From Bagno di Romagna to the spring travelling by bicycle
|
Bagno di Romagna is very welcoming. Friendly people love to stop and tell stories and are curious about travelers. It offers healing thermal waters and two sources of this portentous water where you can refill your bottles before climbing Mount Fumaiolo. It certainly deserves at least a day, or rather two or three before the descent. It would be ideal so as to purify before the journey along the sacred Tiber,
|
 |
|
as if it were a ritual. We take some photos of the town for a while, go to the tourist office for our first stamp on the Tiber Passport, go to the local bar to have successfully a conversation with locals, go shopping (local energycream based on Primitivo beekeeping honey and hand painted linen with bike theme) and refuel at the source of Chiarodovo (i.e. egg white), whose name clearly refers to the sulphurous taste of the water.
Around the Savio River travelling by bicycleWe continue to the town of Montecoronaro with increasing angle of the climb. Also here, the population even is engaged in a festival, that of the cooked water, a poor dish with bread, broth and eggs. The road continues climbing with an average gradient of 10%, the landscape is magnificent between trees covered with moss and the opening on the nearby peaks. Here too there are traces of a competitive race but on MTB along the paths of the Savio river. |
 |
|
I also find a substitute for my smartphone in a stand of ancient stuff: an ancient bronze bell. I can be now located in case of emergency.
The area has a clear vocation for sports tourism, not only the well-marked trails that branch off in all directions but there is also the Verghereto Trail, a competitive race on dirt that reaches 65Km! We return to the state road which is busier but everything remains pleasant, I even entertaint myself in conversation with a group of |
 |
friends in a car who, intrigued, join my climbing for some meters.
We find a fountain of cold water along the road to fullfill our water supplies and then we enjoy many visions reminding of Tarkovsky cinema. In the woods we see some people resting in a hammock or on chairs wrapped in blankets (or towels?), perhaps, fleeing from some suffocated city or a suffocating situation.
|
Fumaiolo pass by bicycle and Tiber River sources.
 |
Finally, here we are at the pass, the closest you can get on a road to the spring: ritual photos and videos, check in at the hotel, beer and plunge immediately down thanks to a very well-kept walking path, with benches and bulkheads, at the source of the Tiber.
But what a wonderful place! The monumental plaque with an eagle and wolves holding ring has little to do with the romantic landscape but |
 |
|
the place was victim of the attention of the dictator Mussolini in the thirties to enhance its native lands by making move even the regional borders.
Today short stage still allows us some time before dinner to download the photos, write a few lines and understand where to have the Tiber passport stamped next. I need an extra page for those stamps collected before the source but I manage to arrange it in the page with some spaces for the first day of descent along the sacred river, along the blond Tiber. Will he still be as blond at least here as he used to be in the Eternal City?
|
 |
To learm more about the Queen of the cycling Paths
Rlease click here: Regina Ciclarum, there you can find gps tracs devided into two seasons, because of the mud and floated tracs, advices, infos on how to get the Tiber Passport and more. There are no guided tours following this link and the informations are taken under your own reposnsability (into consideration that have been made by volunteers and they might not be updated). I can provide you a Tiber passport and stamp it for you with my logo, but we need to make an appointment.
No responses yet