The "Piana degli Albanesi" Southeast of Palermo

This post is part of a thread about a Giuseppe Garibaldi "themed bicycle tour" design and implementation in Sicily. To see the whole thread click here.

Southeast of Palermo is one of the most interesting villages in western Sicily - Piana degli Albanesi.  It is also located in a beautiful valley surrounded by limestone mountains.  Here, in the late 15th century Albanians fleeing the Turkish invasions were allowed to settle and build their own community.  There are several such communities in remote, mountainous areas of Sicily and Southern Italy. 

 

While positioning himself for his assault on Palermo Garibaldi rested a day in Piana degli Albanesi (then called Piana dei Greci) and initiated a false retreat which tricked the Bourbon defenders entirely.  Garibaldi sent is cannon and heavy artillery south on the main road to Corleone.  The Bourbon army, which had come out of Palermo to meet him thought he was in flight and began following the artillery.  Meantime Garibaldi took his sizable army and slipped into the night to back track on Palermo where he entered over the Ponte dell'Ammiraglio.  Garibaldi was quite proud of his ruse.  In his memoirs he wrote:  "it was not until two days after our entry into Palermo that the enemy commanders found out we had hoodwinked them and gone on to the capital whle they thought all the time we were in Corleone."

 

From Calatafimi Garibaldi entered Piana degli Albanesi through the pass in the left of this photo.  On my ride I crossed over that same pass. 

The photo below shows me pedaling out of "Piana" after spending the night. This was one of the most beautiful rides of the trip.

The Ponte dell'Ammiraglio in Palermo Dates to the 12th Century

This post is part of a thread about a Giuseppe Garibaldi "themed bicycle tour" design and implementation in Sicily. To see the whole thread click here.

The Ponte dell'Ammiraglio was one of the main entry points into Palermo from the east side.  The morning of May 27, 1860 the Bourbon troops attempted a meager defense of the bridge to keep Garibaldi, his thousand volunteers and the few thousand Sicilian peasants from entering Palermo.  They failed and Garibaldi's rag tag army occupied and took the city within three days, blockading the Bourbon troops in the castle and in one or two other major buildings in the city.

There's no river under the bridge any more, though it was originally built to bridge the Oreto River. A flood in 1938 changed the course of the river and the widening of the Via dei Mille made the bridge obsolete. It now sits in a park as a monument to Garibaldi and his thousand.

Monument Commemorating Giuseppe Garibaldi's Defeat of the Bourbon Troops at Calatafimi May 15, 1860

This post is part of a thread about a Giuseppe Garibaldi "themed bicycle tour" design and implementation in Sicily. To see the whole thread click here.

Garibaldi was famous among his troops and the general population for his bravery and spirited leadership.  Facing an uphill fight, literally (the Bourbons held the high ground) one of Garibaldi's subordinate officers suggested they retreat to sustain fewer loses.  Garibaldi's response, engraved on this monument was "Qui si fa l'Italia o si muore" - "here we make Italy or we die."  This was an expression of Garibaldi's life-long dream of creating a united Italy.  I visited here May 15, 2009, 149 years to the day of the battle.  Garibaldi and his "thousand" volunteers from northern Italy won the day, routed the Bourbon troops and sent a shiver of fear through the Neapolitan troops throughout Sicily and Southern Italy.  Garibaldi knew that psychologically this was a critical battle for his future success, hence his insistence to take the battle to the enemy.

Near Calatafimi is Segesta, one of the best ancient Greek sites in Sicily. While they rested in Calatafimi after their victory many of the "thousand" made the hike up to see the temple and theater of Segesta. Today tourists come from all over the world to view these great wonders of Magna Grecia.

The Cathedral in Caccamo, Sicily

This post is part of a thread about a Giuseppe Garibaldi "themed bicycle tour" design and implementation in Sicily. To see the whole thread click here.

Sicily has a rich architectural heritage from its Byzantine, Muslim, Norman, and Spanish occupiers over the centuries.  The baroque churches come from the Spaniards.

Rick arriving at the port of Marsala just like Garibaldi in May of 1860

This post is part of a thread about a Giuseppe Garibaldi "themed bicycle tour" design and implementation in Sicily. To see the whole thread click here.

 

The Heart of Sicily - Gangi

This post is part of a thread about a Giuseppe Garibaldi "themed bicycle tour" design and implementation in Sicily. To see the whole thread click here.

The view of Gangi from the west at 6 p.m. in the evening light reminds of a bee hive of human activity.

Designing Your Own Bicycle Tour

This post is part of a thread about a Giuseppe Garibaldi "themed bicycle tour" design and implementation in Sicily. To see the whole thread click here.
I've designed a lot of bicycle tours over the last 25 years. Indeed, one of the best things about this business for a geographer is to sit home in Colorado during the winter designing tours and then be able to go pedal the route and see how it came out. This takes practice, though, and I want to tell you an anecdote to warn you about the drawbacks of doing this.

In Sicily now I'm alone. Hence, I've not booked any hotels in advance and although I've got a route in mind I've already varied quite a bit from it. When you are pedaling alone nobody cares where you sleep, how far you ride, or how hard the ride is. That's the biggest drawback of designing your own route for family or friends. Everything needs to be pretty predictable as you'll always get questions such as where do we sleep tonight? How far is it? What's the hotel like? How much climbing is there, and so on.

The parent company of Bike Rentals Plus! - ExperiencePlus! Bicycle Tours has a great tour in the Dordogne region of France that I designed in 1995. But we heard this anecdote from three couples - customers - who came one year on that tour. It seems that the year before six couples had the idea of flying to Paris, renting couple of vans (6 people per van), taking their bikes, and heading off to the Dordogne for their own bike tour. So there they were the first day - they had booked the first few nights hotel, and they went out for ride. But the next day the weather was a little threatening. "Hey," somone said, "it looks clear to the west. Let's drive west for an hour and take a ride."

Now France is a great place to ride a bike - it's hard to go wrong. But it is also hard to just pick a spot and go riding. Those rides take planning, especially where there are 6 couples! It turns out that the three couples who came on our Dordogne tour the following year were so frustrated with the lack of planning, the driving around looking for rides, they decided to come back with a professional tour company the next year to do it right.

The moral of this isn't that you shouldn't designe your own tour. Go for it. But remember that if you have eleven other people to take care of, lodge, feed, and track evey day, you should do some planning. And to do that you probably need local knowledge. Today, many tour operators will design a tour for you for a fee. They might even arrange luggage shuttles to help from hotel to hotel. And some provide the service of recommending and booking hotels.

So, what do you do? Design your own or hire a professional? Above all it depends on your level of risk. Rent a villa and design your own rides locally. That's pretty easy if you get the right villa. Head out on a ride on your own. That carries low risk and high satisfacion if you are ready to jump on the train, make sure you've got your bike. But as you add people, make sure they are game to share the rish with you. Otherwise you are on the line and you'd best get some level of local help to make the most of your trip!

The Logistics of Bicycling Sicily on your Own

This is just a brief note on the logistics of getting organized and getting the right bike in Sicily for my trip. Bike Rentals Plus! has a fleet of bicycles near Bologna and they work with people all over Europe. My bike happens to be with the fleet in Bologna so I had it shipped off to one of our partners in Palermo, Sicily. So when I flew into Palermo I simply picked my bike up at the local supplier. If you were doing this you'd likely rent a bike (since shipping your bike internationally is expensive - see more on that here). Upon arrival in Palermo you would simply pick the bike up at the local supplier.

From Palermo I took the train to Marsala to begin my ride. Local and regional Italian trains make it really easy to roll on/roll off the train with your bike (most do anyway). So here I am in Palermo getting on the train for Marsala.

"Themed" Bicycle Tours - Exploring Italy through the Eyes of Italian Hero Giuseppe Garibaldi

One way to design a bicycle tour is to pick a theme - food, wine, history, architecture - you name it, and design your tour around that theme. Some of the most popular tours, indeed, are "themed" tours. Maybe you've heard of the Camino de Santiago along the historic pilgrimage route in Norther Spain, for example. Or a culinary bicycle tour in France or Italy.
Well, watch my postings over the next few weeks as I leave today for Bologna, Italy and then I head on to Palermo to begin following Giuseppe Garibaldi's historic route liberating Sicily and Southern Italy from the Bourbon King Francis II who ruled from Naples. Garibaldi took a thousand "red shirts" from northern Italy and launched a campaign that, over the decade from 1860 to 1870 resulted in the unification of Italy as we know it today.

That's me in my "Garibaldi" outfit. (I'll be working on my Garibaldi image over the next few weeks!) The "real" Garibaldi is below.