I am planning a cycling trip in Italy for September/October of some as yet unidentified year. This blog will allow others to participate in the planning activity so that, for those who might like to ride with the group, it incorporates their desires to the extent that is practical and to harness the "hive mind" to produce a better plan. Writing it all down also allows others to benefit from the research and planning that I do.

When the plan comes to fruition it will also include daily blog posts of course.

The Plan

I love the mountains, towns and villages of Italy. I love seeing the change in food and wine, language and culture across the different parts of the country. Yes, some of the cities are jewels, but for me the essence of Italy is in the countryside and there is a lot of it that I have not seen, or only fleetingly from a train window. So this trip is designed to see more of this undiscovered (by me) country.

Having a trip of about the right length is important too: I am not about to fly all the way from Australia to just do a one week trip. On the other hand I don't want to go for months at a time as there is a lot to do here in Australia as well. So I decided I'd ride about 1000km which would take me about three weeks. The route is able to be truncated or extended and allow for multiple points where you can jump on or off a train to allow flexibility. Some might like to ride from further north, which is quite a different experience whether it be the flat of the Po plain or the Dolomites. For those who have never seen Puglia, the current plan finishes in Lecce, for which I can recommend a well-tested route along the sensational coastline and the UNESCO world heritage sites of the region (see my blog of a ride there).

Last, I'm not in love with Italian beach resorts. Sorry Italy, after the NSW south coast, the Sunshine Coast and so on, Italian beaches just are not my idea of heaven so the route will avoid the coast. Given that I want to travel in shoulder season (September/October) this will also keep me out of holiday traffic and more touristic accommodation and food!

I want to see some places I have seen before but a lot of it new. It is always tempting to go back to the glorious towns of Toscana, but no, I'll skip them this trip. On the other hand, the jewels of the south, Matera, Alberobello, Ostuni... definitely worth another visit.

Last, for purely logistical reasons the ride will have to start and end somewhere well connected to the train and airport network. One method that worked well in the past is to fly in and out from Fiumicino, leaving my bike bag there. It is too early to look at flights but this may be the strategy again. Given that I have not yet decided on the year, the route is also designed to be e-bike friendly. It may be that the participants all hire ebikes in Italy.

In the past I have gravitated to towards a schedule of two days riding, one day rest, three days riding, one day rest. This gives five days of riding in each week and enough time for relaxation and sightseeing. I expect this trip will be more or less the same.

The ride will be self supported but using B&Bs and eating out. Camping is problematic in Italy. Their idea of a campground is a summer holiday destination and they are almost 100% on the coast and full of holiday makers from northern Europe. This decision allows lightweight bikepacking gear to be enough which your legs will appreciate on the climbs. There will be no set schedule. I'll have a return flight booked, but every day we will decide how much riding is enough. I am building a phone app which will make the task of identifying, booking and finding accommodation much easier... so at lunch time we can decide how much further to ride for the day. It isn't a race. Typically I only ride five days a week, giving plenty of time for tourism and recovery. This kind if schedule is much more flexible if there are mechanicals, illness or whatever. Most days won't be over 80km.

Every participant is responsible for their own expenses. You select and pay for your own accommodation. We will use the App "Settle Up" for cases where we share a meal or a bottle of wine. Splitting bills is problematic in Italy since the "++" or "+++" means that the bill is greater than the sum of ordered items. There will be no "I only ordered this €13 item, so that is what I am paying". We'll split the bill into rough proportions and assign them in Settle Up.

Tools for more ad-hoc travel

On previous trips I have booked accommodation for the entire trip well in advance, certainly before leaving Australia. That worked well but on a long trip there is always the potential for delays, change of plans and so on, so I want to be able to book as I go. That is really hard work, trying to identify places to stay, communicate and book and so on. In cities it is fine because you have a lot of potential places, but in the mountains... there might only be one small B&B in town so you need to book before you get there.

So I wanted to take the best of booking.com (all suitable places in a location) but curate the list in advance. To do that I have built my own accommodation planning app which runs on phones and tablets. Actually this sounds more over the top than it really is... building the app only took several hours but of course curating the accommodation takes longer. However I'd rather do it from the comfort of home than standing in the rain on an Italian mountainside :-)

As a starting point I will use booking.com to book a complete set of accommodation before I leave home, but all with the "free cancellation" option so that I won't be too badly affected by changes and cancellations.

As a consequence I will leave Australia with accommodation booked but able to change it as I go.

The App

The app is built on top of Google Sheets, using the Appsheet application builder. Here are some screenshots and a brief description.

Tab 1 "Locations" shows the distance from start for each town that has been entered in the database and the number of accommodation places in the database from that town. So you can always see the next few towns and how far away they are. You can click on the little location icon to jump to the map of that town. It is searchable.

Tab 2 is "Locations Map". If you select this tab from down the bottom of the App, you see the entire route of the trip. If you come here by clicking on a location marker, you see the "zoomed in" view of just that location, with the pale blue markers for each accommodation location.

From the zoomed in view, you can see the number of accommodation places (in this case "3"). ask for directions by clicking the little car icon, or go to a list of the accommodation places by clicking the "paper plane" icon.

The last tab "Accommodation" gives you a list of accommodation for the selected town. You can see the address, the map, the name, an indicative price and whether it is on booking.com

If you click on "GO TO DETAILS" then it takes you to the detail screen which shows a lot more detail.

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