Marche and the Po Valley
A jump to the north of Italy for a meandering tour to Milan to meet up with Laura.
Previous: To Puglia and around Lecce
Bari to Ancona by train
We approached the prospect of an Intercity train from Bari with caution and low expectations. Perhaps that helped, because it was a good 430-km trip to Ancona with little stress. The 1.5 km ride through the peak-hour streets of downtown Bari to the station was a bit of fun. At the station, we first checked for the existence of elevators (yes, refreshingly even big enough to fit a bike with luggage attached), and then bought two tickets for the 9:55 intercity. We had time to get breakfast and some sandwiches for the trip from the station cafe (the man serving was so monumentally rude, he deserves to be a tourist attraction himself).
Then having navigated our bikes onto platform 3, we took batteries out and locks off and waited nervously. When the train arrived, sure enough, it was another single-width-door, 4-step-up model. But the conductor was pleasant and patient, and we managed the shuttle of luggage and bikes into the right door without too much effort.
Like Italian road regulations, booked seating allocation on Intercity trains is more a suggestion than a rule. Although we were told the carriage with bike storage was fully booked, it was empty and the carriage with our allocated seats was heaving (and our seats were taken), so we happily settled into seats where we could keep an eye on the bikes.
The 4-hour journey flew by, and we arrived happily at Ancona (although we were a little more rushed to get our gear off than we would have preferred) on platform 1 with direct access to the street (noting that Ancona Station has good elevators like Bari).
We rode around the bay into the old town to find our apartment for the night. After negotiating the car-lift to the basement carpark to store our bikes, we headed out for an energetic passegiata up the hill to the Parco del Cadeti and the Cattedrale di San Ciriaco, where we were sat quietly, enthralled by a beautiful practice session by the church choir.
The walk back down the hill, through bustling streets and piazzas suggested another town worthy of more than an overnight stay. It was a little colder than we had become used to, making us think we had headed a bit far north a bit too early. But Milan was calling and we were now in a position to get there in our preferred take-it-easy mode.
Day 1. Ancona to Pesaro
27 February 2025. (73 km)
To avoid the busy coast road north, we rode over the hills at the back of Ancona. The views from the tops of the hills were limited by the mist. Our faces stung with cold the long roll down the hill back to the coast that . We were pleased to have taken the hill detour, because the coast road remained busy for a few more km once we rejoined it, until we cut down across the railway line to a smaller road along the beach.
It was a long ride along a fairly grim beach lined with ageing high-rise buildings. The clear blue sea of the Puglian coast were replaced by murkier waters here (the shallower, sandy coast? The influence of the Po and other larger rivers here?) Perhaps our perception was somewhat tainted by the cold and the stiff headwind. We stopped for lunch at Senigallia at a flash (and more importantly, warm) restaurant. The weather improved over lunch (some sun, and a lighter headwind), and the ride was a bit more interesting after that too: mostly on an off-road, sealed path through Senigallia Port; a minor detour into the inland farmland; under the large headland before Pesaro. We stayed at Hotel Rossini in Pesaro. Rossini is a dominating influence in the town, making for an interesting passegiata into the old town and back to the beach.
Day 2. Pesaro to San Mauro Pascali
28 February 2025. (63 km)
We had toyed with a detour up the big hill to San Marino, but the weather for the next few days made that an unattractive proposition. Saturday (1 March) was forecast to be rainy so we decided to find a house for a couple of nights to sit it out. We settled on the small town of San Mauro Pascali a little inland.
The ride along the coast from Pesaro was mainly along off-road bike paths. We turned inland at Rimini, where we took a small detour into the old town in search of lunch. Rimini seemed to have more big parklands than many of the Italian towns we had been through.
A particularly large attractive park lies out the other side of the old town at the head of the port canal. Another place worthy of a longer explore.
Friday afternoon traffic made the last km or so into San Mauro Pascali a little more frightening than the quiet off-road paths we had been riding along all day. We had perhaps become a little soft since Sicily. San Mauro is a relatively modern town (having been heavily bombed in the war), and our big house for two nights was a 3-storey new build in a new development on the edge. It was a pleasant enough town, and a very comfortable house to give us a couple of days of domestic normality while the rain passed.
Day 3. San Mauro Pascali to Ravenna
2 March 2025. (51 km)
Just when we thought the ride along the coast was getting to be a bit ‘samey’, our ride to Ravenna restored our enthusiasm in the journey. The day began with clouds to the south hiding the sun and keeping us cold as we rode toward the blue skies of the coast. We were instantly warmer after getting halfway to the coast on quiet backroads, before turning onto a cycle path into Cesenatico. This busy seaside town was full of Sunday visitors walking the streets along the canal, which houses a museum of old ships. We joined the locals for a coffee in the sun.
We rode another 10 km to Cervia for lunch through parkland with tall pine trees for much of the way. Lunch at a jolly bar was crescione, which seemed to be the thing everyone was chewing on as we rode in.
Much of the rest of the ride to Ravenna was more wild, through pine forests, which we later learned were where Byron liked to ramble during his Ravenna years. The cycle route took us along and across canals housing many fishing shacks with suspended nets. The designated cycle route was good quality unsealed path: cycle.travel suggested a couple of alternative ways, which were worse (mud, fortunately not as sticky as the Sicilian kind, and water).
Entering the outskirts of Ravenna was a pleasant ride along off-road bike paths all the way to our hotel (Palazzo Galletti Abbiosi, next to the tower of the Basilica di Sant’Apollinare Nuovo). Our evening passegiata around the old town taught us that this was very much Dante’s town. We also came across a moving demonstration against the unsettling turn for the war in Ukraine. The old Mercato Coperto was an appealing renovated space: we returned there for dinner at the restaurant.
Day 4. Ravenna to Molinella
3 March 2025. (62 km)
Our way out of Ravenna was not as bike friendly as our entrance. No bike paths to speak of, and we spent ~14 km on the straight, busy SP1 to San Alberto. It was a more civilised ride through the town to the ferry across the Fiume Reno (1€ each: we were a little surprised to find it operating on this quiet Monday morning). Across the river, we climbed the levee bank to find ourselves on the southern edge of the Po delta, with our biggest flock of flamingoes yet.
After starting as a beautifully sealed road, the levee trail soon became two fairly smooth clay tracks with raised grass between them. The levee was easy riding, letting us take our time to sit and have a pleasant ponder in the sun for a while.
A bar on the trail at San Biagio came along just as we were getting hungry (and saved us from riding the busy road into town in search of food). We had a satisfactory snacky lunch in the sun out the front. The trail dropped to a road running along the bottom of the levee for a while. It was rougher and not much fun.
We rode past Argenta, a fairly modern town, and turned onto a smallish back road. It was unfortunately also a deviazione for traffic off the Bologna road, so it was pretty busy, and there were quite a few cars driving too fast too close to us for comfort. The last 6 or so km were better on a quieter road in to Mollinella.
Molinella was an appealing town. Our B&B (Cesare Magli & Figli Residenza D’Epoca Luxury Rooms) was a ripper: big room with masses of rock-n-roll decorations. Went out for a passegiata earlier than usual trying to take photos of the leaning tower of Molinella, but none looked as leaning as it does in real life.
Day 5. Molinella to Ferrara
4 March 2025. (31 km)
As we went to leave our B&B, Nida the housekeeper was up for a chat. A highly educated young woman from Pakistan who’d started again in Italy, had been working in Molinella for 3 months. She made us a cup of chai to see us on the road while she told us her story.
It was a short ride to Ferrara on quiet back roads all the way. Ferrara is allegedly a city of cycles, but the way in wasn’t super bike-friendly. Arriving at midday, we were fortunate to have wangled an early check-in. We wandered out for lunch in one of the piazzas and, after a bit of an afternoon rest, had a long evening passegiata to check out the the palazzos and castello (four working drawbridges over the moat) in town. Dinner at a very good Japanese around the corner from our B&B (Honey Rooms).
Day 6. Ferrara to Bologna
5 March 2025. (56 km)
The way out of Ferrara was more bike friendly, along bike paths. The day’s ride was almost entirely on a designated bike route - mainly on back roads out of the city, with some unsealed bits along canals. We stopped for coffee and a donut at a bar in San Martino, and a pleasant lunch sitting outside a big pasticceria in Bentivoglio. On the way into Bentivoglio, we passed through a nature reserve alive with the clacking of courting stork beaks.
It was all good until the outskirts of Bologna at the railway station Primo Maggio. We found it best not to follow the CSA bike route (which sends you down a steep set of stairs), but to take the bike path along Via Guiseppe Di Vittorio to the Pericorso ciclopedonale Walther Vignoli along the creek. The track along the creek was muddy and puddly in places, but not too bad, and improved once we rejoined the CSA route. It will all be much better soon, as they were actively building a new path along the creek.
Having left the unsealed path along the creek, we were within a km or so of our destination, when we struck a fence across the track for works. While we sat and plotted our alternative route in, a couple walking and a man riding a bike came through the other way, and just pushed the fence aside. So we did the same and found the path under the railway line to be fine.
Then we were up on the bike paths along the main roads in Bologna (very civilised), and found ourselves outside our flat opposite the Museum of Moderna Art.
The promised bike racks inside the condominium were a bomb site, with abandoned bikes strewn everywhere (and the gate into the condominium is not locked, so not as secure as we’d hoped). Nevertheless, we did manage to get the bikes attached to the bike rack and they were safe enough. The flat was good - on the 5th floor, with a sunny balcony with a view over the museum to the distant hills, and a narrow kitchen on the other side with windows we could stick our heads out to check on the bikes.
Day 7. Bologna: Madonna di San Luca loop
6 March 2025. (14 km)
We’d booked in for two days, so we had a day to explore Bologna. We decided on a ride up the steep hill to the Madonna di San Luca Church (famously a long protico walk) - the hill was crazy steep, but we managed it easy enough without luggage to weigh us down.
We took the road south home down the other side of the hill to Casalecchio di Reno. Halfway down we stopped at a brand new solar powered charging station and bike pump in the middle of nowhere. It was the first such infrastructure that we had found in an unvandalized state, so we stopped to pump up our tyres in celebration.
After a bit of rest back home, we headed out for a long evening passegiata into the old town, revisiting old haunts from our last visit 18 years ago. We ended up stopping for an aperitivo at a bar who provided a huge amount of free appetizers, which meant we didn’t need dinner - all for the price of two spritzes (The Spritz Bolognese is pretty good).
Day 8. Bologna to Mirandola
7 March 2025. (66 km)
We had intended to head to Modena after Bologna, but we struggled to find a place in the old town that had anywhere for us to store our bikes. So we opted to stay on Eurovelo Route 7 and head north towards Mantova, via the small town of Mirandola.
EV7 is proposed to run from Syracuse, Sicily to Nordkap, Norway, but our recent Sicilian experience suggests that this aspiration is a way off from fruition yet. Nevertheless, the route is well developed and maintained in this part of the world, where it is known as the Ciclovia del Sole. We cruised along bike lanes or off-road paths all day through the flat expanse of the Po Valley.
As such, it was just a pleasant easy day’s riding: morning coffee and dolci at a bar in Osteria Nuova, and lunch in happy Bar Aloa at Crevalcore. Hotel Pico in Mirandola was very welcoming. And, as has become our habit, we took a passegiata for an aperitivo at the cafe del Teatro, followed by our first pub dinner in a while at Note di malto.
Day 9. Mirandola to Mantova
8 March 2025. (60 km)
Another cruisy day on EV7. The only vaguely scary bit was the busy road on the new bridge across the Po (still under construction: it looks as though it will ultimately have a wide bike lane, currently barricaded, ending abruptly).
It was a longer than preferred ride along roads beside the levee to morning tea at Quistello. After midday coffee, with jackets off in the warm sun, we rode on an hour to San Benedetto Po - lunch seemed a bit too soon after morning tea at 1pm, but when the lady in the cafe on the main drag directed us to the restaurant in the lane out the back for lunch, we figured we should just go with it. It was certainly a slow food experience - we were finally fed at 2:15 (pretty good all the same).
It was only another 25 km to Mantova, mostly along a very smooth sealed canal track. On the high embankment tracks, it occurred to us that if it wasn’t for the smog, we could probably see the alps from here (perhaps after the coming rain…).
Mantova is another beautiful town with an amazing centro storico, which we wandered around among the surprisingly large number of Sunday tourists milling around the piazzas. As is becoming our habit, we stopped for an aperitivo, which ended up being enough for dinner (Chris can recommend a Spritz Hugo).
Day 10. Mantova to Casalmaggiore
9 March 2025. (61 km)
Quiet backroads out of Mantova into the flat agricultural plain. Generally beautiful riding surfaces all day (were we really avoiding back roads in Sicily?). After 19 km, we joined the Vento (Eurovelo Route 8) on the embankments along the Po.
After the confluence of the Po and the Oglio, we crossed the Oglio on a rickety Pontoon bridge and followed the off-road track along the road to San Matteo delle Chaviche. At this point we decided to stick to our plotted route on the EV8 around the river rather than take a more direct route across to Casalmaggiore.
We aimed for Dosolo for lunch (earlier towns looking fairly small), and found a good bar for lunch. They were gearing up for a carnivale afternoon, but we left before the fun started. Onwards, the levee road only improved, as we approached Casalmaggiore. Brand new perfect surface for the last 10 km or so.
Our accommodation in Casalmaggiore was a massive apartment with frescoed ceilings and a view over the garden to the church. Rain was forecast for Monday, so we stayed an extra day in our big house in Casalmaggiore.
Day 11. Casalmaggiore to Cremona
11 March 2025. (48 km)
The Vento trail is so good in this part of the world—beautiful new tarmac along the embankments all the way—that it becomes something of a meditative exercise to ride along gazing out over the flat expanse of farms on the dry side and poplar plantations on the river side. We encountered a few cars on what seems like should be a dedicated bike route, and alarmingly one enormous articulated bus that came toward us without slowing down and almost blew us off the embankment. Otherwise a calm relaxing day.
We stopped for a coffee in the only open bar in Gussola, and then went looking for a bar for lunch in San Daniele Po. The only open bar there had a big sign declaring ‘No bikes’ out the front, so we took the hint and took our business elsewhere, leaving it empty. (Not everyone is buying into this cicloturismo thing, apparently) We found a more welcoming bar in Stagno Lombardo (a dark, warm little place with vaulted ceilings). It was 40 minutes from there into Cremona where we were met by our host in a B&B in the middle of the old town.
It started raining and turned cold, but we went out for a bit of a passegiata anyway, and learnt that Cremona was the home of Antonio Stradavari, and violin-making is still a big thing there. We found a passable ristorante near the duomo for dinner.
Day 12. Cremona to Piacenza
12 March 2025. (48 km)
A light cold drizzle as we rode out of Cremona into a light, cold drizzle. A separate bike lane across the Po, then a mostly dry ride along the Po on the vento all day— easy, contemplative riding with some close encounters with the river, and hordes of nutria families playing along the canals.
A lot of the trail was brand new seal, so it wasn’t too surprising to find a section closed for works. We dropped off at the first barrier and had a coffee in a quiet bar in San Nazzaro.
A little down the road, we tried to get back onto the trail outside the town, but we were still in the middle of the works (no sign at the bottom of the muddy trail up to the levee to warn us). So it was down onto a busier road into Caorso, and then we wound back along the bike trail out of Caorso to remeet the trail.
Lucky it was a short ride, because the rain started soon after we arrived at Piacenza at 1. We sheltered in our swish apartment for a few hours, with Chris taking advantage of our grand piano to take some piano lessons (until Maree had had enough). So we ventured out for a damp passegiata into Piacenza sticking, when we could, to porticoed streets. The restaurant Piazza Cavalli for dinner was particularly good.
Day 13. Piacenza to Pavia
13 March 2025. (78 km)
We managed to set off at 10:00 for our big day of riding. After a little detour to check out Palazzo Farnese, we headed across the Po on the bike lane over the bridge, where we stopped to watch the murk rushing downstream and a small, official-looking boat struggling upstream against it.
We scooted along on the very smooth embankment trail, managing 20 km in 50 minutes, before stopping to check out an old ruin and to take off some layers.
Soon after, we were seduced by the impressive looking villa in Orio Litta. We managed a coffee in the one bar we could find open. On our way in on the unsealed road into town, we passed what we had thought might be our way out (red dots on the map), but found it to be a rough walking track. (This was the Via Francigena: we had joined another famous camino.) Instead of tackling that rough bit of the camino, we took quite a long detour to the north along some back roads to avoid the remarkably busy SP234. There was no completely avoiding it, as when we rejoined the vento, it was along the SP234 for a km across a busy bridge. We survived.
We struck another stretch of the vento under construction, so detoured to Pieve Porte Marone where we had lunch in the sun at Caffe Maxi before the last 30 km into Pavia.
Pavia is very much a university town. We set out for a big passegiata through the uni, and down the streets past lots of student bars to the Ponte Coperto, followed by a spritz in the bar over the road surrounded by english-speaking students. Then we visited the compulsory cathedral and basilica, and supermercato for dinner in our own palazzo.
Day 14. Pavia to Milano (and train to Como)
14 March 2025. (49 km)
We were a few days early getting to Milan before Laura’s arrival, so we decided on a weekend in Como. We figured we might as well brave the train from Milan to Como, and ride back on Monday.
The ride out of Pavia up the canal began very optimistically, with a good quality separated bike road along the EV5 (still called the vento according to the signs). But after about 10 km, when we passed a sign telling us rather unhelpfully that the road is closed 1 km ahead. With no obvious signposted alternative we continued ahead until the closed gates across the track. A worker suggested we head off into the mud on the other side of the canal, but we found a less muddy way across to a factory carpark and then up a puddly road (cycle.travel won’t even let us plot the way to took). Of course, when we found our way back to the route half a km further on, the trail was still closed, so we took a much longer detour east along a too-busy road to Giussago and north to rejoin the path at Casarile.
And of course when we hit the trail at that point there was a massive truck fully blocking the path. It seemed to be just unloading, so we headed into Casarile in search of coffee (Black Sheeps cafe was good). After coffee, the truck had gone, but that left us with a couple of km of very puddly unsealed trail. After that, it was all good again until yet another closed section of the path. This time, someone had pulled down the barrier to the south, so we walked over that, and then found we had to undo the two barriers at the other end to get through…no drama really, but pretty annoying.
From then on it was a nice canal ride all the way into Milan. A bike-friendly introduction to the city—off road bike lanes all the way to Concetta, where we had to ride along a tram line for a while, and then at Porta Genova, we had to head out onto the fairly busy road to get around the old walls of the city, and then off-road again from Porta Magenta, pretty much all the way to the Milano Bovisa-Politecnico station.
Of course we encountered the usual dramas getting on the train: uncertainty over the right platform, an out-of-order elevator requiring porting our bikes and luggage down to the platform, no ‘bike’ carriage obvious on the train, so we ended up just going in a random door and standing our bikes up in the middle of the entrance…the conductor didn’t seem fussed though. But it got us to Como by mid-afternoon, where we settled into a nice apartment for the rainy weekend.
Day 15. Como to Milano (and 4 nights in Milano)
17 March 2025. (61 km)
A beautiful, sunny, almost warm day, so we decided to start with a ride down to the lake before heading south to Milano. A little disappointed not to see any snowy mountains from the lake shore, we managed a selfie before hitting the roads up the hills to the south. But a bit further down the road and up the hill, at Navedano, we were pleased to see some snow when we looked back.
After another hill, we stopped for a coffee break at a welcoming cafe at Cuggaio (where the proprietor, who wouldn’t let us pay, told us gleefully of a round-the-world cyclist who had his bike nicked in Milano). Out the other side, we looked back to a distant view of much larger snowy mountains to the east, but we figured we’ll be getting better views in the coming days, so didn’t bother with a photo. After a fun roll down the hill into Carimate, cycle.travel had us crossing the railway line, which involved taking the bikes up and down escalators to go under the railway line.
After 25 km, the route turned into a good solid unsealed trail through the forest of the Parco di Groane. Even though there were quite a few puddly sections, the track was generally solid underneath, so we took to taking to the puddles straight through the middle. We were enjoying it so much, we chose not to follow the road short-cut suggested by cycle-travel, but continued around the forest trail, which took us all the way to within 17 km of Milan.
Once we hit the Milan suburbs, it was pretty much off-road paths all the way to our big apartment on Viale Stelvio on the north side of town: our home for 4 nights. It was a special destination for us, as we were meeting Laura for an extended stay on her way home from Canada. We made the trip out to Malpensa airport to greet her. We wandered and rode the streets of Milan, checked out the tourist haunts, took aperitivos at Frida’s, dinner at a Japanese restaurant run by a Bangladeshi Italian, lunch at a Japanese-Brazilian fusion restaurant near the duomo, and cooked family (Italian) dinners at home.
And we took a train trip to Lago Maggiore for the day to visit Margaret and Neil.
Day 16. Milano to Bergamo
21 March 2025. (55 km)
We left Laura to catch the train to Bergamo and hit Viale Stelvio east to the bike route out of town - first along separated lanes along the busy roads, before turning off onto the canal path which took us out of town without a problem.
We stopped for morning tea at Gorgonzola, disappointed at the lack of cheese, but managed a good coffee and cornetto. The canal trail continued to Gropello d”Adda, where we crossed the Adda River on a long wooden footbridge, then backroads to Brembate further up the river, followed by more backroads and off-road paths through several small towns to Bergamo. Laura was magically waiting for us when we rode up to our apartment for the next two nights.
