Cycling the length Italy, a dreamy 2,000km from Sicily to the Alps

Hello everyone. Back in spring, I spent 19 glorious days cycling the length of Italy, from Sicily in the south to the Italian Alps in the north. Italy’s been a bit of a dream country for me when it comes to cycling, and it exceeded expectations at every turn. I filmed the whole thing and the film is out now on YouTube: https://youtu.be/CE78sSmO5Rg 

We visited the obvious: Rome, Siena, Bologna, all stunning. But I found a lot of the riding in the south to be incredible, especially around Matera, and the rolling hills of Basilicata. I'd been warned that the drivers might be a bit crazy in southern Italy, but for most of it the roads seemed almost deserted at points, and mostly in pretty good condition. And up north near Siena, we took on the Strada Bianche, the white gravel roads of Southern Tuscany, made famous by the annual race. These were so much fun to ride

The trip was nearly 2,000km and 19 days in all, and finished up in the Italian Alps, where we joined the EuroVelo 7, which ended up being about 400km of segregated cycle lanes, running from Mantua all the way up to the Brenner Pass. I’ve never been on such a good bit of cycle infrastructure before. 

We filmed the whole thing, with a drone, phones and go pros, to capture the most beautiful parts of all the countries we cycled through. 

I’m also planning to write up a proper how-to guide of the trip. So if you have any questions, please let me know in the comments and I’ll try and include the answers in the guide.

Would I do it all over again? Absolutely!