Bikepacking Le Marche – Day 3

The third day of our bike trip around Le Marche was probably my favourite. After leaving the hustle and bustle of Ancona behind, we headed along the coast before turning inland where our route took us through some gorgeous countryside. After the first few miles it got lumpy and there wasn’t an inch of flat all day. It was wonderful! It reminded us of rolling hills back at home; a few minutes of effort up before coasting down, whizzing back up as the road replicated the Big Dipper roller coaster passing through the countryside. Once again we had the weather gods on our side, the sky was bright blue dotted with fluffy little clouds like cotton wool balls hanging above us. The sun was out but not too hot for a day in the saddle and the slight breeze was a welcome relief on the uphill sections. Life was good! It soon got even better when we stopped for yet another delicious coffee and pastry at Pasticceria Golosamente, “this is definitely the best one yet” I mumbled through a mouthful of crumbs. A sentence that has been uttered most days in Italy!   

We left the sleepy hill top town of Ostra and it’s wonderful café behind and before long we were grinding our way up the hill to Corinaldo, a member of ‘I Borghi più belli d’Italia.’ The most beautiful Italian Towns. An association set up to promote and protect villages and towns of quality heritage. Like so many dotted around Italy, Corinaldo is made up of little stone buildings, cascading down the hillside, providing a warren of lanes and alleyways all surrounded by the protective fifteenth century walls. One building in particular though was of interest to us. Casa La Scuretto. Being a very rural and sparse area of Italy, work was hard to come by and as result the inhabitants of Corinaldo were not particularly well off. It was for this reason that the son of the town’s cobbler Scuretto left Italy and travelled to America. He succeeded in finding work and regularly sent money home to his father in Corinaldo with the clear intention for him to build a house for his eventual return. However, for his father, the pull of the local tavern and hostelries was too strong to ignore and he subsequently spent all the money on alcohol. After a few years the son enquired about the progress of the house and requested a photo; not wanting to ruin a good thing the father had only a façade of a house constructed, photographed and sent to his son before promptly returning back to the bar! Needless to say the construction didn’t get any further and the money soon stopped but the façade of Casa La Scuretto still stands today, nestled between two bigger buildings with nothing behind but fresh air!

The route continued it’s wiggling journey through the patchwork of countryside, becoming greener and lusher the further in land we headed and the nearer to the mountains we got. Around lunchtime we found ourselves in a situation most cyclists fear. The growing rumble of hunger hitting whilst being in the middle of nowhere! Each promising settlement on the map resulted in disappointment as we pedalled through more and more sleepy, deserted villages. Getting quite concerned about Mr BND’s levels of ‘Hangry’ and his requirement to not go without real food for more than four hours (cycling or not!) I was starting to contemplate throwing ourselves on the mercy of locals and in my head attempted to construct an appropriate sentence in Italian. However, before door knocking commenced we cycled up yet another climb and in to the small town of Barchi where appeared a ahead of us, a bar, like an oasis in the desert. Thank the Lord. The next hurdle would be if they sold anything other than coffee and alcohol but the kind owner must have heard the urgency in our voices whilst requesting whether he sold paninis and agreed to rustle something up for us. I think it was a pickled spicy aubergine piadina, perhaps not what we would have chosen but it was soon wolfed down in great relief! We enjoyed our lunch on the terrace out the back of the bar with commanding views over the rolling hills for miles around. We left the cute little village behind, passing a highly decorated village gatehouse and descended down sweeping bends to the valley below.

As the shadows lengthened we weren’t far from our destination for the night; Urbino. A walled city and  a UNESCO World Heritage Site notable for a remarkable historical legacy of independent Renaissance culture, especially under the patronage of Federico da Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino from 1444 to 1482. It is also home to the University of Urbino founded in 1506 and is famous for being the birthplace of artist Raphael. We had one last (quite large) climb up to the city itself, then negotiated the least steep streets to eventually arrive in the main square in front of the Ducal Palace. Here we took on necessary re-hydration and sustenance (otherwise known as beer and snacks) and soaked in the hustle and bustle of this magnificent place. Being a University town it was much busier and livelier than we had seen all trip. With reluctance we declined another drink and mounted our bikes for the last couple of kilometres to our hotel on the edge of town. We were staying at Hotel Mamiani, a decision we made purely on the basis that it has a spa! Our legs were very grateful of the pummelling jets of water as we soaked our weary muscles. 69 miles and 5,000ft of climbing ensured we slept very well that night!