By Jane Durrell
THE ERICKSON TRIBUNE
Truth to tell, Sicily is not the best biking country for a group age 59 to 83.
But having said that, I wouldn’t have missed it, not only because Sicily is gorgeous, ancient, and welcoming, but because my fellow cyclists were a great group. We came from Minnesota, Oregon, Virginia, Ohio, New York, and spots inbetween. And while there were varying opinions on the trip itself, we all agreed that we liked the country and each other.
Work in progress
Organized by an exemplary company I have biked with many times, the Sicily tour seems to be a work in progress, tweaked a little differently each time out. Sicily sometimes defeats it.
For example, there can be cultural impasses: we were prodded to hurry to meet a guide who himself arrived late, fresh and smiling, explaining he’d been swimming. The local habit is to block off traffic, unannounced, when roadwork is going on. A route along the shore can become a trek through hills.
Sicily is a mountainous island, its level roads usually along the coast. Biking at sea level is fine, but if you leave it there’s nowhere to go but up.
One day our group encountered iron gates barring the way, just where an orange grove bordered the route. This well-paved private road, never closed before, was locked off now because thieves had been at the oranges, a passerby told our leader. The alternate route took us on a busy highway, where the sight of other cyclists reassured me. Italian drivers, by the way, know bicyclists are legitimate traffic and are courteous to them.
Breathtaking rides
All else aside, we had some long, glorious, downhill sweeps from points we’d reached by bus, through countryside where we stopped, now and then, to look at the remains of a Roman aqueduct, at openings in a cliff face to what might have been Neolithic dwellings, passing by fennel growing in the fields. Another crop we passed was artichokes, a Victorianlooking plant with dark, heavy, deeply serrated leaves.