Image 1: Picture of Sicily with Etna erupting
Giro di Picilia - The Preparation
When myself and Stuart did the last tour (coast to coast of Italy, October 2010),
Map of coast to coast route 2010
incidentally our first ever cycle tour, we did a LOT of prep. We were overprepped if anything. This time things turned out very differently. Ideas started quickly after the last tour and we very quickly thought that the time and the place were perfect. Sicily, just a skip and a hop north of Africa so it should be pretty comfortably warm in early May, a time that fitted well with Stuart's Ironman training and my work schedule. Sicily is a big place, so a complete tour around was impossible so we decided that we would link up some interesting towns with the fury of Mount Etna - both of us decided that we didn't want a pootle around a place, but we really wanted to achieve something. The last tour had a been a coast to coast over a mountain range, a clear and achievable, albeit tough objective. This time the focus was Mount Etna.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Etna
Europe's tallest active volcano, a beast of a sight, and also featured in this year's Giro d'Italia, for the first time in 20 or so years. An absolute beast and was one of our must sees. In fact, it had erupted in January and also erupted one week after we were there and almost caused the Giro d'Italia not to go there - maybe it was the weight of my @ss being stuck in those light volcanic pumice rocks!
This time we would be three, Martin would be joining us for his first cycle tour. We had several main items to prepare:
1) Flights
2) Route
3) Accommodation
4) Kit list
Flights
Flights were fairly simple in the end. The capital of Sicily is Palermo, and is a big city, something like the 5th biggest city in Italy. Ryan air flies there very often and it turned out to be convenient to get there both from Italy and from the UK. The times didn't quite work out, so I would be flying in the day before, to scope out the area, and leaving a day later. This made sense to us so that I could use a bit of parlo italiano to check out the lie of the land. There is a special code for flying with bikes - oversized sports kit - it costs about 60 GBP each direction and is essentially weightless although for bikes it should be less than 25kg, and the bike container should contain only a bike - however, I have not seen this be checked.
The route
The route turned out to be difficult. Sicily is a big place, and the sights are spread out. I had heard that Taormina was great, we definitely wanted to Etna, and also that Cefalu was great, so we decided to do some train work on day 1 and then cycle back to Palermo. Last time we had cycled first and then caught the train back and it a was a bit of a faff, so we thought it would be better to reverse it, that is train at the beginning and then cycle back to the airport under our own steam. Trains in Sicily are TERRIBLE! In Italy they are generally very good, very cheap and very reliable, if a little old. However, in Sicily, being a very hilly island there are few routes and this made our selections possible. We spent a lot of time trying to find the right route but eventually we decided on the following:
Fly to Palermo
Train to Capo D'Orlando
Cycle to foothills of Etna
Cycle to top of Etna and on to Taromina
Cycle to north coast
Cycle to Cefalu
Spend a day on the beach
Cycle to airpot
This would work out to be about 5 days of cycling and would take up about 7 or 8 days, about perfect for the three of us. Unfortunately we would miss exciting places like Catania, Syracusa, Agrigento, the whole of the East Coast, and of course we were missing the port town of Messina (flattened by an earthquake at some point) - but all three of us were comfortable with this. Again, Stuart would print the maps off and laminate some of them. The time before he made laminated maps with route instructions for each 10 mile part using mapmyride.com however this time there was very little information on Sicily so very little route information. In the end, I bought a road map in Sicily which saved our bacon later down the road!
Accommodation
We are credit card tourists. That means we do not carry tents, just the very lightest of packs, complete with a credit card so that we can stay at B&Bs and hotels. This is the way that I like to do it, although it can be a little expensive in certain places. However, in Sicily there are not a great deal of places on the internet, except for Taormina, so it was very difficult to book places before we arrived. However, I did book and our route was covered, and only one asked for a deposit so all was good. I was expecting the conversations with the Sicilians on the telephone to be difficult but actually they Italian they spoke was very intelligible to my pigeon Italian so it was all good.
Kit list
Last time Stuart had laughed and laughed at the difference between our packs.
I had taken my old commute to work pack, which had space for a laptop to be placed on top i.e. it was huge. I am not know as a light packer. I cannot go for a day work trip without a checked bag and another bag - it's just the way I am, so last time I took lots of additional stuff that I just did not need or use, including extra tops, extra shorts, and of course the famous 0.5kg pack of prunes which we ate about 8 of that I lugged over 100s of miles and thousands of metres of altitude that I threw away at the end. Not only was it freakin huge, it also took ages to take on and off, whilst Stuart's unclipped. Also, since I had such a big bag and Stuart only had a tiny one - whenever there was anything additional to carry it went into my pack by default. Schweeeeet. So, this time, determined to be light I purchased a very small bag, with a small lightweight seatpost-mounted glide track, and two fold down portions. This was the big challenge for me, that I did slightly offset by using a triangle frame bag and a seat post bag too. Stuart was happy with and thus sticking with his last bag, slightly larger than mine without drop downs, and Martin being a newbie had to get something new and he chose a slightly larger version of mine. Interestingly - although they are from the same manufacturer and look very similar, Martin and mine's bags are not compatible due to the difference in the sliding racks they are on.
We spent a lot of time debating about the kit list, ensuring that we had enough stuff, and splitting certain things between us that we only needed one or two off, such as spares for repairs. We had many emails back and forth and a couple of telephone conferences to sort out the final details. One of the funniest moments in the prep was the genius comment by Martin on Stuart's request for a shower cap to wear under helmet if it was raining - the comment was "not needed - I don't mind wet hair" which nearly killed me and still makes me laugh!
Here is the final kit list:
