Puglia Bike Tour - Cisternino and Ostuni

The initial part of our ride today took us from our masseria to the small town of Cisternino, a small hilltop town. The ride itself was only 10.5 kilometers (6+ miles), of which 7 kilometers (@ 4.2 miles) was uphill, on some of the steepest grade I've ever ridden. At some points Rich clocked a 19% grade on his Garmin! After Cisternino we had some nice downhills followed by rolling hills that felt like a roller coaster ride (again, more 19% grades, but at least we had the speed from the downhill to propel us part way up the uphill). At this point, the road was so narrow that there was no way a cyclist AND a car could be on the road at the same time. On one of the "rollers" I encountered a truck wanting to come down the hill as I was riding up. He was nice enough to wait until I got almost to the top and could find a place to pull over before he started downhill (there was no room beside him at the top of the hill). I noticed as he drove down, the sides of his truck were scraping the vegetation on each side of the road. I wonder what they do when they meet a car head on???

We also rode on some VERY out of the way, potholed roads. One of our fellow riders said he saw a sign saying that the road was originally part of the Roman Via Appia or Appian Way. I don't know about that, but I do know that we saw a 4,000 year old structure called a dolmen, which looked like a miniature Stonehedge.

Lunch was in the town of Ostuni, another very pretty hilltop town and from there the rest of the ride was mostly downhill. All in all, we rode @ 38 miles today, but after those hills, it felt more like 60!

 



Dolmen of Montalbano