to compensate and they just refused! Fair enough isn't it? Less service, less cost for them, still same price.

We share a cabin with Andries the biker and a few beers on the deck. Next day we arrive at Igoumenitsa Greece and we have to ride partially in the dark as the sun is not up yet. We make a stop for a good Greek breakfast though and continue riding South. Here is a picture he took of me right after the Rio bridge - thanks for all Andries!

South Italy in general looked to me like a less neat version of Greece somehow. If not much worse actually since for example there's full switchbacks around Etna where they form a full berm of garbage. Might add some safety if you lose control of your vehicle but jokes aside it's totally pathetic and disgusting. People throw shit out of car windows so often that it felt like I shouldn't be impressed if a diaper would arrive on my helmet at some point. Used not new.

Thanks for reading, see you on the next one!