Post by sam on Jul 5, 2014 1:42:18 GMT
So I got back from a weeks holiday in Italy on Saturday with my bike and body in tatters. I went with a couple of old friends and some or their riding buddies to a village in Liguria, north Italy called Molini di Triora. The mountain biking in this region has exploded recently with the enduro world series holding its final race at the town Finale Liguria for the past couple of years. We were told ninteen uplift companies now operate out of Finale catering for the flood of mtb'ers traveling to the coastal town. To be honest i didn't really look into where we were going, a few of the group had been before and rated it so I just paid up and followed the herd. When i found out we were over fifty miles away from Finale and wouldn't be riding any of the EWS tracks I was a little disappointed but from the start of the first run to the last shuttle of the holiday I never thought about it again.
Molini is an odd place to be frank, its claim to fame is that it was the last place in Europe to burn witches. There are a few dingy shops selling cauldrons and crystals and more than enough women around dressed as the last witches of Molini. It a nice place to relax in the evening though with a real rural Italian feel to the place, mountain bikers are still new to the village and we always felt comfortable leaving our bikes outside the bar unlocked. The food was below average for a holiday in Italy however and the walk back to our holiday home from the bar was a bit of a calf burner but it was only about three hundred meters and beer helped everything.
The riding on the other hand was incredible, we did six days of vehicle assisted riding averaging around ten thousand feet descending each day. In the valley there are hiking trails that can be ridden as well as the tracks dug by the guiding company and volunteers. The riding was very natural, there were no perfectly sculpted berms or tabletops, no cafe and bike shop at the bottom, no netting and no padding on the trees. This is a place to go to conquer rock gardens and tight switch backs. Some trails had incredible exposure, riding a few feet from the edge of a cliff that would rival any of the crags in Snowdonia, while some trails were so steep you would drop ten feet in one switch back. There were rocky and loose trails or rooty and loamy it was all there, demanding every ounce of fitness and ability. Doing a continuous decent of around two thousand five hundred vertical feet was beyond me, I managed to do it once only and the arm pump almost brought me to tears. There were a few man made trails we rode such as the trails over in Neva with gap jumps, ladder drops and berms that link together like I've never seen in the UK. I completely forgot about my life back in the UK for that week; emails, work, facebook it was all irrelevant I didn't even take any pictures save for the last day. Our guide Richy did a fantastic job of tailoring the routes to our groups range of abilities and ensured that we got the most out of our week on and off the bike.
This was not the holiday I was expecting, on the plane I was picturing a week of well ridden, dusty trails by the sea. Instead it was more like going to ride a friends gnarly back country trails, and it was fantastic, I would definitely go back.
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www.rivierabike.co.uk/
Molini is an odd place to be frank, its claim to fame is that it was the last place in Europe to burn witches. There are a few dingy shops selling cauldrons and crystals and more than enough women around dressed as the last witches of Molini. It a nice place to relax in the evening though with a real rural Italian feel to the place, mountain bikers are still new to the village and we always felt comfortable leaving our bikes outside the bar unlocked. The food was below average for a holiday in Italy however and the walk back to our holiday home from the bar was a bit of a calf burner but it was only about three hundred meters and beer helped everything.
The riding on the other hand was incredible, we did six days of vehicle assisted riding averaging around ten thousand feet descending each day. In the valley there are hiking trails that can be ridden as well as the tracks dug by the guiding company and volunteers. The riding was very natural, there were no perfectly sculpted berms or tabletops, no cafe and bike shop at the bottom, no netting and no padding on the trees. This is a place to go to conquer rock gardens and tight switch backs. Some trails had incredible exposure, riding a few feet from the edge of a cliff that would rival any of the crags in Snowdonia, while some trails were so steep you would drop ten feet in one switch back. There were rocky and loose trails or rooty and loamy it was all there, demanding every ounce of fitness and ability. Doing a continuous decent of around two thousand five hundred vertical feet was beyond me, I managed to do it once only and the arm pump almost brought me to tears. There were a few man made trails we rode such as the trails over in Neva with gap jumps, ladder drops and berms that link together like I've never seen in the UK. I completely forgot about my life back in the UK for that week; emails, work, facebook it was all irrelevant I didn't even take any pictures save for the last day. Our guide Richy did a fantastic job of tailoring the routes to our groups range of abilities and ensured that we got the most out of our week on and off the bike.
This was not the holiday I was expecting, on the plane I was picturing a week of well ridden, dusty trails by the sea. Instead it was more like going to ride a friends gnarly back country trails, and it was fantastic, I would definitely go back.
www.rivierabike.co.uk/
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