The UCI World Cycling Championships 2013 in Tuscany!
These run from September 22nd to September 29th 2013, with race starts in Lucca and Montecatini Terme
Here is the happy Canadian Fred McGuire, who stayed at Casa Verde this summer. (Fred is that a bottle of Chianti on the bike frame?) He is happy for us to report about his cycling adventures here in the hillside and mountains that are a training ground for the world’s best cyclists. Mark Cavendish is a local resident in the Pistoia area! Every weekend there are hundreds of aspiring Bradley Wiggins in their multi-coloured tight-fitting lycra ascending the steep hills and bends up and around the Valeriana.
Fred hired his bicycle from ChronoBikes (www.chronobikes.com…….an excellent web-site by the way) in Lucca at what he described as a very reasonable rate (25 Euros per day) in the peak of the summer weather….brave guy. I would probably manage about 100 metres up these mountain roads but to healthy enthusiasts these hills are perfect for a Tuscany cycling holiday.
We recently ventured on a little holiday of our own to South East Tuscany and Umbria. There are so many variations on the historic Italian themes of mountain villages, olive groves and ancient churches. Here in Vellano it is the dramatic steep green hillsides, castellated villages and orange-red terracotta roofs. In Umbria it is the beautiful gentle rolling hills, the light orange/pink stone upon Romanesque cathedrals…..’the land of the saints’.
Here is the central square in Bevagna, an ancient Roman town with two of the loveliest and most atmospheric of Romanesque churches. The little walled town has a lovely warm atmosphere with a number of excellent restaurants and food shops that make it culinary delight along with the excellent local Montefalco red wines, local truffles and mushrooms…..deep, earthy and rich. One particular local delicacy is Gnocchi Sagratino; which is gnocchi in a rich Montefalco red wine sauce. It is a very good idea to combine one weeks visit to Casa Verde and the spectacle of Northern Tuscany with another week in the peace and tranquility of South Eastern Tuscany/Umbria.